Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the info! I was able to put in a ticket from that link.

Hello, we have a few accounts in the house… what can I say, ANET takes a lot of our money.

Anyway, one has email auth and it keeps failing. On the game it doesn’t say why but when I tried to log into the account on the website it says that the auth code is expired… but it’s under 30 seconds old. An account here with SMS has no problems. I wish we could SMS auth the other account but that would require 2 accounts to share a phone number and the system won’t allow that.

Also, I tried to click the above link for support and Firefox blocks it, saying that it’s not secure and is not configured correctly.

You guys okay over there?

First, don’t let people change the meaning of words. It’s kind of like certain “news” outlets trying to change the meaning of “entitlement” to be a bad thing… Look it up, it means “Something that has been earned.” So, if someone says entitlements need cut I tell them we need to start with their paycheck… and they try to say that’s not an entitlement because they earned it. (eyeroll)

Roaming is 1 or 2, period. 3-12 is a Havoc group and then past that are smaller and large zergs. Its been that way for ages and if we start changing the meaning of words then it just creates confusion.

That said, I roam. I take camps, nuke sentries, move fast and can get Tier 6 participation all on my own.

But I don’t run condi. I’m running a DP Daredevil that is inspired by Terrissimo’s 20k physical build but I run around with blinding powder bc it allows me to have permastealth while running bound instead of dash, but then I swap blinding powder out for Bandit’s Defense before engaging a camp.

Get in, get the capture, gtfo.

Team with 2 others running similar builds and you have a ghost squad that can take towers.

But I never gank. Ganking allows your position to be scouted / reported by someone you kill and that ruins the whole idea of operating deep in their territory, which is where it’s at for me.

Just my 2 cents.

I don’t mean to be insulting but I really don’t think anyone did any usability testing on the lobby practice areas or asked people who actually use these things. Here’s why:

AoE is obviously a disaster waiting to happen with the NPC’s so close to each other that you’ll end up fighting 3 the moment you try to do anything that has an area of effect or a bounce attack. Thief SB or Mesmer staff auto attack? Forget it. Want to practice comboing Thief SB4 then blasting with SB2? Say hello to 4 NPC’s at once if you try to do that in the upper area.

I mean BOUNDING DODGER alone is causing unwanted NPC’s to jump in on me while I’m working on something. I can’t even dodge if I don’t want to practice outnumbered situations.

Then there are the golems. The things are parked so close to the Ranger NPC that you always end up hitting one or two, keeping you in combat until you figure out what it was you nicked and go finish it off… again.

C’mon folks… there is no reason at all that this setup should have made it out of beta if anyone actually tried to use it. The problems become obvious after 30 seconds, especially if you try to take on one of the upper area NPC’s without first dragging it down the hill to get it away from the others.

3D real-estate is free… Make some more of it and spread these things around BUT don’t put them on different islands. There are times when we want to practice two or three on one.

We just don’t want to be forced into doing it every time.

Oh, and let’s not forget the beauty of it when your mouse cursor is over the display that shows what you have targeted, it’s class and health. Nothing better than having an emergency blink burned and leave you standing in the middle of certain death.

That’s because the skill fires, goes into cooldown and you go nowhere; that’s for any of those teleports, if your mouse cursor is over the area at the top of the screen that displays the selected target.

After four years of playing GW2 I once again just died to npc’s because I needed to use Thief Shortbow 5 to get to a piece of ground that was covered by some of the right side interface. As you know, if you try to do anything involving the mouse coordinates when the mouse is over any part of the interface then the interface gets priority and the combat skill just doesn’t work.

Blink, same… Lightning Flash, same… Thief Staff 5, same. Do we see a pattern here?

There is a very, very simple solution to this. After all… I ask you this: Other than clicking on skills, minimap or the small line where you enter text in chat, who on earth needs to click ANY other part of the interface during combat? No one, that’s who. No one at all.

Yet all those other things, the group display, the list of dailies… all of them interfere with combat skills, and there’s no good reason for it.

Simple solution? When in combat the only parts of the interface that remain clickable are the skill bar, minimap and the line where you click to get the chat cursor. All other areas become click through until out of combat. It really shouldn’t be that hard since the in combat variable exists already, restricting a player’s ability to change skills, equipment or traits. Just key the clickable property of the interface objects to that same variable, sans the chat text box and skillbar, of course.

What you described you want is definitely a ranger, maybe you just haven’t gotten far enough with it to get the skills you’re looking for?

And my first character was a Mesmer. Big mistake. Mes is one of my fav’s now but it really does need to be your second or third, at soonest. Positioning is crucial, and the playstyle can be as hectic as thief if you’re running shatters.

But yea, for an easy to level character that has fantastic damage at range, good survivability and never any need to chase things down, Ranger is it.

It’s map related. Last night, I was fine in alpine and ebg but my ping skyrocketed and got dc’d 6x in desert. My gf got dc’d constantly in once specific pvp map and one fractal map.

Wow, brag post? Not sure what makes you two try to read too much between other people’s lines but no, definitely not bragging. I don’t put junk in between lines, what you see is what you get. I never understood people who try to claim they know what other people’s motivations are, as if they were some kind of mind readers.

And if I was bragging then I’d be telling you that I had a run of 1:15 and not say anything negative. Because I did, it was cool and I did a snoopy dance when I did it. Now that is bragging. See the difference?

No, really. I kind of thought there would be some sort of eater egg somewhere along the line. Seemed like a good place to have one and even just doing the achiev once is a lot more work than Agent of Entropy and hell, you get 2 pts each for that, up to 250.

(shrug)

C’mon guys,

It’s not bad enough that people work for days or weeks to complete this thing one time but don’t get an achievement point when we can get one in five minutes doing simple dailies?

