Guild Wars 2

From all of us fellow thieves. (Too lazy to make a forum one)

I reached leaderboard rank 64 in TeamQ nearly a month ago on my engineer with a full turret power build. It’s my firm belief that engineer is actually the easiest class to master, although with a relatively high skill floor, and here’s why:

• Kits – With no cooldown, an engineer is able to use one skill in a kit, swap to another kit or their main weapon set, and continue fighting scott-free. Unlike elementalist, there’s no punishment for cycling your kits too fast, and you’re actually encouraged through traits to swap kits constantly. This leads to the spamming of skills without much need to put thought into what you’re using, other than having a ‘generalized’ grasp on combat.
• PBAoE – Engineer has far too much PBAoE for a conquest-based PvP format. Between bomb kit, grenade kit, toolkit, turret detonates and elixer throws, engineer by far has the absolute most offensive and defensive AoEs of any class, and can shotgun them at his feet on a whim, making kiting the only viable option for defeating them, and even at that point Grenade Kit has both the condition damage, direct damage, and soft CC to deal with even the peskiest of off-point burst mesmers.
• Condition Spam – ANet’s initial vision was for necromancer to be the condition class, however engineer has far surpassed the conditions output of the necro with the constant spamming of PBAoE fields and the ability to spam shuffle through their kits without punishment. This combined with the horribly imbalanced condition meta makes the engineer both tanky and have high damage output.
• Healing Output – Healing Turret blasted into its own water field after the initial pulse of healing has a higher HPS than warrior’s base healing signet/adrenal health/regeneration combo, and adds regeneration on top of that healing.
• Automated Response – This trait is entirely too powerful, and I’m ecstatic it’s getting nerfed. Running a Barbarian’s Amulet and jewel, I’m easily and comfortably able to maintain myself in the 1k-6.5k health range that is 25% of my 26k health, and more often than not a fight would be easier, even running only Healing Turret as my sole source of condition removal. Fights involving even two condition classes (say, a condi engie and condi necro) would last far longer than it would take for my team to reach far point and help me out, and eventually push the opposing side from their home point with my health still in tact.
• CC – This one’s a big point. Running my full turret build with rifle and APT, I had 6 sources of knockbacks/launches and one stun at my fingertips, and one of these CC skills always available even with the other 6 on cooldown when rotating correctly. This is a stretch since most engineer builds don’t have quite this much CC, but even when not investing into turrets they’ve got rifle, flamethrower, toolkit, APT (healing turret), and Supply Crate for 5 total CC skills while maintaining their survivability and gaining the benefits of kits and conditions, as well as mass AoEs as per mentioned earlier.

The engineer is, by far, the easiest class to master. The issue is that many people don’t play engineer because it’s hard to get into, but once you learn the rotations and what each skill does, you’ve essentially already mastered the class. Running a build like Teldo’s Bomb Build with heavy conditions only makes you look like a better player than you actually are due to the extremely forgiving nature of the class.

I know that I can’t be the only one absolutely fed up by the amount of AI-spam in PvP right now, both competitive and non-competitive, and the issue is only growing. The runes themselves aren’t bad in PvE or WvW, however the issue arises in that both Rock Dogs and Tropical Birds have massively high burst, increasing the overall DPS of a player running the runes much further than DPS runes which provide direct stat bonuses. The other issue that arises is the fact that there are AI-summon sigils out there which nobody takes due to the fact that better summons are more easily obtainable with runes that guarantee a summon early in the fight without the player providing any effort on their own behalf other than simply being ‘hit’. The easiest of solutions to the problem is to remove AI-summon runes from PvP altogether, forcing players to show a tidbit of skill outside of the AI doing the entirety of the work. The alternative to removing the runes from PvP would be a rebalance of both Pirate and Ogre runes to no longer summon pets, and be converted to sigils which summon the pets at 25 charges like every other AI-summon option.

That’s just my piece. I’m not whining, and I’m fairly certain most of us can agree that AI-spam isn’t fun and doesn’t lead to skillful gameplay.

Afya.5842:

Can we all forget about dueling?

+1.

We should all forget about Guild Halls, Mounts and Player Housing too.

