Guild Wars 2

…^ as the account-holders husband, I second everything referred to above. To get (what feels like) a canned PR-response instead of giving us any detailed information about what happened to provoke this serious of a response is extremely frustrating.

I remember how excited my wife and I both were to sign up for this game, and we’ve been in from beta. We love the game and hope the customer service / tech support will work to validate that enjoyment rather than drive further wedges in it.

[FRST] and assorted allies have just flipped it on Stormbluff Isle (4:17 PST)

:-D

My guild is running (or attempting to) run Balthazar this Saturday at 3 PM PST on Stormbluff Isle…you’re more than welcome to come along

Aloha,

My guild [Freeriders of Stormbluff] is going to be making a run at the Temple of Balthazar this Saturday at 3 PM PST — the more who come, the better the odds of success!

…and you know y’all want the shinies from after it’s open ;-)

Feedback & Arcane Thievery. I love killing idiots with their own things

Ayanavi.1904:

I think the aspect you’re missing is the part where you’re… not standing still like a targeting dummy in lion’s arch. Berserker’s cripple keeps targets perma-crippled more or less, making kiting entire hordes of things easy. Also, the auto-attack is meant to be used at long range.

Why on earth would you ever knock something back and stand still in the first place? I rarely even need to use my knockback. It’s like a panic button.

Touche, good sir, touche. For the most part I’ve managed to ditch my WoW stand-and-cast, but for some reason I hadn’t been there. And I’m clearly not using the berserker properly.

As I said though…GS is not my thing, and I leave the commentary on its merits to those for whom it IS a thing. Myself, I still stand by the staff as being a better defensive/survival option :-)

I agree with scepter/sword — I ran that for a loooong time, because the two blocks + your dodge rolling is enough to keep you from taking too much damage. Plus, it kind of forces you into the game mechanics a little more (ie, watching for the tells of mobs about to lay down a big hit), which is incredibly helpful once you get into higher-level content where you’re expected to know that already.

I switched to a shatter build recently that uses sword / pistol and does a lot more damage but I’m not sure how viable that is at lower levels. Certainly the sword-2 skill is useful if timed appropriately, regardless of what build you’re running — the distortion it gives (or the F4 shatter, which does the same thing) is equivalent to a dodge for avoiding big damage.

As darkrequiem said — 20 duelling gives you a clone on dodge, and gives you vigor (= moar dodge!). There’s a trait somewhere else (I think 10 points in inspiration) that also gives you vigor when you shatter clones, so that’s useful too.

The more I’ve played, the more I realise how important timing is to successful mesmer play — shattering clones is great for >insert shatter effect of choice<, but you better have thought ahead and have an escape plan ready because your clones are frequently tanking something for you and once they all go poof you’re going to have a bunch of angry things coming down on your head…and just like GW1, we are quite fragile if we sit around to take the hits!

GS v Staff — I’ve never quite understood the love for the GS, but I may just not be playing it properly — I knock them back, and then they come at me again, and now my knockback’s on CD. I think the important thing with this is to use the clone-generating one (where you hurl the sword at them) when they’re far away, so that if they go after the clone you’ve got distance, and if they come after you your clone has distance. That being said, I vastly prefer the staff for survival. Chaos armor is amazing, and you can get it both off the 4 skill, and from putting down chaos storm (5) and teleporting back out of the field (2). And the buffs from the chaos storm, if you stay in long enough to pick them up, are usually excellent defensively.