It’s not bad enough that people invest hours or even days to get their first 15 completions for the achievement and get…. no point and no title. A title that many feel is deserved.

And now I repeated the achievement for the 100th time last night, representing all the effort it took to get 1500 (One Thousand Five Hundred) completions in a single Wintersday season and I got….

Not a thing. No hidden achiev. No title. Not even one stinking little achievement point.

Seriously? Something like that should have a prize of a thousand gems or some such thing like the company already gives away to PvP players as prizes. It’s not as if it would cost the company a penny to do it.

Oh crap….

Thanks Inculpatus, that was it. Being invisible cut off my g chat.

Just finished the repair.

Didn’t help.

Since Wintersday dropped I haven’t been able access any guild chats. I’m still listed as a member in my guild panel, I just can’t talk to anyone.

When I first logged on I tried to use /g to talk to guildies and got: “You are not a member of that channel”.

After changing rep, I do have a guild tag over my head but if I try to use any of my guild chats via just /g OR /g1 through 5 I get: “You are not in a guild”.

Help?

And thank you.

The name of this puzzle needs to be changed to:

“Mesmers Only”

At least two are suggested. That way if one makes it across a hard section you can just port the other and leapfrog your way through the puzzle.

This way ports are useful for more than just recovering a fall.

I honestly dont get how you manage to cause a bug of such a magnitude…

if (armorAscended == true)
{
delete armor;
};

What could possibly go wrong?
(jk)

I demand that as compensation I shall get a new backpack!

Just skin an Asura and send it to PO Box 1457, Nowhere OH, 99999

While you’re in there could we get a new backpack added to the patch?

We already have Charr and Quaggan backpack skins, how about a skinned Asura?

>:>

I’d check metabattle first, after that maybe talk to someone who knows mesmer about creating a build for those weapons that has great synergy.

If you want, my twitch stream is up and will be up for a couple of hours. I can help you figure something out.

Actually that’s what my twitch channel is all about, helping new players.

https://www.twitch.tv/liberal_gamer

If you’re going to want to stick with light gear then your only choices are Power Necro and Ele. Ele can be a glass cannon, complicated major support and combo maniac (staff) or…

About a year ago Wooden Potatoes created a “Medic Ele” build that can’t kill squat but:

“Want to pull off some INSANE rezes and experience 4,500+ armour, 53% damage reduction, being impossible to crit with invulns to boot? Watch on!”

It’s a lot of fun, if nothing else:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIqny2fRecI

Mesmers weakest DPS?!?

What drunk have you been listening to?

Mesmer: “When you absolutely, positively need it dead right kittening now.”

The only real issue with playing Mesmer is that it’s just as complicated as Staff Ele plus you have to be able to fight with a hectic, highly mobile style that is about the same as thief. In most builds you are constantly on the move, teleporting, using stealth, shattering clones and playing “Now you see me, now you don’t.”

I like to call it: “Agile, Mobile, Hostile.”

For starters look into the basic power/shatter mesmer. The WvW build on Metabattle for the Condi PU Roamer is also a great foundation to modify for PvE and I even like it in PvP.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_PU_Condi_Roamer

Yes, it’s possible. But it’s not free.

You use the Anthology of Heroes and a few other things in the Mystic Forge in order to change stats on any ascended gear. Details are here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/how-to-change-the-stats-on-weapons-ascended

BTW: More often than not, the best way to make your own ascended gear is to make the cheapest thing possible at the time (it changes, do some research) and then convert to the stats you actually want.

I’ve been looking at other games and I truly believe that GW2 has as much to offer as any of them, and more… and it’s a hell of a lot more exciting to watch than LoL.

So why do they get thousands, in some cases tens of thousands of viewers on twitch and the massive player base that such numbers would indicate while GW2 does not?

Simple, most people have never really seen GW2, even if they have heard the name.

Anet has really been missing the boat in the marketing and promotion department by not being far more aggressive on Twitch. Imagine getting an ad showing and talking about WvWvW before you go to a Twitch channel about BDO and it’s simple little open world PvP and where one little guild can “declare war” on another little guild.

Imagine getting an ad showing GW2 5 man PvP and pointing that there are various roles such as bunker and roamer when you go to an Overwatch channel… a game that is about 6 man PvP in first person, with various roles to play.

Imagine getting an ad showing WvWvW and explaining the complexity of strategies as you go to a LoL channel, where people appreciate a good strategy.

There is an audience of millions out there, all people who game… all people who already appreciate many of the kinds of things that GW2 has been doing for years. And any marketing high school student can tell you that a concentrated pool of people you know are already interested in similar products to the ones you offer… that’s a gold mine. Those people are called Pre-Qualified Prospects.

And the ability to drop tailored ads into an audience made up of basically 100% Pre-Qualified Prospects is an opportunity that no company can afford to miss.

I’m blown away that Anet hasn’t been all over this sooner. Marketing, and those who set the budget for Marketing, need to make this a top priority, because you’re never going to see a better concentration of potential customers anywhere.

Target audiences just don’t get any better than this.

PS: If Anet is doing any Twitch ads, I haven’t seen a single one of them in well over a month of checking out all kinds of game streams. Not even once, let alone the number of times an average person needs to see an ad before they buy.

The real problem with guard traps was, and I say was, threefold:

1) A guard could and often did lay traps out of combat so that they were back off CD by the time you hit them. While you were trying to deal with the ones that just went off, he’s recasting them while you’re stuck.

2) A sneaky, IE good, guard could lay them in all sorts of places you don’t expect. As a druid I can shoot (teleport/comet) over the point and trigger them without getting hurt. But the sneaky ones will lay a trap at the top of the stairs in Niflhel or potentially at the creature or in the middle of the door you run through between mine and keep. That’s just good play, I compliment it… but it shows that the traps aren’t nearly as easy to dodge or blow through as people think because they’re not always where you expect them to be.

