Guild Wars 2

Ludus Rex.1562:

This game has the most responsive devs, with the most transparent work, with the most community involvement of any MMO I’ve ever seen. Add to that that their game is a subscription free model, and color me impressed.

Forum dwellers response? “You guys are terrible and you’re dumb for not doing it better and faster!”. I’ve never seen a game community so doted on, only to claim that they’re being ignored.

There are some more things I want out of this game also, but the overall amount of negativity really is baffling to me. I enjoy tons of aspects of GW2 and I know that most of the things that need improvement, are being actively looked into and worked on by the dedicated development team.

I think there is a huge difference between the PvE and PvP part here though. For PvE and its content, I would agree to all you’ve said above. Unfortunately, I am not a player who enjoys or plays much PvE at all, and “my” section of the game has been treated like the unloved step-child since the launch of the game.

It is not surprising that the mood here is negative, especially when we see other parts of the game getting a lot of love and attention. It’s been over a year now, and all that has basically happened to PvP duing that time was things getting taken away that once were there at launch (3 round tournaments) with no replacements.

So sorry that we are disappointed and impatient after more than a year of our time invested and being hopeful. I won’t keep hanging around for another couple of months for another potential blog post with news. And I perfectly understand everyone else who isn’t willing to either.

Yes, I am disappointed. Was looking forward to this blog post a lot since it got announced and hoped that it would tell me something to look forward to.

As it is now, after one year I am really tired of waiting for something that I actually want to play. Guess despite all the potential it has, the focus of this game seems to clearly be PvE, and so this just isn’t the game for me after all.

It’s sad and I’m disappointed because I had expected otherwise, and if I had known how this would develop, I never would have bought the game in first place.

That’s it? That’s the revealing blog post of PvP news I’ve been waiting for? oO
Who even cares about rewards at this stage of capture-the-point-boredom, seriously? It’s just not fun to play, no matter what rewards you get or don’t get from it.

I’ll be back the day GvG or something like Heroes Ascend gets implemented… no patience for this anymore.

The games I play on my phone have more “guild wars” content than this sad parody of its name.

Amen to that! Couldn’t agree more.

1. GvG
2. guild halls
3. sPvP formats

I hadn’t done any dungeon for about 3 months because I mainly enjoy WvW and PvP and got bored with PvE.
Had lots of fun in this one with my guildies last night however. Not too hard, just not easy enough to be boring. It’s only been released and figuring out how everything works and practising it is the most fun and rewarding part concerning dungeons in my opinion…

Jamais vu.5284:

I still find it unbelievable how they’re willingly destroying the self-organized budding eSport where their own attempt at eSports failed.
They just need to make a tiny part of the map not have the kitten buff.

Exactly.
Especially because this is players doing something constructive instead of just whining and complaining. The whole “scene” is player-made out of own initiative because the devs are failing to heed the call of what people want in that regard. :/

What I don’t understand is why someone would willingly put rocks in the way of a healthy and lively, very motivated community in the game.

Those GvG players made their own (not so little) niche all out of nothing, because the game as such still fails to provide any features for real GvG.
But there are enough people enthusiastic enough to organize on their own, make websites for player-managed leaderboards based on good sportsmanship, lots and lots of guilds participating because THIS is the way they want to play.

It is beyond me why such a positive vibe in the playerbase is not getting any official support but rather the opposite.

[EW] would like to thank [VotF] for the fun fights on Ugly Rock border last night!

Does anyone know of a video showing the new Bifrost spell animations on a guardian? Been looking on youtube for the past couple of days but can’t find one.

Count me in for that boycott. I have so many regrets and it makes me wanna scream.

I guess it’s because there is still enough people whining about how weak and useless warriors are in PvP, so they don’t dare touching that. Think they wouldn’t ever have touched ranger spirits either if we had just let people keep whining about how useless they are.

