Guild Wars 2

This is just one of the major pain points of the game for me, and part of the reason why I stopped playing 4 years ago. It’s just frustrating to have a game you thoroughly enjoy but be unable to play ~half of its content because of latency… But I gotta say, I like your attitude… if nothing else, it gives me hope for the future!

I actually don’t live in Aus — I play from Eastern Europe on the US server in an international cross-game guild, and most of said guild doesn’t care about dungeons/fractals/raids, so pugging is the only real way to do things. We’ve been playing together for 10+ years now in various games, and this is the first game where latency is proving to be a serious problem… it wouldn’t be an issue if it was possible to hot-switch between regions like in GW1, but alas.

So yeah, I’m wondering if ‘low latency or bust’ type encounters are what PVE is all about (and continuing to be about), and I’m legit interested to see what raiders and high-level fractal / CM players think about latency. What ping is required for those activities to be fun and enjoyable, and is there a tipping point where it actively hinders enjoyment? Is that tipping point at 100/150/200/250/300 ms? Is there any kind of lag compensation tech planned (WOW does this pretty well, to the point that playing on a west coast server with 600+ ping felt more responsive than any other MMO I’ve played and I could be pretty competitive in pve at least)? etc etc.

This is a pretty extreme video, but it illustrates the kind of obnoxious shenanigans that come with high latency, and that’s just when using abilities, never mind avoiding sub-1sec boss abilities!

Joxer.6024:

Being in Australia on an MMO sadly sucks bigtime. I also run at that ping and therefore I wont ever hit qT’s benchmarks and raids at times can be a lag nightmare. But overall its doable, and its still fun, so we stick it out. Comes down to personal choice I reckon…are you willing to put up with it?

Hah, that’s reassuring… somewhat. :p

I made this thread because when I asked about latency and its effect on gameplay in the reddit QA thread yesterday, the three responses I got were:

• necro is very ping forgiving, althou i only have 250ms (looks like I need to level a necro)
• With that ping ? nothing is enjoyable (sad face)
• While players say that pve playable with 300+ ping, I wouldnt suggest playing high fractals or raids with it. As you’re not just making it hard for you, you are potentially wasting time of rest of the group. Basically everything except engi or mesmer can work for open world with that ping, but I would take something that can afk from range, like ele, rev or something with pets, like ranger or necro. Nothing is fun with that ping, but you can try with dungeons and low fractals to see if it works. (good answer, but it makes me sadface)

And yea, that response was disheartening. I’m trying to gauge whether it’s worthwhile for high-latency players to invest time/effort into pve or if it’s just “stick to ‘afk from range’ builds in the open world and wvw” (which is pretty fun, but I don’t like missing so much of the game’s content) because high latency in fractals / raids just adds frustration for me and is a major handicap / hindrance for the group.

CptAurellian.9537:

Zaphir.7210:

What’s so different in the PVE content in GW2, especially post-HOT?

A bunch of mechanics have become more meaningful, which isn’t difficult when vanilla mechanics were faceroll in general. Since dealing with these mechanics requires active efforts by each individual player, I’m not surprised that stuff feels much harder with a high ping. GW2 isn’t WoW, where passive stuff has a much larger influence.

Hmm… I did Aetherblade Retreat and Molten Facility back in early 2013, and I don’t remember their mechanics being faceroll, though I suppose that’s not the “in general” part. I was not a big fan of vanilla dungeon play for several reasons, but those aren’t really the topic of this thread (well, there were plenty of one-shot ‘dodge this’ boss abilities that were kinda latency-critical).

However, the ‘stuff feels much harder with a high ping’ is definitely interesting. Do you mean strict dps requirements that high-ping players can’t fulfill due to lower damage potential, boss abilities that need precise timing and/or split-second reactions where you can’t rely on what you see on your screen due to latency that require significant extra effort to compensate for (turning a fun activity into a frustrating one -> dealbreaker for me), or something else?

edit: words

Hi, my name is Zaph and I play with 250ish ping on a good day and 350ish ping on a bad day for reasons beyond my control (HPB Anonymous crowd: Hi Zaph!).

