Guild Wars 2

Bumpsy daisy

Greetings forum frequenters!

Toxic Harmony [tX] is an european international guild that focuses on raids, fractals & dungeons. As a group that has been around for a while we hope to deliver top tier quality of play while maintaining a relaxed and loose atmosphere.

Being a hardcore guild we have a few criteria that potential members must meet:

- Having the Heart of Thorns expansion and all raid relevant masteries unlocked;
- Being able to communicate in english, both written and vocally;
- Having at least 2 professions properly geared for the content we cover;
- Being able to play at least 2 professions to a good extent;
- Being fairly experienced at the content we focus on (Must be experienced in every raid encounter);
- Having at least 150 agony resistance on 1 character;
- Being ambitious in regards to being a good PvE player;
- Being able to operate in a team environment and have a good attitude.

If nothing has scared you away yet, here’s what we can offer you as your guild:

- Efficient daily & weekly runs;
- A friendly and focused atmosphere filled with helpful people;
- Multiple non-static raid groups throughout the week;
- The chance to evolve as a player by playing with other good players;
- An obscene amount of banter and toxicity :^)

If you’re interested in applying to our guild then click here!

Perhaps you still have a nagging question or doubt, in which case feel free to whisper or message any of the following people:

Veckna.9621

Bukkebruse.2810

Painbow.6059

Wethospu.6437:

Ye, makes sense. I just occasionally get people asking about it so I felt like I should do something about it. From my end, most of the stuff has been ready since HoT. Just no point implementing the rest without categories / rules.

Fractal speed clearing is also one open thing.

Now that you mention fractals, in that recent AMA they said they’re currently reworking a few things in them and working on new fractals altogether. When is this supposed to ship into the live game? I have no idea but I guess setting up things for fractal records now with a rework that could warrant a complete change a few months (I hope) down the line would be a waste of time.

The linear nature of raids make them not very appealing for speedclearing, there’s only so much to do differently. The fact that you also need to find people to open instances for you after every time you reset is an enormous waste of time and people only have so much of that on their hands.

As sad as I find single boss speedkills or these in different low-man formats, these seem to be the way going forward unless something is done at least about the effort that is required to reset a raid instance after every attempt.

Congratulations

Not sure if you guys mean for it to be approved as a record but “Once the timer starts, switching characters or re-entering the instance is banned.”

Congratulations anyway, impressive run

Cheezy.2039:

At least we timed our daily run correctly :^)

Oy vey, thanks for the backup

Nice daily run :^)

Try specifying what region you play on, your preferred class(es) and any other information you feel relevant for guild representatives to contact you if you’re a fit for their guild.
Alternatively, you can just browse this sub-forum as there are multiple dungeon-oriented guilds recruiting in both EU and NA servers as far as I can tell.
Good luck in your guild hunt.

Finally, people who share my enthusiasm for champ bag farming

doddbox.8153:

Rising Dusk.2408:

I do not believe anyone from [vC], [HeX], or [LOD] is a current approver, so they would need to find someone willing. Does that sound right to everyone?

What I recall from that meeting is that they wanted a maximum of one approver per guild as a safety net, and not a static one per guild. Anyone can apply as long as it doesn’t break that rule and they meet Weth’s standards ofc.

This is correct, the 1 approver per guild is a maximum limit to ensure fairness between competitors. Anyone who wishes to volunteer for the position can become an approver with Wethospu’s approval.

Wethospu.6437:

I don’t think you are the right person to talk about the fairness of voting.

What did I do now? And it’s not a question of fairness, I don’t doubt your intentions or integrity it’s just my observer’s opinion of the matter.

And yes, we agreed on votes only being used to clarify/classify things as issues if they come up and not change existing rules or create new ones.

Shouldn’t a guild have to get over 50% of votes in it’s favor to earn voting rights? After all in a poll of 6 voters getting a 3-3 split is most likely the result of a guild voting for itself and 2 out of the other 5 guilds doing the same, unless you’ve made people unable to vote for themselves and I’m not aware of it.

He wasn’t prepared for the Aldus kill to be so quick, and couldn’t stack might after Aldus because there were a bunch of trash mobs still alive keeping people in combat.