The point is that nothing was OP to begin with.
It was people on these forums whining and crying about spirits being broken to such extent (for almost a year!!), that a couple of motivated people stepped up and elaborated on how to make them work well. Because the ranger forums are a horrible place full of unhappiness and frustration, and we wanted to be helpful and improve this for the good of all.
So we pointed out options that had been there since the very beginning of the game, as in ONE YEAR, but a lot of people seemed to lack creativity to experiment themselves and up with the same results. Whining is always easier, you know.

Then suddenly when this became public, more and more people started using spirits, and other people started whining about spirits suddenly being OP while nothing had really changed about them. People who were simply not used to being confronted with spirit builds as they used to be so rare for ages. And again, whining is so much easier than having to use your own brain to adapt and come up with solutions.

What just really disgusts me is how Anet reacts with nerfs to whoever screams “OP” the loudest, even when there is nothing to back it up with but a bunch of upset crybabies.

Wow, I can’t believe my post that I made in the support section got merged into this thread.
Apparenetly asking for compensation for 3 sets of wasted transmutation stones is “not a support issue”.

Durzlla.6295:

I don’t see a spirit nerf… Only buffs.

The recast cooldown for spirits now only starts ticking when they die, which means that you will be without them for 25 seconds no matter what. Before the patch you were able to recast them earlier if they lived long enough, as in instantly if they didn’t get killed during their uptime.

Edit: I come from a WvW perspective mainly, where my build, which worked well for 1 year, makes no sense anymore now.

As I said above, I have no use for different stats rares because all my characters already have exotic gear for all their builds.

The 20% free magic find means I have as much magic find as everyone else. While unlike most other players I spent real money for transmutation stones and ingame gold for cultural skins which I now have no use for from one day to the next.

Vox Hollow.2736:

It’s pretty obvious the mandatory downtime is there to create a window of opportunity for a human opponent, but lowered cooldowns is not something the sPvP crowd would be in favor of (Especially when it comes to Spirit of Nature).

Nor the WvW community, but since WvW doesn’t get taken into account when balancing things anyway… we just have to keep on feeling as unloved as we are. :/

I have 3 level 80 characters and got each of them a full set of magic find rares, which I used for dungeons and world map farming. Since I used them so often, I bought each of them a set of cultural skins and transmutation stones to make those clothes look pretty,

I expected some kind of compensations for real money spent on the gem store when these changes hit. Instead I now have 3 sets of soulbound rares in expensive skins that I have no use for, because all my characters have exotics for all their builds.
I could use them for the skins and transmute them onto something else, right? Spending more money on transmutation stones…? So totally not. I feel extremely screwed over and I’m no sure where to turn to for adressing this issue. Hope his forum is the right place.
I’d like to either get my money back or be refunded the gems or transmutation stones I used.

I totally agree.
I had a full spirits build on my ranger for ages that I used to WvW with when noone else did and considered spirits useless. I came here and posted my build and tried to promote spirits just to make the horrible ranger forums a little bit of a better place. Where people help and try to be constructive rather than just whining.

Now I wish I’d never done it. My build is now useless with that recast countdown only starting after the spirits die. Goodbye beloved ranger, I don’t care about playing anything less sparkly. Also that was the last time of me ever sharing a build on these forums or trying to help people see their options.

Chiolas.1326:

Look on the brightside, at least we have awesome expensive abilities like the ballista spreadshot, the arrowcart toxic shot or the burning oil increased damage, they work wonders against large groups of Risen!

lol

Virtute.8251:

However, I think that many of these features are not in yet for two reasons: withholding them allows the game a longer lifespan through incremental introduction of them (which is exactly ANet’s m.o.), and it seems that they want like-kind but different implementations of features like that. They want this to be unique, rather than a 2.0 version of GW1. It’s not a bad move.

Well as long as it’s still on the agenda, I can live with that too. But at the moment I’m feeling so drowned in living story things and mini games and whatnot (which I couldn’t care less about) in every patch and every interview and every blog post…. that I’m seriously worried where the focus of this game is shifting towards. And if other aspects aren’t actually getting lost on the way.