So like many other people, I’ve returned to this game due to POF hype. In the last few weeks I’ve gone through the HOT maps and metas, living story, etc, but have been looking into the new group pve stuff (fractals, raids) as well, and ‘latency’ seems to come up as a blocking issue over and over. I’ve experienced some of it myself when doing Tequatl (have to jump ONTO the wave) and Stavemaster Whatshisface with the bullet hell attack in Dragon’s Stand where I was being hit by projectiles even though I was safe on my screen. I’ve had some problems with latency in pve ~4 years ago as well (good luck winning Sanctum Sprint f’rex, and playing melee was an exercise in frustration), but at least I could do some dungeons and a few fractals and not feel like I was hindering the group. I’ve also resigned to only play staff elementalist, because all other classes/builds seem to be way too twitchy and unresponsive (I messed with scepter and dagger for a while, and was frustrated by combos not going off as they should).

Now, I understand that with my latency I won’t ever be playing SPVP ever… but I’ve played fairly high-end pve in a number of MMOs before – sometimes with even worse latency, e.g. WOW challenge modes with 600+ ping – and had no problems. What’s so different in the PVE content in GW2, especially post-HOT? Is it true that high latency makes them unfun for the player and the entire group? And more importantly, is this a continuing trend?

(NB: I understand that it’s possible to do high-end pve even with 400+ ping… but is it really fun for the people involved?)

I’m a total noob at pvp (just started playing 2 days ago), and I actually like facing premades ever so often. Note that this may just be because my MMR is so low that even premades aren’t going to stomp over a pug. :P

Anecdote: I was in a deathmatch game the other day, full pug vs partial premade (4/5). The premade team did a perfect stealth opener gank on the pug, killing everyone immediately, and then getting 3 quick follow-up kills. So a few minutes into the game, our team is down 0:200 and we’re basically wiped out. Time to afk and get it over with, right?

… Nope! We regrouped and fought back. We managed to break their team apart and get a few good kills, slowly equalizing the score. It was 300 v 300 a few seconds before the timer ran out, and they managed to secure a stomp in the very last moment, getting them the win. Heck, if the game went on for 3 more seconds, we would’ve won — we had two of their players down with nobody to interrupt stomps!

Moral of the story: never give up. /rickastley

As another staff elementalist who came back after a looong hiatus (used to roll pvt 6/6 monk in wvw and event zergs in 2012/2013), I can confirm that it’s berserker or bust. Even when soloing or doing the living story chapters, my success rate and killing speed with my pvt monk’s set was terrible compared to a zerk set I tossed together in 30 mins or so (thanks Purple Miku for the tips, btw!). I use 6/6 Flame Legion runes for now, they’re cheap and seem to be not that much worse than scholar’s.

Survivability isn’t really any worse either. Low toughness means you get less aggro (I think?) and geyser + healing rain blast combos can get me from 0 to full in a few seconds with zero +healing. Sure, I have less hp, but in my experience if something is hitting me in pve, I’m either dodging it, kiting it, using some sort of block/invuln skill, or dying. Not to mention, the faster the enemies die, the less chances they get to land hits…

Wow, thanks, I’ll definitely give it a whirl, those damage numbers look pretty crazy! Though I may use things like arcane shield and/or mist form for a while… practice makes perfect and whatnot.

I agree that signet of storms is op… or at least, I have vague memories of using signet of storms in earth for some amazing shenanigans (e.g. capping reinforced supply camps) way-back-when in wvw.

Thanks again!

6 points instead of 30, eh? Goes to show how much has changed… I guess 5-point increments make sense, though. :p

That looks like a good build, thanks — though I’ll need to get some berserker pieces and such. How is it on survivability and control (e.g. fighting multiple veterans, recovering after missing a dodge, etc)?

Hey all,

I’ve recently returned to gw2 after a ~1.5 year hiatus. I used to play a staff elementalist with 30 arcana and a full PVT set… I really like the concept of placing fields for offensive/defensive combos as well as constant attunement swapping to control and support as well as possible. From what I remember, it was a solid build for wvw and doing the story quests / soloing tough enemies + enemy groups / being a useful participant in DEs.