If it were me, I’d put the trap just after the point so people dodge into it instead of over it.

3) They were provably OP. This is not an opinion, it is fact. Here’s why (better players who would use Signet of Stone, see the end of this.)

I play a support druid, my team loves it that way and it works for us. If I see 2 or more DH’s I swap to Cleric/Dwayna or possibly Cleric/Earth. I also run 3 glyphs, all traited for healing seeds. I also run 2 shouts, traited for regen and swiftness. Now…

I hit a trap and know I can’t get out. So now I blow all 3 glyphs because the seeds take a couple of seconds. I then blow a shout(regen) and after that I blow my heal (also more regen) because by this time I’m down enough that I’m not wasting it. Then I use Staff 5 (water field) and blast it for an area heal. Then before I can flip to avatar…

I die.

If you think I could just avatar and out heal it then you clearly don’t play a druid. Your normal heals do a lot for you and a little for others. The avatar does a lot for others but very little for you.

All of this means that a DH could lay 3, maybe 2 utilities and kill a druid with tons of both toughness and healing power, who blows 5 defensive CD’s and uses a combo.

That, by any reasonable definition, is OP.

Better players sometime have signet of stone and laugh at the traps… the first time. But the DH most likely laid those traps a while ago so the CD is already back up.

And your signet of stone won’t be back up for over a minute.

One of the best things they could do for the DH traps is shorten, yes shorten, their CD but make it so the CD doesn’t start until the trap triggers. That way they couldn’t hit you with them twice in rapid succession.

All that said, let’s see what these new changes bring. A 7% nerf and max 10 hits will help… how much is something we will only know with time.

Dojo.1867:

No because you could quite easily block bad players and thus gain an advantage by not being matched with them. This is not how a MM system works.

Just hide team chat if you want my personal advise.

Everybody suggesting this does not understand how MM systems work and that you cannot let people randomly intervene with them. Imagine someone blocking almost everyone he meets in his pip range that isn’t super good? Insane queue times, the whole system would become prone to manipulation. No, just no! Bad suggestion. Think first.

I am thinking. Most people will not abuse it, no matter how much people talk about that here.

Block all they meet? Fine, they won’t be getting any matches then and will have effectively ended their own season. Not my problem.

But what really made me double-take when reading your reply was your suggestion to hide chat. I mean, seriously???

If you hide chat, “and then what?”

You’ve crippled your team by making sure that 20% of the team can’t coordinate anymore. So please “think”.

Just sayin’

I’m kind of surprised that no one has suggested that we request the ability to look at our records by profession.

After all, look at what everyone complaining about having two seconds to look at our stats and scores after a match resulted in. Instead of two seconds, we now have two minutes… and a better stat breakdown too.

IMO, of all the ways to approach this, asking for the ability to view your stats by profession seems to make the most sense. YMMV

I am sorely disappointed to hear that we already aren’t teamed with people on our blocked list.

Since I only block people who are verbally abusive, as in demeaning, I don’t care if it makes me have longer queues. At least I won’t have to deal with abusive attitudes.

Note that I don’t block people who are giving honest, if frustrated, criticism. To say that it’s stupid to stand there at mid the whole match isn’t the best way to say it but that’s not abusive. Screaming how much everyone else sux and bla bla bla is what I block.

Now, don’t forget the most important question in anything (especially politics): “And then what?”

1) People who abuse it to block all but very good / great players will limit their potential team mates to the point that they spend hours in queue instead of being able to get matches. There doesn’t need to be any penalty for this, they’ve screwed themselves.

2) People who use it to block only abusive players, but not poor ones, will have made sure that they can’t be teamed with the worst but they can still be teamed with the best. This will shift their average team quality up but only slightly. But the important thing is that the intended purpose will be served since they won’t be re-teamed with abusive… something-somethings.

3) The people who are really abusive will get blocked by so many people that they themselves will have their queue times go up the most of anyone. This penalizes them most of all.

I thought that this was the way things always were. It’s definitely the way things need to be.

I’m not the greatest player in the world but my team mates, some of whom have made top 1000, say that I’m solid. Not great, but competent and a solid team player. With that said:

I know that it’s not normally done but because of the following reasons S2 matchmaking needs an emergency patch asap, even in mid season. Else, half the players may just quit in disgust due to futility.

And solo queue has become utterly futile for some of us at this point.

When I queue with people I know we get a 50/50 win rate, which is good match making. But they aren’t on much anymore and haven’t been on for about a week. So I had no other choice but to solo queue. Then I got on a losing streak.

Losing streak people get paired with losing streak people, winning streak with winning streak… but that’s not the worst of it:

The worst of it is that the longer your losing streak goes on the more hapless your teammates get.

IE:

• My next to last match had one guy who followed me around +1ing free caps, including going home off the start. This was after I asked who wanted home before the start and got no response at all.

• My last match had 4 ppl on the boss as I took home, which is fine. I saw an enemy coming in steal our boss and said so. The guy got targeted and you know what? He got the boss and got away… 1v4. Yea, my team mates couldn’t take one guy out when they had a 4:1 advantage.

Then I went to mid and found out I was alone. Not sure where my team went, maybe out to lunch or something.

If you get on a losing streak it’s like a black hole that sucks you in deeper and deeper. I’m finally reached the point where all I draw is slaughter after slaughter after slaughter.

So what’s the point? If I can’t find people to queue with then I’m just wasting my time and running up my blood pressure. So like many, many others, I’m on the sidelines unless I can get a group, which means my season is basically over.

Unless there is a change to the matchmaking in mid season, which is never a good thing to have to do.