Take sPvP for example. All that’s basically happened since launch was that big features got taken away. Real tournaments, being able to win gems, etc. Some new maps with the same capture-the-point mechanics were added, fine. We got a half-arsed ladder. Now we’re supposed to get a solo-queue ranking. Uh.. yeah great, but what about the bigger picture, and the direction of all this? Some vague words about that, and meanwhile I don’t really trust vague words like that anymore.

No mention of new guild features is even worse than vague hints. :/
You’re saying just have faith? Well, I’ll try.. and hope that I won’t be playing a PvE-only game in another half year.

Antara.3189:

the whole topic of Guilds needs some work. Being able to see their active logon and last time logged in, Guild Halls, Guild vs Guild, Alliances.

Just a few things I hope to see again

Oh yes, guild alliances too please. My guild basically was trying an alliance with other small guilds (mainly for guild missions) and the lack of common chat really messed things up to some degree.
So where is all mention of improving/adding more guild features? Are PvE guild missions all there was to those plans?

Virtute.8251:

These things operate on longer timelines than Guild Wars 2 has been released. Guild Wars was released in 2005, and its GvG wiki page history starts in October 2007.

Alright, but the point was that guild halls and more focus on “guild content” was mentioned by the devs quite a while ago, but this latest blog post with the outlook for the rest of the year doesn’t talk about them anymore at all now. That’s rather unsettling and disappointing imho…

I absolutely agree, made a post about this in the WvW forum yesterday… cause I miss the GvG aspect the most and thought WvW comes closest as that’s where the current “GvG” takes place.
Was looking forward to this blog post for a long time and am very disappointed now.

Renxian.6982:

So in otherwords, an kitten measuring contest.

Yeah. But with some context, too. Imagine buying/building your own guild hall and deciding on what you want it to look like, then defending that against other attacking guilds. Also being able to watch/replay other guilds’ matches in-game. That’s the kind of stuff I miss from GW1 and sort of hoped to carry over to here, name of the game and all..

WvW is great fun as it is, but the fact that so many guilds do get together for GvG kitten measuring contests on the public maps shows that the interest for this kindof thing is there. Why not pick up on that and provide an environment where it won’t ruin the fun for other people cause their playground is the only one we have…

Haven’t been to the ranger forums for a while and just saw this… I posted my spirits build in Prysin’s thread and can’t say anything bad about it. I play WvW with my guild mostly, big zerg fights are fine as long as I can hug a stability-guardian (preferrably commander). Same goes for roaming/smaller scale skirmishing.
I’m full of AoE, CC- and healing-wise. It’s somewhat similar to what a shouts guardian does, but with different mechanics and effects. Some damage support, lots of CC (more than your average guardian), lots of heals. No stability, but an awesome water field. Versatile with the option to swap out pets if you need to adapt to a different situation.. scout or chase down a single target, etc.
So maybe if you look at the utilities close up, there is probably a class/build for each that does a better job in the same department. But those will have shortcomings in other areas, where the ranger might hold up better. It’s the whole package and combination of things that counts, not just your boon output or raw damage.

Maybe try out a couple more builds and gear combinations until you find something that works for you and your group?

I’ve been using this spirits build for about half a year now:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNBlYDbkoqqurysC0OQwKoo3jWRr27eMKSdqK+IH-TsAgzCmIuRdj7GzNybs3MqYVxGEA

Focus is on support and healing (full cleric’s gear for strongest possible healing spring, traited moa AoE heal, elite spirit), and it feels very much like a “druid”.