Is staff still good for that kind of stuff — and if so, what’d be a good build to use? I’m open to trying other weapons/etc as well, as long as they work with 30 in arcana and 500+ ping. NB: I’m really looking for a build that’s good for catching up with the living story and doing well in dynamic events. I have no interest in running dungeons (the aforementioned 500+ ping being one of the main reasons).

Thanks in advance!

The defiance system is a strictly worse version of City of Heroes’ mez protection system — which actually worked pretty well to allow controller types to hold the boss at crucial times while not making it possible to perma-hold the boss. It was also gradual, so holding a random minion was trivial, holding a lieutenant (veteran) required the use of higher-intensity (longer-cooldown) abilities, and holding a boss (elite) 100% of the time required very careful management of control abilities. Holding an elite boss (champion) or archvillain (legendary) required multiple controllers to work together, and even then it was not possible to maintain control for too long. There were also periods where an EB or AV was especially weak or strong against CC.

That said, I didn’t like the COH system that much, either. DRs or immunity timers work much better, and they punish bad play (like overlapping CCs or using the wrong kind of CC in a certain situation) by making the enemy uncontrollable. Of course this opens up the potential for griefing, but I bet that there are far easier ways to grief people in 5-man dungeons anyway.

Xae Isareth.1364:

I don’t really get the same impression as you. Even in say, CoF P1, where I can be blindfolded and still win, I feel like Im contributing in one way or the other uniquely to the party. Whether it be timing Aegis and protection right such that we can just attack the boss non-stop, portalling my team across the rolling fireballs, or just doing my (although somewhat easy) job of holding out in the braziers.

Then in stuff like a level 49 Grawl fractal, I can honestly say without boasting that my team would’ve been screwed without me. Trying to do that fight without a Guardian/Mesmer is a one way ticket to hair loss. The other classes as well, they all contribute in one way or the other, maybe apart from rangers, but that’s a different argument.

Again, I don’t really see what’s wrong with having twitch mechanics. Comparing say, Smash Bros to WoW, I can’t really say which is the better game, they’re good in different ways.

I think the core ideas of GW2 is fine as they are, just that they need to be a bit less messy (ie, the Dredge kind of frustrating messy), and more direction.

Maybe it just isn’t the game for you and our tastes are different.

I actually think TSW has some of the best dungeon content in any MMO I’ve played because some of them balances fair and hard so very well, and because they aren’t so scripted they have a lot of replayability because its incredibly fun to find different ways to tackle them (I have to explain what I’m doing to a lot of groups in BiS gear because the way I tank them is often different to what they normally see).

As for Vindictus, managing to solo some of the harder bosses on the hardest difficulty is incredibly satisfying, and I still look at the solos people do on that game and think its a work of art

GW2’s combat system isn’t inherently bad. I enjoy it a lot more than TSW / Neverwinter; there are lots of interesting skills that interact in interesting ways (combos!) and behave differently depending on build. Like I said, I really like playing my staff elementalist in wvw and openworld content (and I don’t just mean zerg events), because I can find a use for every single one of my 20+ abilities in a way that it makes a difference. One of my best GW2 memories was teaming up with another lowbie while levelling to duo a champ spider guarding a chest somewhere — needed to use every trick in the box for that one. Soloing reinforced wvw camps in green gear was fun and interesting too, as was the queen’s ’brawler’s guild’-esque tournament. But when it comes to interesting combat in dungeons, however… I got nothing. Who cares about triple blasting a water field at 10% hp while CCing/debuffing a bunch of enemies if we’re fighting a boss that only has OHKO attacks and is basically immune to blind/weaken? I may as well just stay in fire attunement and put another lava font on top of the boss/melee! Sure, there are times when I can use magnetic aura and intercept arrows aimed at a party member (if latency permits, anyway) or use various tricks to rez someone in a dangerous place without getting hit myself, but otherwise… eh, I’m just one of these five people ‘soloing’ the boss at the same time.