Ok, didn’t know that about S1, thanks.

I do have to admit, climbing the ladder would be extremely hard if you were always in even matches.

I think I’m beginning to see the way this system will work out, allowing everyone to settle in at their skill level as things go along. But that’s going to take a couple of weeks to settle out since not everyone is playing every day.

The fact that you can get matched into a fight that is hopeless is still frustrating as all… and having that happen again and again over a couple of weeks can’t be good for “noob retention” in PvP.

Ok, so there’s no easy fix…

PPS: If you run mostly glyphs then you won’t need to choose. I often run S&R, Glyph of Tides and Glyph of Equality (Glyphs are traited for seeds).

Rather than give you my own thoughts I’ll just tell you what my regular and pug team mates have said over Teamspeak:

About Glyph of Tides: Nothing

About S&R: “OMG!”,
“That is SOOOO cool!”
“You saved this whole fight.”
“What just happened?! Oh, WOW! How did you DO that?!??”

Glyph of Tides is a great knockback that when traited gives you a seed for a heal and condi cleanse, and those things ARE important when running or bunkering solo.

But S&R allows you to make match saving play after play after play in a team fight.

PS: The inital mid fight can go on for quite awhile. I’ve used S&R twice during that fight on more than one occasion and on my third revival in any opening mid fight I will joke that: “You guys sure know how to keep a druid busy…”

I’m becoming known as someone who keeps repeating that joke enough that it’s starting to go stale… and I only tell it after the third revive in a single opening match mid fight.

S&R FTW.

Wow, each person really does have a different style and it’s great to see the variety. I use a different way:

• All glyphs are traited to drop seeds. If I see many mesmers or reapers on the other team before the start then I make sure I’m running 4 glyphs (at 2 cleanses each) + S&R. The seeds also heal, so they not only clear two condis but they heal up the damage that was caused by the condis you just cleared.

That has to drive a mesmer bug nutz… Not only are the condis being cleared so fast but they aren’t even doing any lasting damage.

• If I see many mesmers or reapers I also ensure that CA is traited to cleanse 13 condis.

• Never forget that they’ll try to instantly reapply condis as soon as you enter CA to get rid of a lot of them. This is what CA skill #2 is for. Another seed, 2 more condis gone.

If you want to go the shout route the run Soldier’s runes. Each shout clears a condi from not only yourself but from all allies. If you’re doing shouts then they’re traited for regen, which is great but I find it to be slow. Personally I prefer the seeds from glyphs but I know people have have been able to seriously kick a** with the shouts too.

If you are running shouts, consider traiting the glyps to drop a seed and then run 4 shouts plus Glyph of Equality. That will not only give you another heal and cleanse, it will also provide you with another stun break (30 sec cd).

Being a condi clearing machine is the start of a good d, but what about offense?

Immob, immob, immob…

I love, love, love Ancient Seeds (Druid bottom elite trait). Striking a stunned, dazed, knocked down or launched foe roots and bleeds them for 5 sec (10 sec cd). Couple that with the passive knockdown on the Smokescale, longbow 4, staff 4, Glyph of Equality, Glyph of Tides and, if you run more healing than dps, the passive knockdown on the Fern Hound….

You get one mesmer raging at their monitor, and maybe cursing you in map chat.

Bristleback’s F2 is on a 12 sec cd and two of it’s passives bleed so that’s your primary dps. I try to keep the mesmers interrupted and immobed as much as possible because it makes it easier to remember which one is the actual mesmer. My own dps helps some, but the Bristleback is what really takes them out. I’m mainly there for CC and to heal the Bristleback.

Seems like a pipe dream… can’t be a simple fix…

Yea, I know. But what if…

Looking at ANET’s own description of how matchmaking works gave me an idea. As you read it think of each task as what it most likely is, a method call. If you go to www.guildwars2.com and click on the big PvP graphic you get sent to a Feb 18 post about it. Pay special attention to the bolded and underlined part in this quote:

“…matchmaking in PvP during season two will now be based primarily on your current division placement and a predetermined “pip range” that extends from that spot. We’ll search for other players that fall within your pip range (which can extend outside of your division depending on where you’re currently placed) and pair you up with teammates who have a similar skill level to your own. We’ll then find you opponents within that same pip range and pair them against you, regardless of their skill level.”

As you go on win/loss streaks I can’t imagine that your skill level wouldn’t change, it has to. So you get paired with people who are in the same boat, then get matched with another team in your same pip range but their skill level is never factored into the equation.

Could this be fixed by altering the number of similar players selected and then splitting them? Right now the system makes teams of 5 who have similar skill levels and then pairs them another group of 5 with any skill level… but what if the system instead made a team of 10 people with similar skill levels and then split them into two 5 man groups? Since the 10 individuals were chosen to have similar skill levels then the teams would have to have reasonably similar skill levels by design. IE:

• Now the system finds 5 people who are in your same pip range and skill level. Change that to 10. It should be a simple change to one line in one method.

• Instead of trying to use some complicated matching method to find another group within a similar pip range the system could simply split the already matched 10 people into two groups. The person with the best skill level going to red, the second best to blue, the third to red… etc.

• Queued groups would, of course, need to be handled as whole units. Their skill levels are already weighted when being matched against solo people so that would predetermine which team gets the group and which gets the solos with higher skills but this is already being done so there is no need to reinvent that wheel. Just assign the group to red team and then assign the higher skilled solos to the other team (as is already being done) and then divvy up the balance of the single queued people the same way as described above.

It’s a thought… Maybe one that could be easier to implement than rewriting the entire matchmaking system.

Maybe….

jessiestiles.9437:

I didn’t know either. Don’t use the beast mastery traitline. I prefer wilderness and nature for the boons and condi removal.