Someone should definitely tell Bukke to learn to play Kappa

And people say skillclicking isn’t viable Kappa

Welcome to the “sub 3 minute club” HotW p2!

Guild: Vis Invicta [vC]
Date: 27th July 2015
Restricted time: 2 minutes and 59 seconds
Game build: 50,837

Participants:

Symbolic Avenger (Guardian – Veckna.9621)

Bring A Banner (Warrior – Cheezy.2039)

You Heard Grast (Mesmer – Bukkebruse.2810)

Feronni (Elementalist – Painbow.6059)

Scrub that didn’t record: Flame Axe Conjurer (Elementalist – aeriel.3589)

P.S.: Congratulations to Bukke for his 2nd Koda’s Gift recipe.

Element Two.7316:

BlackDragon.3752:

ok so walking while being immobalised doing nothing is the same like doing aoe attacks.

What the kitten are you even trying to say here?

He means that Shoggroth is effectively disabled through immobilizes during it’s retreat to burrow.

Will GW2dungeons representatives be attending? They don’t exactly seem very supportive of this initiative.

Enko.6123:

Veckna.9621:

Alternatively you can join Vis Latrina [wC] which roughly translated means “Do you want a toilet?” :^)

Lol now you guys are going to see a troll guild running around with that name.

Edit: Apparently that guild name is already in use.

Well of course, as official guild troll it is my responsability to claim ownership of such a guild :P

Alternatively you can join Vis Latrina [wC] which roughly translated means “Do you want a toilet?” :^)

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

I don’t think the lupicus one shot got banned under my rules, but I’ve been wrong once before

Is the ‘restricted’ in point of discussion not the one gwscr hosted?

Lupicus one-shot was first brought up in the last meeting you attended Cookie, as you’ve stated it was debated but not banned because a logical argument couldn’t be made that it wasn’t an intended game mechanic. And it also happened to be the “new cool thing” at the time so most people weren’t prepared to discard it and only when it was proved not to be optimal in competitive terms (as in when it stopped being an issue altogether) it was banned. Compression of AoEs followed this same logic – “I can’t pull it off consistently so I’d rather not have to to secure a record.” – plus people felt it was unintended in the first place so I guess the ruling on this one was justified.

Could you elaborate on option E for the 2nd poll? Will this basically be a rehash of the meetings we used to do or something else entirely?

Wethospu.6437:

Why wouldn’t a mobility (leap) be a core mechanic? If you can reach something middle of the play area by using legit mechanics, is it really out of bounds? Also technically they never bypassed a blockade since they just stood on it.

Yes, it stretches rules but is pretty harmless and not something I would consider a big issue. Kind of same as this immobilizing thing.

That minimal distance between being prevented to progress through the blockade and standing on it resulted in NPC manipulation making it revelant. Do I think it’s a big deal? No, as it’s something that’s available to everyone however it still goes against rules of greater importance and therefore should never have been allowed.

As you’ve said many times over by now, people will vote for what suits them best and that sort of audience can’t be counted on for consistency in their rulings or objectivity.

Wethospu.6437:

Could you mention a change which “flat out broke the principles of the ruleset”? And also elaborate what are these “principles”?

Most of the added rules have just clarified what the rules actually mean. Most (if not all) real changes are from issues before I had even mentioned voting. They would have been resolved in some way, even without voting.

I don’t know a better example of “I have an opinion” than mentioning both unrestricted and overly restrictive in the same sentence. Yes, some decisions have been bit silly but that’s how it works with opinions. Things which you consider silly and stupid make a perfect sense for someone else, and vice versa.

An example of a decision through voting that flat out broke the principles of the original restricted ruleset was allowing to get over the fence in Molten Facility fractal which violates the “Bypassing blockades that have not yet been opened.” and/or “Any party member may not go out of bounds.” which are two fundamental rules that have always been a part of the restricted ruleset. The principles I referred to would be showcasing gameplay as close to non-exploitive as possible but that wouldn’t force people to discard strategies enabled by core game mechanics such as crowd control or conditions.