Works great in WvW if you play it right. The trick is to actually go into melee on top of your commander and have a friendly guardian nearby to provide you with stability. (Lack of own stability is the achilles heel with this build, but in guild raids that shouldn’t be a problem.)
As you charge in with the other melee people, fire the spirit CC effects around you and watch yourselves carve a path of desctruction. ^^ Most common misconception here is that people think spirits are useless because they die too fast, but the thing is you WANT them to die, right there in the middle of the pit, because they will pop all their AoE CC effects again then. So it’s actually useful getting them killed in the middle of the fight instead of having them die a natural death of old age later on where they don’t hurt anybody anymore.
Their buffs are nice while they last, but the AoEs can be just as good in the proper place. Especially because enemies are likely to have used up most of their condition cleansing/stability by the time they trigger for a second time.
Also if it’s a larger/longer fight, you will be re-casting them soon enough anyway and get your buffs back again, too.

Healing spring plus dwayna runes give lots of survivability, moa heals the crap out of everyone around it and the elite spirit is my personal favourite here. Never know what it will do, get up one downed NPC or ress up to 5 dead (not downed) players…have seen all of that happen now.

I really like this build and find it lots of fun in WvW, but it does get a bit bland after a while. You have 3 skills (=spirits) that all use the same mechanics – cast, keep an eye out, trigger AoE, recast. If it wasn’t for the fun elite, it would probably be very boring to play on the long run.
Still have to say it’s very effective especially if you run with a melee-heavy group, people love your buffs and healing and you look very flashy, too. ;P
I never really understood why there are so few spirits around in WvW…

PS: I’m obsessed with the shortbow and bring the sword just for potential 1v1 scenarios, you might wanna use a greatsword and axe instead which makes more sense.

Am I the only one really disappointed that there is no more talk of adding GvG features? I’m thinking of guild hall fights that many GW1 vets among us are still missing and have been hoping for. Guild rankings, the possibility to challenge a certain guild from whatever server, outside of WvW boundaries, an “arena” or something of the like where you compete and the winning guild’s name gets announced server-wide, and so on.

About half a year ago (?), the devs said that they would add features to make guilds more important in the game. Now it looks like the guild missions we got already were the end of that? Honestly, those PvE-scnearios really weren’t what I had in mind or was hoping for and noone in my guild is enjoying those overly much either.

At the moment, guilds occasionally have semi-organized GvG skirmishes on the WvW maps. Those are fun because we all WANT to battle each other, but it interferes with other people’s fun, too. People who accidently end up in a GvG because they are on the map to actually do WvW get in the way, and it’s very unpleasant for both sides.
I really wish this wasn’t the only way to test your strength against another like-minded guild.

Is there still hope for some actual, literal “guild wars” content at some point or am I dreaming too much?
The combat system and mechanics themselves are great, the “bare bones” of all that we need are there and are awesome, but please add some substance to them…

I’m rather disappointed with this blog post. Had been anticipating it for months, since it was first announced… and now all I see in there is more “small changes” to content we already have more or less.

Most importantly, whatever happened to Guild Halls and GvG? Or in general, the idea that guilds were supposed to become more meaningful in the game? I sure hope those guild missions weren’t all of that, because I don’t really see anyone enjoying those much.

I think this is probably part of why so many people would like to see a big expansion instead of these small drop by drop updates… it kinda feels like nothing really new gets added like this, when many of us are still waiting/hoping for features we have been missing in the game from the beginning.
Personally I’m very tired of living story and mini games every couple of weeks.

Nooo, I really liked those!
Have to admit I haven’t played any in the past 3 or 4 weeks, because my new team and me stuck to “practising” in the 2team ones for now, but this was the goal we were working towards to… oh well.

ski.4927:

@Holy Devastation…

I am confused by what it is you are looking for here. How is a 1v1 fight in sPvP more challenging and skillful that a 1v1 fight in WvW. You said that food buff gives a disadvantage, but the person I’m fighting also has a food buff. So, we are still on equal ground.

What is it you are looking for?