I’ve spent over $1,000 on the game and gem store, and I’m pretty content with the game as it is. Complaining won’t get me anywhere, and I don’t come up with some mind-blowing solution to x or y problem every day. Nobody does. These are highly controversial issues which people bring up: the equivalent of gay marriage or abortion here in GW2. My money goes to make content, hire new designers and better the game. I’m happy in knowing that, and that’s all that matters. A dev can’t simply say, “Idea!” and have 100% support either. There will always be naysayers who feed on responses from their claims and complaints. The best thing to do is not to ignore them, but read and verify that they aren’t making an attempt at a valid point and move on. ArenaNet Devs are people too. They suffer from the same controversy and affairs that we on the forums go through every day.

Just be kind, and pay it forward. Maybe your ideas will make it into the game someday, but this “I want it now” stuff has to stop for the betterment of the community and the forums. Peace.

Thank you so much for this Allie! Now if only I could have had them yesterday during my 12-win TeamQ streak ;-;

Slow rank progression, large risk, virtually no reward.. The list could go on. Literally the only point to go past rank 20 is for essentially free 18-slot bags (20-slot at ranks 50+)

Also a fact: all warriors are norn. Even my charr.

Why is this in the WvW discussion? That is my first question.

Second is, why do you come onto the forums and spend so much time complaining? The fact is that Guild Wars 2 has no subscription fee and that’s a lot of the appeal. You’re able to come and go as you please, playing other MMOs at your leisure while still contributing to this one. The population for the original guild wars never died, and I expect the same for Guild Wars 2. ArenaNet has a very loyal fan base, and a lot of us can respect their policies even if they aren’t implimented correctly.

I have full faith in ArenaNet. We in Team Legacy witnessed the entire hardcore PvP team scene disappear with no faith whatsoever that ArenaNet could bring back the PvP scene so late in the game. Yet, here we are. The eSports scene is not only taking off but it’s thriving, and thousands of dollars are being poured into every major tournament. After seeing that happen over the course of this game’s history thus far, I have no doubts about the power ArenaNet has to make this game not only better than it already is but really hit the nail in the coffin of doubt when it comes to their competency.

In the words of Bob Marley, “Have a little faith, brother.”

Everyone seems to think that clipping issues are the reason why they haven’t added capes. The real reason is because, while it’s as easy as welling each cape they make to collide with every armor model in the game equipped to your character, that takes a lot of client-side power to render in real time (though, it is doable. Anyone running a mid-high range PC would be able to render it without any noticeable FPS drops.).

I’m a character artist, and when I see the clipping argument it makes me laugh knowing that ArenaNet works with Maya over 3DSMax and would be fools not to allow nCloth properties in their engine, which GW1 did. They still use nCloth in GW2, but with the much higher poly counts that this game has and massive amount of normal mapping, I fear that 50 players with capes on your screen would cause some serious issues were they all to have collision information attached.

Mesmers are all about being purple and kicking kitten . Get used to it!

It’s fantastic having so many people to sit around and talk with while waiting for queues or just bumming around in the Heart of the Mists, and I see it being a fantastic hangout for people who PvP or want to get into PvP, but it’s missing two things: A bank, and a trading post. I can’t fathom how many times I’ve gone looking for one, or someone’s express drop, to find a specific skin or shuffle through my stored items in the bank (for changing builds). Would it be too much to ask for both of these NPCs to have a permanent home in the Heart of the Mists?

“doesnt become a grinding treadmill”
-Mike O’Brian

The only thing they didn’t follow up on out of all of that was account bound dyes which I believe they reasoned out in a later blog post.

/thread?

Ha. He thinks Shattered is impossible.

Let’s like at the Yakslapper title track:

• It takes 1,000,000 yak kills in WvW to gain the title Yakslapper.
• After nearly a year of hardcore WvW I have 5,740 yaks slain.

If my math is right, it will be another 199 years before I achieve the Yakslapper title.

AoE’s make the shattered achievement easy. Use them.

I can get well over 500 in a day roaming with the zerg for 12+ hours. All it takes is large AoE to keep on tagging as many people as you can.

And my god is it easy to play. After numerous occasions where AR and ET permastealth thieves told me to L2P (mind you I’m playing my S/P no-stealth build in which half of those thieves died to), I finally decided to grab some exotics, trait out 0/30/30/10/0 for might stacking, and head out. It’s a breath of fresh air not having to worry about losing 1v1’s against equally skilled players. Even D/P thieves crumble under my might (heh, it’s a pun), and it’s sad to see just how easy it is to play. Don’t know whether I’ll stick with it, but it is a fun spec to play, albeit quite cheesy. Vitality? Toughness? Who needs it! Full zerk with traveler runes is the way to go.