I run exactly the same. Occasionally I will flip to beast mastery for Foefire or somewhere else where I really need the swiftness from Resounding Timbre. I lose a lot of condi clear that way but the regen really helps make up for that.

jessiestiles.9437:

Diamond skin eles have as much if not more tanking ability as druids and more power. Revenants have higher damage and can be really hard to kill against multiple opponents because they evade everything and kite the rest. You can’t not have tanks with condi classes (Reaper, Rev) and massive damage classes (DH, Warrior, Scrapper). I don’t know what the state of mesmer is. And don’t care about thieves because who wants to fight imaginary people?

Healing druids are low power so if you can’t kill them bring a friend or go somewhere else. Like if you were a druid and came up against a druid or a ele you’d have to do the same thing. If you had a nerfed druid on your team against all these other classes you’ll lose.

All great points and reasons why other professions can, with the right builds, perhaps be even stronger in solo point defense than a druid.

But a lot of the druid’s capabilities are really designed for support of others, especially Avatar. This is why someone above rightly pointed out that a druid is very vulnerable in Avatar… because all the healing gets flipped from a lot for self and a little to others to a lot for others and little for self while in Avatar.

MarauderShields.6830:

You have a very strange understanding of class balance. If you really think being unkillable in 1v1 is ok (because hey, you died in a 3v1), if you really think (new) pets provide only mediocre damage (independantly from player stats), I will disregard any and all of your opinions from now on.

At the disregard comment I stopped regarding, or reading, your response.

And what you’re not understanding is that for any player to be able to fulfill the role of real team support then they’re going to have to have far more healing and cleanse than they would need only for themselves.

Druids are designed to heal TEN people at one time in raids, but you want them to not even be able to heal all the damage that just one person can do?

If DPS and heals are equal, the druid’s average health shouldn’t change much, up or down, over the course of a long fight. That is a form of balance, but apparently one you don’t like.

GW2 has never had a true healing class before. Now it does. It can heal but not kill while other professions can kill but not heal.

Oh Snapalope.1378:

Druid is actually really op though…..The pet taunt bugs out like half of the time and you turn into a free kill because of the bug.

That I wasn’t aware of. I’ll have to triple check but I don’t think I’m utilizing the taunt. I’m mainly focused on protection when dodge rolling, healing around the pet for team support, etc.

I’ll look at that though. Maybe the taunt does need to be looked at.

Another thread is discussing the same thing:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/1-Profession-per-team/first#post6016389

As a defensive style player, I find it sickening that when we finally get a few builds that can stand up to the 1000 different builds that used to burn us down like newspaper, that there is so much kitting whining and sniveling.

Druids are SUPPOSED to be able to have a chance to keep 5 people alive, which would obviously allow them to sustain almost indefinitely 1:1. They are a HEALING profession that is designed to cleanse condis not from just themselves but from 5 people, all at once, and keep them all alive.

But the cost of being able to do that is that WE. ARE. KITTENING. TOOTHLESS.

Of course you can’t 1:1 them. BUT A HEALING DRUID CAN’T KILL YOU EITHER. Not a chance, unless you’re really, really bad. What have we got? The pet? Without decent DPS from the player, who runs Cleric/Dwayna or Melandru, the best we can do is stalemate you.

We FINALLY get something you can’t burn down like dry leaves and within days the screaming and whining has gone through the roof. Tough.

You can take a druid 2v1 in about 20-30 seconds. I’ve been roasted 3v1 in about 4 seconds despite being able to hold all day in a 1v1 vs any profession out there.

And for a profession that is designed to be heavy support for 5 people at the same time, that’s about right. So, no, the screaming is not justified at all.

The possibility to play a strong defender that can be invaluable in team play is long, long overdue and, honestly, not being able to play that style is why I never got into PvP for my first 3 years in this game. I am NOT the only person who feels this way.

Druid is opening PvP up to a different style of play that wasn’t available before. If they take our only real defender builds away then I’ll just go back to doing something other than PvP, and so will a lot of other people.

So if you wanna burn a druid, focus them. If you want to take a point from them, bring friends.

3 or more Necros is annoying but I do know that druids can counter.

Set Avatar to cleanse 13 condis and when you use it get in and out as fast as you can. Since you don’t burn all of your AF by getting out of Avatar as fast as you can, you can often regenerate all that AF within 10-15 seconds, which gives you a way to cleanse 13 condis on a very short cooldown.

Then trait all you glyphs to drop seeds, which aoe cleanse 2 more condis per person, per seed. I usually run S&R, toughness signet and 3 glyphs if I’m against 3 Necros.

Not sure if other professions can find a way to do the same but when carefully tweaked a druid can easily clear a ton of condis, fast.

And yes, it did work. I was mid point defender in that match and didn’t go down any more than usual. Three times, to be exact.

We have submitted tickets for days.

We have sent emails by the dozen to exploits@arena.net for days.

We have taken videos, showing them to exploits@arena.net and posting them to youtube, for days:

These botters crashed the presents market a full silver, from 8s to 7s, in the first 24 hours after they were noticed.

To those who like cheaper presents, many of us worked for 3 years to learn this puzzle and selling presents is out reward for hard work. But because of the botters those of us who do even only 10 runs a session are loosing 2 gold per hour.

We’re LOOSING 2 gold per hour to the botters, because they crashed the market. Do you have any idea how much hard work it takes to make 2g per hour?

Do.
Something.
Please.

This can be good news… if they only overlooked it and know how to fix it then I wonder if we can get a new build with the known fix implemented within only a few hours.

How about it Anet? Can I look forward to logging in and adding one more reply to this thread to say “Thank You!” before the end of the day?

Pretty Please?