And yes, it is my opinion though one I feel is shared by many and I’m not attempting to shift blame onto you because in truth that lays in the fact that most people with the ability to vote currently never got the chance to know the basics and fundamentals of the original ruleset.

Wethospu.6437:

Petty or not, it’s still a matter of whether a record gets approved or not. I realize it’s annoying to get effort wasted but there is no guarantee that letting me or approvers decide would end up with a more favorable result.

I’m curious how do you define success? The rule set is about the same as before, few clarifications there and there so I know what they are supposed to mean. The failure (“endless quarrel”) is pretty much about people not getting exactly what they want. So every week we have people making long posts about the ultimate solution, “do as I say, it makes sense and works the best”.

I never really claimed to have the perfect solution, nor is there one as far as I’m aware. It’s impossible to please everyone but as Miku mentioned above all these changes just create confusion. Most of the tweaks that have been made through weekly polls have either smothered people’s creativity and disallowed strategies that were never before questioned or flat out broke the principles of the ruleset to allow new ones.

I’d define success by returning to a situation where everyone was crystal clear as to what restricted meant and rather than even give people the chance to blur the lines between restricted and unrestricted by putting issues up for voting records that wouldn’t fit the bill would just be classified as unrestricted.

I’m all for striving towards perfecting the existing rules and fine tune them to cover every applicable situation but instead we’ve been adding to the existing rules and at this rate I fear things will just keep getting more confusing and with the ever increasing amount of tweaks and exceptions added to restricted it will just keep getting closer to unrestricted in some regards and become overly restrictive in others.

Enko.6123:

I think this would have been fine except some records were approved that had rule violations in it so its more of a matter of the approvers going by the listed rules.

As for the discussion going on now, the stricter the rules get, the less creativity teams are allowed to employ which is going to lead to people not bothering.

I do agree with this. To be honest I couldn’t understand why there was even a need to vote on the Molten Facility Ride The Lightning thing as it was being used to get to an yet unacessible area and therefore is classified as “Out of bounds” or/and even “blockade bypassing”.
Two of the most fundamental rules of the “original” restricted ruleset.
The rules need to be what they are and people should just play accordingly rather than attempt to customize them everytime they find a new thing to show and that would require the rules being bent. I can understand the voters’ perspective as it’s a heavily timegated instance and anything to make it quicker probably feels like a good thing but it still doesn’t justify allowing it when it’s clearly disallowed by fundamental rules that have, for as long as I can remember, been a part of the restricted ruleset.

Point being, the poll system is a very nice concept but ultimately given how opinions differ between voters and how petty issues have been put under a microscope it has not been very successful.
I’d be more than okay with giving the power of decision to the approvers and attend meetings whenever there are significant issues that need to be discussed and agreed on.

The ‘wall on wall’ lupicus situation for example, everybody acknowledges it to not be optimal yet it was banned because it felt cheesy and highly advantageous in a low-man situation. Which is a big reason why I believe there should be a tournament specific ruleset that focuses on all these exceptions and caters to the organizers’ preferences rather than adjusting the restricted ruleset, which is meant for speedclearing records, to competitive livestream play where people are seemingly afraid to show they’ve found ways, that use legit game mechanics, to beat encounters more easily.
Strategies that “trivialize” content are available for everyone to use and more often than not they will have no impact on record runs themselves as nothing stops the next group up from using those same strategies. I certainly hope the day we forcefully prohibit people from taking advantage of their insight into how encounters are designed never comes.
If anything exposing these design flaws might put more pressure on ArenaNet to come up with better designs in the future.

Wethospu.6437:

Luckily they aren’t bosses. So we can just:

“Using immobilize on bosses before they have been active is banned.”

But but, what’s to say they’re not the bosses of that specific event? :^)

While we’re on the subject, the Elite Flame Legion Assassins in CoF p2 also don’t activate until they reach Magg. Will they also be subject to these rules? :^)

Kodiak.4213:

unfortunately, these forums can’t be used for public trading. The best thing to utilize is the in game trading post.

