Guild Wars 2

Kagato.4061:

I like the fact that they are blue mists, it does make it easier.

What I don’t like is:

1. The scoring system – it’s absolutely pointless other than to brag to others that you’ve beaten it so and so times. First place doesn’t even get a reward, and it just makes it take longer to get to the puzzle. Why was this even added?

2. Unable to play with friends now. This is an issue with all activities, but I remember having a blast racing my friend to the top, and now we can’t join the same server anymore. Why is it like this? Why can’t I play with my friends?

3. Only 5 people. One of the most fun things was the social interaction from last year – the blue mists got rid of the issue regarding Norns and Charr, so why in the world did they reduce the amount of people jumping through the puzzle? It’s not as fun with so few people.

With that being said, I love the challenge of the puzzle, but it’s just annoying that most of the changes based around it kind of suck.

Scoreboard

I actually don’t think that true racing is fully possible in GW2 due to lag. A person’s clock tower can actually be de-synchronized from others. This is why when a person lags, they have to jump up to 3 tower walls earlier to make the last jump (before the clock is even hit).

Similarly, player positions can be de-synchronized due to lag. For instance, if a player is lagging, he can be ahead of everybody in the race on his own screen, but to others (and to the server), he can actually be behind them. I don’t think GW2 has a way to compensate for this desynchronized lag.

Personally, I think that the Scoreboard in the new Clocktower is a really good alternative way to compete with each other. See who can complete the tower faster and more often / more consistently.

I’ve already had a few different matches where me and another random person would be neck and neck, tied to the last round, then finally one of us would mess up, and the other would win at the last moment. It’s pretty fun XD

I also like the new Scoreboard because it gives me incentive to beat my own personal record, to see how many completions I can get in a match.

Blue Mists

I personally preferred seeing the actual players rather than mists, but I think the mists change is a good change overall. I personally didn’t mind seeing big norn / charr because there’s a way to bypass most people at the start of the map (a really efficient path that most people never took), but I also didn’t mind the extra challenge of blind jumping when vision blocked by big norn / charr.

Thing is, purposely playing a big norn / charr was actually a way to grief the clock tower. Not everybody playing a big norn / charr was purposely doing it to grief, but at least now they can still play their big norn / charr without being raged at for griefing others, heh.

5 Player Limit

I do miss being able to play with more players because there were a lot more people to talk with during the puzzle. I also really liked being able to show other players how to do the jumps, and purposely waiting up for them so they could catch up.

With the 5 player limit, most of the matches are a lot quieter in the chat. Then again, Clocktower might not be as popular this year anyway since it’s repeated content.

I really love Clocktower though. The freerunning feeling of trying to smoothly speed run Clocktower is still so enjoyable for me. It kinda reminds me of Mirror’s Edge. Clocktower is still my favourite jumping puzzle.

Zaxares.5419:

It’s lag, as null says. I haven’t done the Clocktower again so far this year, but last year, one good way to tell if you were lagging was to observe the gears at the start when they burst out of the wall. If they flowed out in one smooth motion, you’re good. However, if they seem to freeze in mid-air or suddenly appear in front of you, you’re lagging and you will need to jump about 1 – 2 seconds earlier than the lightning strike at the top in order to make it into the window.

I agree with this, I also use the animations of spawning platforms to tell how much I’m lagging. If the platforms after the leap of faith chest spawn instantly (without animation), then I gotta jump about 2-3 tower walls / faces early.

I actually don’t think you have to hit the clock face that precisely; however, if you have lag / latency to the server, sometimes you have to jump extremely early.

I’m talking like 2-3 walls earlier (before the clock even gets hit) depending on how much you lag.

You can use the rising level of the green mist to help gauge when you need to jump.

Ceribrocanasans.4135:

MagicSlurpees.4851:

Wow, great runs. Just wondering two things.
Did you pull these off with few attempts or were they something you had to try a bunch of times?
Why not use the shortcut worm in W1Z2? Saves time even if you take it safe I’d think.

I’ve died many times. Without exaggerating, it’s safe to say i’ve spent 30 hours in SAB TM. I’ve only ever died in the worm. If it’s possible to do it, then I’ll try it out.