I agree that TSW’s dungeons are a lot more enjoyable than GW2’s… and this may not necessarily be because of the trinity, either. The content itself is just a lot more varied than dps-dps-dps-dodge. Subject Alpha is probably a good example: he’s perhaps the most commonly used boss, appearing in every COE path multiple times per path, who theoretically has a lot of interesting abilities that change each time you meet him… yet all I remember from him is to stand in his hitbox and spam dps skills, and dodge 1.5 seconds after red circles appear on the ground to evade the fire/ice/whatever attack with my trusty invulnerability frames. That’s not a dungeon boss, that’s a [boring] QTE minigame.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Zaphir.7210:

Dungeoning in this game has been some of the worst / most unfun I’ve ever seen in any MMO… and the “every man for himself” aspect is part of the reason.

You don’t need a holy trinity to make dungeons fun — in City of Heroes, some of the most fun (and successful) groups I’ve been in didn’t have a tank or a healer. What they had were multiple buffers/debuffers/controllers that could deal with any combat situation from locking down zergs of weak mobs to handling strong bosses as well as enemy buffers/debuffers/controllers. On my defender I could nuke, I could support (healing was a tiny part of ‘support’ btw, sometimes omitted altogether), I could control… it worked great. If content was too easy for a group, just crank up the difficulty and have at it! Compared to that, my gw2 staff elementalist is supposed to have zero points in arcana, sit in fire attunement and press 2/5 on cooldown while pretending I’m playing an action game by using an invulnerability move based on metaknowledge of boss behaviors and/or muscle memory.

GW2 is far from the first mmo to try and break the mold of the trinity. AoC and Champions Online both boasted twitchy ‘skill-based’ action combat — and dungeoning was really, really unenjoyable in both games. TSW too, though it works slightly better there; there are so few buttons it’s easier to pretend I’m playing an action game (albeit one with considerable latency — how fun could it be to play Dark Souls with a 400ms delay on everything, for example?).

TSW’s dungeons worked on a very hard trinity. I don’t really see how its like Dark Souls at all though, most of the fights are very scripted, there’s a few encounters that had ‘freeform’ mechanics which didn’t have any particular fixed strategy in mind for them, but that’s still nothing like Dark Souls.

You seem to really dislike a game based on what you call ‘twich reflex’. Personally I don’t mind it as it makes fights feel more real. Against a real enemy, you won’t exactly know what’s he going to do all the time, do you?

Yea, I wasn’t clear enough in that last paragraph. I just used DS as an example of a ‘good’ action game, is all… as opposed to dungeoning in GW2, where at no point do I feel that I’m part of a group doing interesting content and making the most of my class abilities (as I did in WOW and COH), I’m just one guy among 5 doing an optimal 3-button dps rotation on the bad guy, and “pretending I’m playing an action game by using an invulnerability move based on metaknowledge of boss behaviors and/or muscle memory” to prevent OHKOs. It’s sad because in open-world content (or wvw) I have a lot more fun with my staff elementalist and the twenty-something buttons I have at my disposal. Maybe I’m missing something, though I’ve played through every explorable dungeon at least once (except arah, never tried that one).

re TSW, I know that it used a trinity model, I was just following up on the ‘MMO with twitchy combat’ angle, could’ve used vindictus or something as a better example but I haven’t actually played it. I guess I could’ve just said “MMOs with twitchy combat are pretty bad when it comes to dungeoning”.

And no, twitch doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with how predictable an enemy’s moves are. My favorite WOW bosses were the ones with no aggro table and ‘pvp-like’ randomized abilities with no clear patterns (Delrissa, tier0.5 BRD fight, Faction Champions), and there was no twitch involved anywhere. Incidentally, those encounters worked just fine with the trinity, too.

edit: I was hoping GW2 would have such fun bosses as the WOW ‘pvp-esque fights’ I mentioned above, but nope… the only really interesting encounters that I remember from all these dungeons were the Iron Forgeman in SE story mode and the “illusionary party” boss fight at the end of TA story mode (and since release, I’ll give a nod to the two berserkers as well as both encounters in the Aetherblade Retreat… and really, that’s a letdown even compared to what I’ve seen in GW1’s mission content. Maybe it just means this isn’t the game for me, though.

Dungeoning in this game has been some of the worst / most unfun I’ve ever seen in any MMO… and the “every man for himself” aspect is part of the reason.