Cheers
-Kodiak

It’s not exactly a tangible item that I’m looking to sell, me and my friends have a fully upgraded guild that we have no use for anymore that we’ve joined a different one so we’d like to get a shiny penny off our work there.

If I wanted to advertise a transaction of in-game items for in-game currencies on these forums, where should I post my thread?

So word for word it will be something along the lines of “Using immobilizes to permanently disable a not yet active boss is not allowed.”?

Wethospu.6437:

The way I see it, only immobilize is problematic since it’s a full disable and pretty easy to keep up. But if you feel that we should vote about whether inactive bosses should be attacked at all, I can add that.

I’m still in awe at how we’re even having a vote about this but in 1 of the cases that the current results will affect the most the boss can be killed before it becomes active without having to resort to immobilizes specifically.
I’d rather nothing else be added to the polls as the risk of it ending in a scenario where, as I’ve mentioned above, we’d have to wait for a boss to waltz into it’s activation location before even attacking it is considerable. Then again it’s probably best to get it out of the way now as there’s a chance it will be brought up later on as people adapt to taking advantage of the design of these specific bosses to effectively obtain the same results as using immobilizes.

It looks like the B option will win out in Issue 3. Will this cover only specifically immobilizes or all sorts of crowd control and movement-impairing conditions?

I personally don’t like the idea of having to wait for a boss to waltz into it’s activation location but oh well, the results are what they are.

Might as well rename restricted to ‘Play How We Want’ because that’s exactly that it has been for quite a while now. We as a community have been customizing it to fit our whims and wishes and purely based on personal opinions.

I agree that there needs to be more consistency specifically in regards to ‘where we draw the line’ between what’s creative and what’s unintended.

As far as I’m concerned anything that doesn’t involve purposely disabling an already active boss, breaking out of the map to reach areas that are still inaccessible and other tiny bits for the sake of balance such as racial skills and consumables should be considered restricted.

In my personal opinion if a boss is disabled merely through immobilizing it before it reaches it’s activation area it is simply poor design and players should be allowed to take advantage of it.
It doesn’t look pretty but I believe it could be filed under creative use of game mechanics™.

Concerning record resetting, I believe consistency is the way to go. Given a full wipe was done for the might nerf which hardly impacted the game when compared to the increased damage that basically every profession is doing in the current patch plus the mobility nerfs which will be felt the most in paths with long skips such as Arah, it would be wrong not to reset now based on that precedent.

Windsagio.1340:

Or balancing for the speedrun crowd is not their priority.

The speedrun crowd is not the end-all and be-all of pve.

Whatever affects the speedclearing community usually ends up affecting the game as a whole, especially the issues being debated in this thread. It almost sounds as though you feel like we demand for changes that would impact only us when instanced PvE is in truth available to anyone in the game.
If anything the speedclearing community seems to first and foremost attempt to push for bug fixes and tweaks to things that are clearly overperforming and these have a negative impact not only on speedclearers but also on anyone who does instanced PvE or even any kind of PvE in some cases, just look at how upset the tryhard world boss crowd is at this Symbolic Avenger situation.

While it’s granted that most speedclearers in these forums have grown a tad bitter due to what we’ve had to endure for so long, seeing world bosses being tweaked on a weekly basis because of minor details while gamebreaking bugs persist in our environment of choice for instance is very disheartening, it’s not like we don’t make a valid point.

Jerus.4350:

To be fair how long of those 2+ years was it a prominent tactic? It was fixed pretty soon after that tournament where people went hog wild with it.

If you believe that for a second ArenaNet ever gives PvE a second thought you’re fooling yourself. The extra exposure of the situation because of a community organized event had nothing to do with FGS finally catching ArenaNet’s attention, however it was starting to also gain a fair bit of popularity in PvP as it was being used to melt Trebuchets in Battle of Kyhlo and Lords in Legacy of the Foefire. And at the end of the day, their precious would-be eSports scene is all they care about and will ever care about. If PvE was ever one of their priorities we wouldn’t experience such droughts between instanced content being released (when it actually has replayability value, RIP aetherpath) and bug fixes that only directly affect PvE. Moreover, since announcing Heart of Thorns back in January we have had no concrete information that instanced PvE will be included in the expansion, all we’ve gotten is their nearly trademarked “challenging group content” statement.