I saw you link this thread from another TM thread. The shortcut worm is very doable, although, I haven’t figured out yet how to get past the spike trap (without dying) once you exit the worm.

The worm path itself only takes around 40 seconds. Here’s a video:

Tribulation Mode also gives Bubbles and a lot of Baubles. So if you did TM, you can get even more Bubbles than 20 per day. I’m not that good at TM World 2, but I can finish TM World 1 in 40 minutes. TM World 2 for me currently is more like 3 hours.

I currently have more TM skins than I have Blue skins.

But yeah, just giving some numbers for sake of comparison.

Overall though, there’s probably still gonna be a ton more Blue skins than TM skins. The population that can farm TM is probably pretty small in comparison, and the TM skins are all account bound anyway.

I’ve experienced the Storm Wizard reset bug myself. It happens if you lose your last life and get sent to Moto. Even if you use a Continue Coin, the Storm Wizard (at least when he’s a Dragon) will reset where the Dragon spawns at full HP.

I only experienced the bug when I died on my very last life (the 0 life). All other deaths, the Storm Wizard fight never got reset.

Once you learn the Storm Wizard patterns and how to counter them though, it will be a lot easier to survive the fight. The Storm Wizard always has the same patterns in both forms.

As for difficulty of Assassins, as well as the difficulty of the Storm Wizard fight, the upgraded Chain Sticks makes everything a ton easier as well. The extra wide range of the Chain sticks allows you to strafe around enemies to avoid attacks while still being able to hit them without missing. This makes a huge difference in making many World 2 fights much easier.

I actually don’t really like Living Story, and I came back just for SAB. I love Super Adventure Box! As well as Halloween JP! My two favourite things in GW2.

I actually think the rewards are quite good in SAB. It’s possible to get more skins more often in this SAB than the last SAB.

I also think that the way to acquire the rewards are a lot better than all the alt swapping in the first SAB.

Another thing is that the clouds have a pretty simple pattern. Most of that path is pretty straight / linear. So you could potentially actually do the jumps by memory as well.

But yeah, zooming in definitely helps a lot.

Josh, I want to say that I really appreciate all the work you put into Super Adventure Box. I personally feel that World 2 is amazing in its own unique way, even compared to World 1.

I think Super Adventure Box as a whole, is such a great idea, and World 2 greatly adds to that.

My favourite area of World 2 are the moving logs on the river. I don’t think there is anything else like this in GW2, yet those logs feel so realistic, natural, and fluid when I jump along them. When I first tried out the log river section, I thought it was very new, fresh, impressive, and fun!

It’s a bit funny though. After doing a lot of Tribulation Mode in SAB, I kind of wonder how much more difficult jumping can be made in World 3. I feel that World 2 has already taught me the mechanics of how jumping works in GW2. So it has become a lot easier for me to consistently make max distance or max height jumps.

Although, one definite way to increase the difficulty of a jump is to add some external pressure / rushed feeling, like with the Halloween JP mist. For me, that added pressure ads a lot to the intensity of the experience and gets my adrenaline going. But I suppose that should be reserved for future Tribulation Modes rather than Normal Modes? XD

Anyway, both Super Adventure Box World 1 and World 2 are amazing! I can’t wait to see World 3, and I will be very sad when SAB leaves GW2 again at the end of the month.

It’s really impressive what you could do with the GW2 engine. A ton of respect and appreciation!

Ayrilana.1396:

Unless they did not intend for you to get past the traps. This isn’t the first time people have found away around obstacles that were supposed to stop players.

Going by your logic, if they didn’t intend players to take the W2Z2 shortcut then they would’ve put up spike traps so you couldn’t get to it. However they did not put up traps and instead let you complete it which then ports you to the beginning after. They let you go through thinking you could take the shortcut and got “punished” for doing so. There’s no reason to think that they did not tempt you with the wurm shortcut and have it impassable near the end.

Only the devs know whether it was intended or not. They have not directly stated either direction. However, in the same thread about the eagle shortcut, it did appear that the dev seemed to be hinting that the wurm one was not intended to be doable.