I was looking into getting an A series APU and I had a long talk with the self-build crew over at my local Microcenter. The A series processors are newer BUT they’re supposedly a value processor, so they’re a step backward in performance from the FX series CPU’s. The big selling point with the A series is that these APU’s have AMD graphics build right into them whereas the High Performance FX series CPU’s require a separate graphics card.

Even the A10 would have been a step backward for me from my old FX-6100 six core.

If you have a laptop then there isn’t a whiole lot that can be done but if you have a desktop then you could check Microcenter, Fry’s or you local geek heaven for a motherboard and cpu combo based on one of the FX processors.

http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/processors/desktop/fx#

Le me be clear: “Player Experience” is being ruined in the JP. The experience is great, very positive, when this issue doesn’t interfere with my progress.

Before some troll says “get good”, I have already done runs of 14… when I was on maps where no one was using a character that blocked out the sun.

It’s not QQ’ing to point out the simple fact that one cannot do a JP if they cannot see their own character. It’s basic common sense.

There are 2 solutions, one of which is definitely easy to implement:

1) Easy: Fix the existing toggle for standard character models so they work at all times, regardless of where you are in the game or what you happen go be doing. The toggle we have works in Divinity’s Reach but it’s not working in the JP for some reason.

2) Maybe? : Put all norn and char in their own instances so that no one else has to deal with having their view blocked.

We have been trying to get something done about this for three years. Enough is enough. Fix the standard model option so it works in the JP already.

Or I’ll just have to grab my own norn and ruin someone else’s experience just so that I’ll finally be able to see myself.

No, I don’t want to become part of the problem… but if Anet doesn’t fix the toggle so that standard models are used in the JP just the same way they work in DR then my only choices are to let my experience be ruined or ruin someone else’s.

I hope it doesn’t come to that.

Thaddeus.4891:

UnbentMars.9126:

Thanks for the guide! Are you recommending zealot stats or what is the sta balance you go for?

It can’t be zealot if he gonna tank too. I would say cleric would be the best option there. Maybe some magi if you feel you don’t have enough vitality.

^^^^^^^

I use Zealots now because I’m on circle duty. If I were to tank I’d probably go for nomads, maybe some cleric in there too.

But this whole thing really isn’t so much a guide as it is an analysis.

Thaddeus.4891:

1) The circle group don’t have a good dps whatever they do. They are in range, don’t necessarily have 100% buff on them, have their attention focus on something else, etc. So if you can put the Druid, that always is in range and doesn’t have good dps anyway, it’s a win win. That leave 1 place for a better dps or for a tank with higher dps to stay on the boss.

Disagree because of two things.
1) Druid contributes far more to DPS through buffs than it or any DPS / Tank ever could by attacking but ONLY if it’s able to put those buffs on the melee group. If you have it working at range, you loose all that DPS.

So by putting a “good” DPS in there and taking those buffs away from melee it ends up with less DPS, not more… and this was a big point in the OP.

Thaddeus.4891:

2) The melee group don’t really have any pressure on them. They have 2 threats. The seekers and the blue teleport, both of which they should be able to evade completely with cc and dodge/positioning. At the same time, the Green Circle team have a lot more pressure on them.

Exactly my point! That very pressure is what prevents a Druid from doing the job that the team needs done. If a druid can be in the melee then it has more AF, can go into Avatar a lot more often and so it can spend more time healing the green circle team than it can do while on that team.

The pressure of being on the run all the time results in the green circle team getting less heals.

^The whole point of the OP.^

As far as too much responsibility on one person:

Why do you think it’s any harder to hold the boss where you need him and dodge when people call for blue? I guarantee you that jumping around between circles, dodging around seekers, running into melee every 20 seconds and then right back out again is a LOT more pressure, and a lot harder, than maneuvering the boss slowly from place to place and dodging once in a while when someone calls blue.

And doing all that leaves me with no energy to get into Avatar, so that makes the job 3x harder still.

And yes, I spent years tanking. I know how to hold a boss.

softblackcarbon.1537:

Astral force generation doesn’t depend on your dps, but rather how many hits you do. You gain .75% of your astral force bar per attack you do, regardless of how much damage that attack does. A druid in clerics gear will generate just as much astral force by attack as a druid in zerker gear (I’m not recommending clerics). In fact, a lot of druids are now running zerker gear because it’s cheaper than zelots, and the healing power really isn’t require for them to do their job effectively.

You missed the point Re: AF generation. I am now using hits to generate AF and it’s taking forever. What generates AF quickly is not damage or hits, it’s healing. This is healing that I’ve already said isn’t happening because I’m so busy working the green circles plus Ancestral Grace is constantly being wasted plus all my short range heals do NOT work on the green circles.

Why? Have you forgotten that one of the ways we deal with seekers is to jump into the circle for only a moment rather than stand in them? This negates any attempt to use most of the short range heals.

So no, getting long range hits in while on the run is not even close to cutting it, I can’t heal on the run, I’m too far from the melee to do much healing that will generate AF and the ranged are in constant motion so trying to heal them is like trying to catch a skritt on crack.

Voluptus.3509:

“But the green circle needs those heals.”
The circle can get plenty of heals via the big three bomber heals a druid has in Avatar form because those three “Death from Above” heals all have range 1200. They can always hit the green circle from melee, without fail.

softblackcarbon.1537:

The green circle team does need those heals. This fight is honestly all about keeping that team alive and not worrying so much about the rest of the group.

A) The green circle team isn’t getting those heals now, that’s a major reason I went to all the trouble to spell this out. What I’m proposing will get them more heals than they’re getting now.

So you say that they need heals, I agree… and moving the druid to melee will get them more of the heals they need than they’re getting now.