Own all the faces.

Burnfall, it’s not because you’re a ranger. Trust me.

Rangers aren’t bad, it’s the mindset of the majority of players who play them. “Ranger” typically infers ranged combat, however it’s not the optimal playstyle, so many uninformed players are kicked off the cliff and bring the class as a whole down with them. In my opinion, ranger’s definitely the hardest class to master when you realize that we really don’t have a focus of direction within our traits and have very awkward utilities that don’t function like any other class’s in the game.

For those of you talking about south sun being pointless: it’s essential to the Bubbles story. The Sclerite are essentially the Bubbles Dragon’s minions (apparently it creates tentacled minions), and the end reward for the SoS is a sclerite Karka shell, which has tentacles moving on a non-living shell structure. It may be small, but it all plays into the big picture and we’ll eventually say, “Oohhhh okay, that’s why they did this seemingly pointless living world update.”

Actually as a hardcore WvW player I do NEED to spend all of this time doing these things. That 8% stat increase is significant enough to be the determining factor in a fight between myself and an equally skilled player. There’s been several times where one of my builds perfectly counters another and said fight turns into a never-ending battle. If I’m hitting 8% harder, or taking 8% less damage or have 8% more health the numbers keep going up, and that balanced fight tips in favor of me winning. I don’t know if the OP has ever played a game with a gear treadmill before, but essentially higher stats are a need if you’re in the competitive world.

Now we just need the commando and sandwichmancer, both brought by the Tengu who lead us to Cantha on their mounts with capes to their guild halls.

I like Omnomberry Ghosts, because life steal is OP and they aren’t very expensive.

Azure Prower.8701:

Viking Jorun.5413:

It’s because you’re a cheesespam D/P permastealth thief. Try some no-stealth and be a man:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaVlYmSO3dS6E/5Eh3jyOWzqVgmdP4q81KA-j0DBYfREREgaAiWGgQAM5pIaslhFRjVNDRVLoqkYaXQ6XwmeQ2eAGfLrWKAsFGB-w

Actually I had a no stealth build before the nerfs of the last balance patch. The nerfs have funneled my thief into stealth.

Also that is a pretty bad build you have there.

Still people are missing the point. Not any thing to do with player skill.

What is the advantage to playing a thief over a warrior now?

I’m already using my warrior for no brainer dungeon runs.

Hah! Good one there, bud.

Anything with Vitality as a major stat. There’s a serious lack of those stat types in the game right now.

I’ll quit. I’ve invested too much time to have it all put to waste.

I’m pretty sure it’s an attempt to balance the votes, as only the diehard voters will go out of their way to tip the scales in their votee’s favor.

Halanna.3927:

An Achievement Leaderboard?

Really?

There was nothing else for the Dev’s to spend their time and money on then to elevate some players above others and make them “special” as opposed to the other 99.9% of us?

Now we will all be judged by our position (or lack thereof) on the Achievement Leaderboard.

Bad move, Anet.

I can agree with this. The fact that they’re creating more opportunities for elitists to boast makes me sad.

Haiku was quite bad

But sometimes writers aren’t good

Don’t let door hit you

I’m hoping PvE/PvP skins will be able to be used together. The Masquerade (tribal) set is just waiting to be mixed with ascended skins.

roachsrealm.9284:

if you could teleport to work, the store, the bar, out to eat, visit family around the country, anytime you wanted, for less than the cost of a gallon of gas per use, would you honestly still use a car for anything, ever?

If you owned a Ferrari (or any exotic supercar) would it change your mind?

Horizontal progression doesn’t involve handouts.

This is probably one of the best screenshots I’ve taken, on top of being the best screenshot of any of my asuras.

You always have the option to solo any dungeon, they’ve all been soloed. It’s significantly more difficult, but possible all the same.

law.9410:

wait wait wait!…
llama pet f2: pressing f near your llama pet allows you to ride your llama, giving you increased movement speed and damage.

…and so the Llamabow was born

Steel Fenrir.2791:

We should do a farewell party for old Lions Arch if that would happen. Oh wait, maybe we should gather for a solemn mourn for its loss? Or maybe both!

Oh my god — you just reminded me.