I kinda have to agree, because in WvW your opponent could be an upscaled non-80, or someone whose gear is not as good as yours, while in PvP all of that is always equal per default.
Also my confusion hits a lot harder in WvW and that means it’s easier for me to kill people with that build, while in sPvP that’s a more challenging undertaking.

Yeah, same here.. my guildie is playing just fine and lag-free on a borderlands map and when I try to enter there I just get a message that it’s full.. and no queue.

I wasn’t aware that Rabid gear has higher condition damage on it, because at least in PvP both sets have the exact same numbers for that stat.
That is confusing indeed, but thanks very much for the explanations.

Also good to know about the toughness/vitality thing, I guess I’ll be aiming for 1500 toughness then and fill the rest with vita for better retaliation-zerg-survival.

I think the “guilds forum” here really is a mess. It is beyond me how anyone is supposed to find a suitable guild on their own server by digging through hundreds of posts that are both “looking for” and advertisements for guilds on all US and EU servers at the same time.

http://gw2guilds.org is great, but most people never even hear about it.

I’d very much like to have an in-game recruitment tool and/or proper forums for every server, to make things easier to overlook and sort through.

Embolism.8106:

Regarding Carrion and Rabid. It is true that with Glamour builds it doesn’t make too much of a difference which one you go for, but bear in mind that Rabid is much better than Carrion in conventional Condition builds; so going for Rabid will allow you to switch between a Glamour build and a conventional Condition build with ease.

Would you mind explaining why Rabid stats are so much better for conventional condition builds? Because of the tuning crystals?

wauwi.9162:

if you’re on an EU english or german server: may i join?

one of my problems in every mmo…i just always met the guys who are scolding me for having fun…at playing a game.
and if i’ve found a guild which advertises casuality, fun, etc., i end up being the only one at that guild after 2 weeks, excluding the leader.

and i just realized, bombing banners all over the town and guild missions are now a mandatory requirement too, to find a guild.

i guess i’ll have to switch servers…oh wait, that ain’t free anymore. >_<

Feel free to check out http://waldmeister.guildlaunch.com – we are on Piken Square (EU), alive and kicking.

That said, there is also http://www.gw2guilds.org/ which is a list of guilds on all servers.
I’m sure there are lots of nice guilds around that would fit the profile you are looking for, it’s just really hard to find one due to lack of proper official server/guild forums etc. and this is seriously frustrating for both sides. Recruit spamming in chat is not fun either!

Thank you for the explanations Pyroatheist, that helped a lot.

Pyroatheist.9031:

It sorta depends on what you’re trying to do. If you are going for absolute pure condition damage, then rabid is better, because tuning crystals scale at 6% per toughness and 4% per vitality.

Other than that, carrion is actually a bit better for overall damage, since it does add power. It really depends on your personal preference. As I mentioned, I’m using carrion weapons and rabid everything else, it really doesn’t make an enormous difference.

Sorry, I should have clarified more. My main concern at the moment is survivability in WvW, specifically not dying in the AoE in zerg battles. ^^
And I’m not sure if just loads of toughness will help me more there, even if that means very few hitpoints, or if I should go for both vitality and toughness.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Never seen a mesmer with bifrost, but all the clones retain footprints when using sunrise, so I assume it holds true for all legendaries.

Ah ok, that probably answers it.
Thanks for the fast reply, image of a million rainbow footprints in my head now… lovely! <3

I have a question – why exactly is rabid gear (prec/tough/cond) better than carrion (pow/vita/cond)?

I’ve also recently switched to a glamour build ankittenrying to collect proper gear for that build now, and these two condi damage stat combos confuse me because both seem to have a rather “useless” stat each.. conditions can’t crit from what I understand.

I suppose I do want both vitaliy and toughness? Or really just toughness and not so much vitality and that’s the reason for rabid gear?

I’m wondering, if a mesmer is wielding the legendary Bifrost, will the clones all leave the rainbowy footprints, too? Because otherwise I guess you’d be giving yourself away automatically..
I’ve been looking for gameplay videos of Bifrost-mesmers sporting clones on youtube, but no luck so far… so it would be great if someone could answer this.
Thank you!