B) I have to worry about the whole group, not only range. If you don’t think so then explain it to my melee who are calling for big heals 4 to 5x before the end of phase 1.

softblackcarbon.1537:

The druid has a lot of heals at range 1200.

Three is not what I would call a lot, and they are only in Avatar… which a druid at range can’t get into nearly as often when they’re running circles. Staff 3 does not count, remember I have to keep that in my pocket for mobility as long as I’m circle duty.

softblackcarbon.1537:

They can always hit the melee from the green circle, without fail.

Not when you have no AF, because you can’t get into Avatar in the first place. So no, you don’t have any long range heals to cast. [/quote]

softblackcarbon.1537:

(Plus they have the flexibility of using their short-range heals and long range heals on the circle group if they are in the green circle.)

See the above comment about why hitting the circle with short range heals doesn’t work so well.

But if you use short range heals in melee to generate AF quickly then you CAN use that AF to get into Avatar and hit the green team not just in but also around the circle as they wait to dive in at the last second because of seekers.

But here is the biggest flaw in people’s logic… it’s an assumption that is wrong, and it’s what causes people to try to insist that the druid stay at range:

softblackcarbon.1537:

Another issue with switching the druid to melee, is that the optimal dps classes for this fight all dps in melee range. When you put a ranged class like druid in a ranged role, they can continue to dps while running circles.

I’m sorry but did you actually read all of the OP because I carefully, explicitly spelled out why the druid can NOT do as well of a job at range AND what on earth makes you say this:

“When you put a ranged class like druid in a ranged role, they can continue to dps…”

Druid. Is. NOT. A. Ranged. Class.

Bad asumption (misspelled due to language filter). Druid is not the same as Longbow Ranger and they don’t work in the same “good only at range” ways. Not at all.

Also, I’m not doing DPS. I’m not supposed to do DPS. I’m buffing and healing. Was “buffs are worth 2-3 DPS” not clear in the OP?

softblackcarbon.1537:

You would need to add a ranged dps to the circle group in order to not lose out on dps on the boss, and what class is that going to be?

I only said “Condi Engi” like 3x in the end of the OP, so yea. I’d say Condi Engi would be the class that can DPS at range without losing DPS plus be a huge help on seekers.

In fact, according to some teams that use condi engi’s at range it’s one of the best ways to handle seekers.

Note: This is a complex subject involving a lot of intricacies that have to be thought through in order to know enough about what’s going on to form an opinion. Because of that, this is a long post. If you have the attention span of a skritt or have ever responded to another post with TL/DR just because you were too lazy to read it all the way through (in other words, you’re a skritt) then just close this tab and go away. This post isn’t for you.

First:
If you aren’t a healer or tank yourself then you need to realize that you probably don’t know enough of the details involved in doing these jobs (yet, we’ll fix that) to be stating your opinion as if it were fact. This doesn’t mean your opinion isn’t welcome, it is welcome. Just realize that there are a thousand small details you’ve probably never considered, so what you’re thinking at this point may not actually be practical.

Second:
This isn’t my idea. I saw it mentioned in Brazil’s video on a druid build and it’s an idea that’s intrigued me since. As a former core raider in (the game that shall not be named) I’ve been tier one raid heals and done my share of tanking / off tanking. In fact, people often said they’d never seen a good DK tank before me and had thought it wasn’t possible before working with me. If that doesn’t make sense to you then don’t sweat it. All it means is that I have a pretty good clue when it comes to both tanking and healing.

“Can it be done?”
Yes, and it’s already been done.

“Why would you want to?”
The short answer is that an effective druid puts so many buffs on the raid that they can be worth two to three DPS, plus the heals that they bring to the group. A druid played to mathematical perfection (never gonna happen) theoretically can increase the total DPS by 35%(ish). In reality I shoot for 25, which is one heck of a trick even under the best of circumstances.

But most druids are operating under abysmal circumstances in the Vale Guardian fight. As a result the raid is getting so little out of the druid that it’s sad.

“What’s wrong?”
In my experience the druid is being used as heals and green circle duty. This has a number of problems, not the least of which is that the druid is spending about 25% of it’s time on the run instead of doing it’s thing. Worse, half of the green circles take the druid too far away from the melee group for the druid to reach melee with half or more of the buffs/heals. Melee is where the boss is being burned down and the buffs the druid brings have to be there or you risk losing so much DPS that your back ends up against the wall or, in this case, the timer.

While doing green circle duty I have never seen six minutes at the end of phase one. Not even close. This is a problem.

Worse, one of the druids most powerful and beneficial heals is being totally wasted, almost never healing anyone for the entire fight. This heal is Ancestral Grace, know to non-druids as “that yellow comet teleport thingy that goes streaking across the platform”. This is our biggest heal (well over 2K) and a blast finisher but I’m forced to keep it in my pocket and use it only to get to green circles that are too far away from me to reach without it. I never use it to heal… I can’t afford to miss a circle because that risks a wipe. And if your answer is for the druid to just stay central then forget it because here comes another detail you’re missing.

A druid on green circle duty has to dash into melee as often as possible, then dash out to the next circle, endlessly. This is more time wasted on the run but it’s necessary because many of the druid’s buffs and heals are very short range.

You lose almost all of these if you keep a druid on the run with green circle duty:

Rejuvenating Tides: Radius 240 Every 8 sec (Avatar only)
Natural Convergence: Radius 360 Every 10 sec (Avatar only)
Glyph of Rejuvenation: Radius 300 Every 19 sec OR Healing Spring: Radius 240 Every 24 Sec
Glyph of Empowerment: Radius 300 Every 16 sec
Spotter (600 Precision to Allies): Radius 600
Vigorous Training (Endurance to help with Blues): Radius 300
Verdant Etching (Trait) Drops a healing seed at your feet with each Glyph cast: Radius 180

Every lost heal in Avatar form is a lost stack of Grace of the Land (3% damage increase of ALL types per stack, 8 sec)

As you can see, losing a few of these may not be a huge deal but losing most of them can cripple total melee DPS, not to mention all of the lost heals because the druid is too busy running around to heal.