Lion’s Arch will be the mirror of Ascalon of Pre-Searing, and Scarlet is probably going to decimate the landscape, turning the beautiful city into the wasteland of Old Lion’s Arch, just like Old Ascalon.

Let’s just be hopeful that Scarlet can live up to what The Searing did to scar its mark in history.

….What’s PvE?

Ew… A thief wearing plated armor? No thank you.

Meglobob.8620:

This video was very, very funny…

Good way to promote the game in the run up to xmas…

Best bit was, ‘you won’t notice the grind in Tyria’…lol

Obviously GW2 and this forum has players with no sense of humour at all…

Right? I thought it was hilarious, especially because they got Meg Ballsy Turney to be a cab driver and she stayed in character THE ENTIRE time.

I know a certain 5-charr mesmer team that uses Warband Support in conjunction with identical characters and outfits, all ash legion, to turn their 5-charr team into a 30-charr battle when each has 3 clones and 2 warband allies out. It makes any even matchup very difficult to win for the opposing team.

If anyone recalls this article, it was stated that the Revenant features mobility in-combat similar to the thief out of combat. While I can see this in off-hand axe, I don’t see this anywhere else in the class. Staff 5’s cooldown is far too long to be a reliable gap closer, and axe 4 doesn’t have the shortest cooldown to reliably stick to an enemy either. Could Roy have possibly been referring to the mobility of the elite specialization, or did the direction of the Revenant change in a later iteration of the class post-interview?

I think people lack faith in ANet, and assume that they’re stupid or something. It’s a company of ~300, who have been developing this for the past year at least (when it was confirmed that they hired their AI designer). You don’t think that one of them would have thought of this prior to announcing the expansion when immediately this was everyone’s first concern with the class? I guarantee you that ArenaNet not only solved this solution in their own way, but you’ll also be impressed when you see it implemented on launch.

Expect rifles and you’re going to be disappointed come HoT launch. Get ready for that dual warhorn thief hype, boys!

hellokittyonline.7532:

anet strikes again

YOU MAD?

What an insightful and well thought out comment that contributes to the discussion.

Calae.1738:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Calae.1738:

There is little reason or incentive to improve your play when someone else can just run up to you and fix your mistakes._*

team work. strength in numbers. covering each other.

there is no glory in solo death.

I don’t believe an ally should have the ability to erase what an opponent has created. Which is what healing is in a nutshell. It’s an eraser.

I believe allies should have a toolbox that shields me from taking damage. If you want real skill to come into play; death needs to have a serious consequence. Death may be temporarily avoided only if an ally can skillfully shield you from a killing blow.

Running up to someone; healing and reviving them not only makes no sense at all; but is the province of unskilled players.

You couldn’t be more wrong. Certain professions excel in punishing res-rushing, specifically those who bring heavy damage support. Many situations when one person goes down can result in their entire team going down when attempting to revive their allies. It’s an active decision you have to make and adds more to the playing field. If you aren’t able to make the stomp, maybe you should try learning every profession’s downed state and adapt to it.

It’s not death. Just because your health bar went to zero and is replaced by a set of skills to potentially give you a second wind doesn’t mean that it’s broken. More often than not you can easily escape death, and quite a few builds for both my warrior and thief have revolved around the downed state to allow me to fight more than 1 opponent under glassier conditions. When you find your niche in the game, you cannot discount the fact that you have a downed state. Learn to use it properly and the game will have worlds more layers of combat complexity.

Don’t listen to everyone telling you that it’s necessary to play a cheese build to win. I like a challenge, and I’m always playing the builds that have a definitive disadvantage to make a point. My Crit/Condi hybrid has no form of condition removal, because it’s a team build and I run with a shout ranger and a healway guardian who more than take care of the conditions, so that I can focus on bursting down the target. My alternate build (of many, but this is my favorite) is pure conditions and uses shout heals, which actually got buffed in the last patch, and Lyssa runes which makes for a very wonky but extremely functional bunker. If you want to just win, take someone else’s build and run with it. I’m a bit of a build kitten, and challenging myself via combat is the only way I keep myself entertained. I suggest that you try your own build based on your playstyle before resorting to keyboard face-smashing builds.

Penguin.5197:

That radiant armor is just so bright and shiny…would that make you more or less prone to skritt attacks? :O

I feel like you’d have to be stupid to assume less <_<

Honestly? Stealth is a crutch, plain and simple. Learn to play without it, and that’s where the real skill takes places.