I personally am an enormous fan of Guild Wars 2’s game engine and combat system but seeing what could be considered ‘endgame PvE’ constantly being neglected, not only in development but also in maintenance, has led me to a point where I don’t even expect anything for the future anymore.

Cheezy.2039:

Disgusting/10
I will personally give all of you a Guild Disgrace rank on ts

Except Aike, because at least your music is good

They’re just keeping up with the swiftly changing meta, I thought it was the essence of our guild.

“Vis Invicta [vC] is a hardcore PvE guild formed from dedicated dungeon and fractal runners that are constantly trying to optimize their gameplay.”

K3k!

How much more optimal can you get? :^)

Rofl, this is simply 10/10!

dboylolz.3916:

I would like to see a trio fractal tourney, a 5-man one would honestly be a bore at this point

That is a very good idea actually, I’ll hop aboard that hype train!

One issue that has been brought up in the past about the 3-man format is that it takes people farther away from their daily routines than the classic 5-man which probably was a decisive factor on so many teams dropping out late in the last one. While theoretically it’s easier to get a 3-man group together than it is a 5-man one, getting people to consistently practice in a trio format is harder and that is a big contributing factor to why so many teams dropped out late last time, I personally would like to see a return to the classic 5-man format. And having at least 1 alternate per team should be mandatory to prevent situations that have been observed in previous tourneys like people disconnecting and forcing the festivities to halt for considerable amounts of time until they reconnected.

Also as mentioned above, the best of 7 & 9 rounds were simply a drag to watch. In some ways the length of the final rounds made the tournament reach it’s air time quota as a lot more teams were expected to participate at first but from a viewer’s perspective it was just too long. I’d lean towards best of 3 series with the finals being best of 5, this of course depends on the number of teams that participate as time is something to consider.

Plus, fractals tourneys would be a refreshing change for the future. Yes, these are heavily RNG influenced and don’t appeal to as broad an audience as dungeons though it remains the only true high-end content in this game (well not so high-end since the most recent balance patch).

Nice to see HotW being given some love, way to improve on our endboss kill!
Congratulations

If I may, when an AoE is targetted at the roof the white outlining does not appear on the ground but rather at the location where it has been targetted. So in this case, that was just a normally casted Ice Storm.

Amicable Pugs.4503:

Both eles using it = 4s chill plus 4-8s more from water 3.
But yea, I’m not that sure either, just wanted to ask.

It was our starting idea as well, but we soon realised that we couldn’t sustain the chill uptime given that GoEP isn’t really the best source for it and being able to always land our water 3 was also unrealistic when factoring in the boss’ habit of catapulting itself into the ceiling.

Amicable Pugs.4503:

Ofc cheezy dies at last boss.
Also, why glyph in air there instead of water? Did weakness really help compared to a longer cd on his rush?
And good job

The chill uptime didn’t last as long as we hoped for which in truth made it fairly useless compared to the weakness which sort of helps us facetank it without aegis. Those last few seconds of the endboss fight are torture to rewatch, if it doesn’t fall apart at the end that would easily end up as a 4:0x run

Ted The Warrior.8674:

The door isn’t opened yet so that couldn’t of happened. They spawn at the bottom of the ramp and path up once you run past door. They just aren’t there though.

Actually, their pathing is triggered much earlier than that which is something we discovered as a happy accident during one of our test runs when one of us got feared against the door and we ended up being jumped by a bunch of crazy bears.
It will be more clear once Bukke uploads his PoV.

Honor of the Waves path 2 (Plunderer)

Restricted time: 4 minutes and 18 seconds
Date: 10th June 2015
Game build: 49,781

Guild: More Pewpew Less [QQ]

Participants:

Elementalist – Yours truly

Elementalist – Feronni (Painbow.6059)

Mesmer – You Heard Grast (Bukkebruse.2810)

Warrior – Claw of Bella (Bella.4708) – No PoV

Thief – Mía Swift (Cheezy.2039)

Thanks to our special guest Bifrost Master Cheezy for leeching off our underwater DPS