I’m in a rather small guild with mostly less than 10 people online during prime time. We made an alliance with another similar and like-minded guild and have been helping each other out with manpower for our guild missions the past few weeks.
We can usually do tier 1 missions just fine with about 10 people and voice communication.
Have tried tier 2 without success so far, but I don’t think it is impossible. Just requires some more practise and experience probably.

I really do wish there were features to encourage guild alliances though. We need at the very least a common chat or something, because the way it is right now it makes things a bit of a pain in the.. to organize.

Nevertheless I can only encourage other small guilds to look for similar guilds in the same situation, and keep checking on people on your friend list as well. From what I’ve seen there are lots of people out there who aren’t able to do guild missions on their own and are happy to help/play the content/get the rewards.

I love Andal with the two quaggans in HotW path 2. Lots of running around, so much fun.

fiftypercentgrey.7108:

Tissitra.4153:

German user. Currently unplayable due to lag.

this.
+

Me too.

Had to log out because the game has been unplayable today. Was fine yesterday, but been having huge lag issues in dungeons ever since the last patch.
Right now, up to two minutes lag even in the open world, disconnects every 20 minutes. Horrible.

Well yeah CM works but it just takes a lot longer than the old AC used to. I’m all about time involved here.
And I don’t know about WoW stuff, I was just saying it was nice having shorter options before the patch and it’s a shame if those are all going to disappear in the future.

Short =/= easy or paying no attention.

Actually, Sorrow’s Embrace path 3 is my favourite at the moment in that way, Mosspit.

But unfortunately it is for level 60+ only, and we can’t take our “lowbie” players there. And most of all, which is the point of this thread, I am worried about what places like SE will look like after they get their own revamp in time.

I’m not sure if all “new” versions of the dungeons are supposed to be taking longer, but I dread it in a way because we are already feeling the “loss” of our short AC option every day now.

Edit: updated topic to make this clearer

No, not neccessarily easier. The difficulty of the new AC and what it means for (especially new) players is already being discussed in the “new AC” thread and is a different topic I think.

To be a bit more specific here: even if we do the new AC path2 reasonable well for example, the new mechanics of the last boss just make the fight last a pretty long time. It is a fun encounter the way it is designed and not “too hard”, but it just makes the whole run take a lot more time than it did before.

We are simply lacking a shorter option for people with less time in the evenings now where we had one up till recently. We miss that and this makes me worried about the direction any future dungeon revamps are going to take in that regard.

After a few days with the new AC, I realized that me and my guild are now sort of lacking a “short” dungeon to go to with our members who might either not have a high level character yet, or are only logging in with less than an hour time of time to spend on a dungeon run.
We used to end up going to the “old” AC a lot for both of these reasons, and are now missing an alternative. We are a casual guild with a lot of players who are relatively new to the game, so dungeons usually include a few wipes, which means taking a little extra time.

Yes, CoF is fast, but it is for higher levels and also it takes a while to do the event first in case it isn’t opened. HotW path1 is fine, but unfortunately only for high levels, too.
TA is fine IF the group can get past the first boss, but that’s not always a given either.

I’m wondering if other people are concerned with this as well. Personally I am ok because I usually play for a couple hours every day and I can fit anything I want to do into my play time just fine. I also love Arah for example and the fact that it is as huge as it is and takes as long as it does.

But I do miss shorter dungeons for above reasons and I am worried that the future revamps of other now “short” paths might turn out similar to the new AC and leave us with little to no options for people with less experience and less time on their hands.
How do other people see this?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Honestly, I would probably be satisfied if one of the developers could sit and explain the reasoning which went into the pricing, the target invested time/Influence, and why “Art of War”, and addressed the larger pieces of the concerns.

Yes please. Pro transparency!