You don’t need a holy trinity to make dungeons fun — in City of Heroes, some of the most fun (and successful) groups I’ve been in didn’t have a tank or a healer. What they had were multiple buffers/debuffers/controllers that could deal with any combat situation from locking down zergs of weak mobs to handling strong bosses as well as enemy buffers/debuffers/controllers. On my defender I could nuke, I could support (healing was a tiny part of ‘support’ btw, sometimes omitted altogether), I could control… it worked great. If content was too easy for a group, just crank up the difficulty and have at it! Compared to that, my gw2 staff elementalist is supposed to have zero points in arcana, sit in fire attunement and press 2/5 on cooldown while pretending I’m playing an action game by using an invulnerability move based on metaknowledge of boss behaviors and/or muscle memory.

GW2 is far from the first mmo to try and break the mold of the trinity. AoC and Champions Online both boasted twitchy ‘skill-based’ action combat — and dungeoning was really, really unenjoyable in both games. TSW too, though it works slightly better there; there are so few buttons it’s easier to pretend I’m playing an action game (albeit one with considerable latency — how fun could it be to play Dark Souls with a 400ms delay on everything, for example?).

Good info, though I’m frustrated enough with SS that I won’t be going back anytime soon. (EU player playing on US servers here)

Although I seem to remember that while having the grounded ability active when hitting a fake powerup would prevent the knockdown, you’d still lose all your abilities.

Yeah, a bank slot for items like this would be nice.

I’m still holding on to the Mysterious Soggy Bag and the map from the first karka event… yeah yeah, I know. :p

Yeah, this is pretty infuriating. I’m a European playing on the US servers (international guild) and I’m encountering the same rubberbanding / unresponsiveness / overshooting problems. Sanctum Sprint is especially “fun”.

Staying in fire attunement isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you’re heavily fire specced (you get +10% damage, 20% less cooldown on your skills, etc) and fighting few / easy mobs, but you’ll still want to switch for a few skills:
- earth to activate the magnetic aura skill (3) if you’re fighting a ranged or caster mob -- it’ll both significantly boost your survivability and do a decent amount of ’free’ damage. While you’re there, you can cast eruption (2) under the mob, it’s a heavy damage AOE skill that goes off in a few seconds. Finally use shockwave (5) to root the mob in place so it won’t run away from eruption (though most don’t try to run away anyway)
- air for runspeed (4) and a good stun in static field (5) that you can place between you and the mob so it’ll run through it and get stunned. Also the blind (2) and the knockback (3) are very helpful against single tough (veteran+) mobs.
- water is not very useful in typical solo combat, but if you pull extra adds or get in trouble you can use the two heals (3) and (5) to stay alive. Water (2) is kind of bad, but if you’re stuck in water attunement you can use it as extra damage.
- if you’re trying to get away from multiple mobs, use water(4), earth(4) and air(5) to put down fields that’ll slow / stun them while you can run away by using swiftness in air(4) (cast it before you cast air(5)). Also use earth(3) here to avoid damage from ranged mobs.

Water attunement is where it’s at – which is almost logical except for the fact that water is the ‘support’ attunement on ground…
-1 is blah like all other autoattacks (except maybe air at point-blank range)
-2 is very good if you have some range… explode it before it hits for more damage
-3 works both as a good aoe, a snare, and a distance maker. I almost always double-tap it so it explodes right away for a very nice chunk of damage
-4 is a good aoe cc (sinking = can’t cast anything) and some healing for DEs, but not really useful in a typical situation
-5 is where the magic happens. Target a mob standing behind the other ones and you’ll do crazy damage to the ones you run through, and then add in some more aoe damage when you hit the targeted mob. Only drawback is that it moves you a fixed distance, so it’s not as good in melee range (use 3 to remedy that)

Other than that, I use air 1-2-5 when fighting single enemies, fire 5 (I think?) to get vigor for more dodging, and earth 5 if there are mobs clustered around me for a long-ish duration aoe blind. Earth 2 isn’t that shabby with somce +condition damage, so I usually fire that off too before switching back to water.

Works pretty well, and makes veteran skill challenge mobs much easier as well.