Worst of all:
Say your green circle group gets into trouble. You pop Avatar form and keep them alive by “carpet bombing” heals and blowing CD’s. Now you come out of Avatar and you have no energy at all. You need to refuel.

There are only two ways you can do that. One is to do damage. Have you ever tried to do DPS in Zealot’s gear? Okay, so that ain’t happening. The other way is to heal or res people. Well, you just blew most of your heals, though you do have Ancestral Grace and that could generate a lot of energy IF you didn’t have to keep it in your pocket so you can get to far away green circles, so that’s out. So is reviving people because you have no choice but to jump and run for circle duty.

So how do you regenerate your energy?
Answer: Slowly.

This means it takes you a long time to get back into Avatar and that’s a lot of lost healing that some melee people are calling out for, plus the whole melee group is losing Grace of the Land because you can’t get into Avatar.

This is not an effective way for the raid to use the tools that are at it’s disposal.

“So how do we fix it?”
The short version is keep the druid in melee at all times.

“But the green circle needs those heals.”
The circle can get plenty of heals via the big three bomber heals a druid has in Avatar form because those three “Death from Above” heals all have range 1200. They can always hit the green circle from melee, without fail.

“But putting a druid in melee is a loss of DPS that the tank was providing.”
Yes but you’re better off. Here’s why:

First, the obvious. You get all those buffs back. That in itself is worth a lot more than the DPS of any tank.

Second: You can bring in a ninth DPS.

“Okay, so how would a druid pull all of this off?”
It’s simple, but not easy. Here are the things that a tank/heal combo druid needs to be able to do, most of them at the same time:

1) Position the boss. Without this, all is lost.
2) Dodge blues… this means dodge when someone else calls out blue because the druid is way too busy looking out at the ranged people to watch for blues.
3) Watch the green team constantly. They get into trouble with seekers, some more often than others. Be ready to react when they need you.
4) Lay water fields in melee and blast them as much as you can. This means that Ancestral Grace is now aimed right at your feet and use it on CD, preferably to blast a water or fire field. Don’t forget that Staff 6 is another water field, though I have no idea why since it’s a curtain of light. Using Ancestral Grace and healing the melee with utilities is the way to recharge quickly.
5) If your green team gets into trouble, or looks like they’ll be safe for a good while, pop into Avatar. At the same time start hammering the green team with staff 1,2 and 3 while dropping seeds, glyphs and personal heals at your feet.This has little to nothing to do with heals, what you’re doing here is maximizing GotL. The short range stuff stacks it on melee and the bombers put it on the green team, so everyone should be getting it.
6) Swap pets, F2 them and swap weapons as often as you can to proc buffs. Don’t forget that you can run two staffs with the same stats and different sigils (or the same if the CD is under 9 sec), then keep swapping as fast as you can.

Other advantages:
A number of raid teams are handling the seekers rather nicely by using multiple condi engineers on the green team. Don’t forget they have a lot of tools to slow, stun or kick seekers around and they can still do a lot of condi damage from range. You could do a lot worse than putting all your condi engi’s on the green team and making your ninth DPS a condi engi too.

Usually during intermission the tank and heals are placed on the green pillar, sometimes with a DPS. Then when another pillar is done they come over to help green. With a ninth DPS you can put two DPS on green along with the druid and this will burn the green pillar down, maybe faster than the other two.

Every second counts. Make the most of that ninth DPS.

Now you know enough to form an opinion.

If you’re worried that this places the fate of the raid in the hands of the druid/tank then I have news for you. The fate of the raid is already in the hands of the druid and tank. If either one blows it, you’re going wipe. So how is this any different?

For druids I have one piece of advice:
Relax. You got this, boss. No pressure or anything.

0.0

In a 5 man I make it clear that I’m taking over the target function when I need it. If someone is going down I click their name, mark them as target and then find the target marker. Then staff 3 to them or swap to avatar and start hitting them with “the blue death ray”.

The hardest part is getting people to understand that they need to not move around so much once they’re targeted. They are so conditioned to strafe and roll all the time that it’s making it impossible to hit them, considering that there’s a second or so lag between your hitting 1 and the ray coming down.

Finding people who need healed is the biggest issue. Having them evade those heals so that 80% of them are wasted is second.

Palador: Even from day one of the personal story you always had help. You were part of a team.

Sicarius:

“If it isn’t nerfed, when zones become dead or they try to move everyone to the next thing it will be impossible for anyone.
Unless it is changed in the future it will become a wasteland.”

Really? If that were so then Orr, Southsun, Dry Top and SW would all be barren today.

They may need to have the spawn rates tweaked as map populations dwindle but no, they don’t need major changes.

I have to admit, there is one and (IMHO) only one good reason to nerf content.

As much as I love the content the way it is, VaLee makes an excellent point here:

VaLee.5102:

Keep in mind that all this new content is a payed expansion, wouldn’t be an issue if it was added in the core game like SW was for example.

Everyone payed the money for the expansion, not just a certain group of people. And you can’t blame them for that, the expansion was never advertised to be challenging in it’s entirety, just that it will have challenging content.

People who want to play a much more relaxed style paid good money because it was strongly implied that challenging group content was referring to raids rather then just trying to walk from A to B. These people waited months and paid full price just like those of us who are hard core.

Maybe the solution here is to see if the megaserver rebalancing will provide enough players on each map to ensure that everyone, casuals included, will have enough help to get from a to b.

Fingers crossed.