I agree with the others. Based on actually trying out the shortcut, I think that it is supposed to work.

I really doubt that the Shortcut Worm is a case of players figuring out how to bypass intended design. The design of the jumps / obstacles in the Shortcut Worm are more a psychological deterrent, rather than a path made actually impossible (or even near impossible).

The Shortcut Worm looks hard, but the jumps are nowhere even near the max distance possible of a normal jump. All of the jumps actually have a pretty big margin for error.

If the design of Shortcut Worm was actually intended to be impossible, then the devs could have done what they did with Shortcut Eagle, and teleport the player back to the start of the map instead.

Similarly, the devs could have actually made the spike traps require a jump distance that is physically impossible, just like how most areas are blocked off in TM, forcing the player to take alternate routes.

I remember during the first SAB that Josh said on the forums that he had a dev tool to actually measure the distance of jumps by using colours. So if intended design was to make Shortcut Worm impossible, the devs would know that all the jumps they implemented into the Worm were actually doable (without even dodge jumping).

As far as I can tell, most signs point to the Shortcut Worm as being intended to be doable, just seemingly difficult enough to be deterring.

Beating the Shortcut Worm is not a case of using buggy mechanics, exploits, or similar methods. You can beat it entirely with just basic jumping.

The Tribulation Mode Shortcut Worm does work. I’ve also completed it successfully.

One thing is to be careful of the last spike trap jump, because there are spike traps on the ceiling as well. If you don’t keep holding down the forward button after that jump, you might hit the spikes on the ceiling and die.

I had a lot of trouble with reaching this shop in Tribulation Mode as well. I also kept dying every single time. My character would open the Shop’s door then immediately die right after.

Eventually I tried to jump dodge off the lily pad and through the acid waterfall and that worked every time.

I made it up to the secret area too. I made a video showing what’s up there from the top:

I’ve beaten all of Normal Mode Worlds 1 and 2 solo. I’ve also beaten all of Tribulation Mode World 1 solo (haven’t tried Tribulation World 2 yet). I think all of SAB can be solo’d.

Some tips:

1. You can actually jump over King Toad’s left / right stomps, but it requires good timing.
2. You can double dodge the King Toad’s Belly stomp, but it also requires good timing.
3. It’s far easier to just grab a shard and wait on the rock until King Toad opens his mouth.
4. You can easily avoid King Toad’s left / right stomps by looking at his eye brows. Just run in the direction of the twitching eyebrow. IE, if his Left Eyebrow twitches, run to the left pad.
5. The Whip can actually auto loot many baubles around you, which helps for farming Honeycombs.
6. With the Candle, if you use it then immediately Jump, you can burn Plants above you (IE, in Zone 3 checkpoint covered by plants). This helps for getting the Minor in Elusion achievement.
7. Similarly, you can Attack Jump vs Gators while jumping on lily pads (Zone 3). This lets you jump the lily pads onto the gator without taking any damage from the poisoned water.

Hi, I’m not sure if anyone here would be interested, but a friend suggested I post my video guides here.

Perhaps these videos can help others who dunno these tips and tricks yet.

Note: Enable Annotations to see the tips.

1. How to Solo King Toad by watching for tells
2. Efficient and Safe Way to Solo Queen Bee With Whip

You can chain the Symbol of Swiftness / SY / Retreat with Greatsword #3 Leap of Faith for even more mobility.

Ring of Warding actually counts as Combo Field: Light, so you could use it for an on-demand combo if you want. IE, you don’t have to wait for Symbol of Protection in the Hammer chain.

In terms of PvM though, I mainly just use #1 and #2 on Hammer.

What if you:

1. Switch Heal to Shelter
2. Switch Purity to something else
3. Equip Signet of Resolve
4. Wait 5 seconds
5. Switch back to Purity

Will you then remove 1 condition every 5 seconds until map change?

Or is it 2 conditions every 10 seconds based on the Signet of Resolve (first equiped) timer?

I periodically get this same error and get booted from the game. I got this error before changing my password, and I still get it after I changed my password.

I was never really bothered about this error before, since I could also just log back in, but it’s incredibly annoying to get kicked by this error in the middle of the fractal dungeon.