Guild Wars 2

What you nerds know about War of Emperium?

This week’s event doesn’t have assignments: just give me your silliest WvW screenshots you can win up to 300g!

http://youtu.be/lTBaJiGRVkk

Week 6 is underway! Check it out at bingo.robocafaz.com!

http://youtu.be/5N50b9j6mEE

Fourth of July special! Bigger prizes and everyone who gets on the board is a winner this week!

Hello again, you deliciously attractive people of the intertubes!

Deany Kong here—everyone’s 47th favorite Guild Wars 2 content creator and all-around jerk—and I’m here to once again extend an invitation for all of you to come play “Team WvW Bingo!”

Week 1 Recap

Week 1 of Team WvW Bingo was bigger and better than any of us could have hoped! We achieved Bingo later Sunday night and even after it was over players still eagerly submitted their screenshots. We gave out over 100g in prizes including sweet gem store prizes like the Warrior Quaggan Backpack and Fuzzy Hylek Hat thanks to the generosity of several donors.

This week we’re hoping to continue that trend!

A full recap of week 1 is available at the beginning of the week 2 video.

Week 2

Week 2’s board is now open and we will be accepting submissions as soon as the WvW matchup resets! This matchup runs from Friday, June 20th, to Friday, June 27th.

(\^ Week 2 Board \^)

For the complete rules and instructions list, head on over to our website! You can also find the weekly Bingo Board and the state of it there.

http://bingo.robocafaz.com/
(\^ Our Website \^)

We hope that Team WvW Bingo will continue to have a positive impact on the WvW community and bring a little bit more fun to your day-to-day activities!

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or contributions, please feel free to contact me here, on my YouTube channel, or in-game at “robocafaz.9017”.

Good luck and happy hunting!

Hello, lovely internet people.

My name is Deany Kong—Guild Wars 2 content creator and 6th place winner of the Mr. Maguuma 2013 Pageant—and I’m here to tell you all about my new weekly game called “Team WvW Bingo!”

(\^ Introduction Video \^)

Team WvW Bingo is a twist on an old favorite of grandma’s everywhere—but arguably more fun and more rewarding! Every week before reset I’ll present a 5×5 board full of odd and atypical things for players to look out for during the weekly matchup. Things like “Find and open-field Trebuchet.” and “Screenshot a player in a megablob /bowing on your lone corpse.” If you find something that meets the criteria of one of these challenges, take a screenshot of it and post it on that week’s Bingo Video along with your in-game handle. Since the board is shared amongst all participants, even just submitting one challenge can get you a sweet reward!

If your image is confirmed to meet the criteria, that challenge will be marked as completed. When a row, column, or diagonal of challenges has been fulfilled: BINGO! We have our winners!

All the players who helped achieve the bingo will receive a fabulous reward from our ever-growing prize pool. In the event of a MULTI-BINGO (two or more sets of 5 completing at the same time) those who contributed to the victory will receive their prizes and EVERY SINGLE PLAYER who made it on the board for that matchup will also receive a reward!

The first game starts at reset on Friday, June 13th, and will last throughout the matchup. But the board will be available for player viewing at midnight (EST) on Thursday!

(\^ Week 1 Board \^)

For the complete rules and instructions list, head on over to our website! You can also find the weekly Bingo Board and the state of it there.

http://bingo.robocafaz.com/
(\^ Our Website \^)

I hope that this community game will help bring a little more spice to your weekly WvW matchups!

If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them here or on my YouTube channel!

Healing Signet grants higher health over time than any of the other healing skills: that’s why everyone runs it.

The two conditions/full bar of Adrenaline the other healing skills grant are not good enough to put them on-par with Healing Signet.

xbutcherx.3861:

I don’t know about you guys but is been long since I got a damage window pop-up upon death like the one on the OP screenshot. Looks like is an old screen shot for when Thieves were really deadly, or it is something in the options you can enable.

You can click to see the detailed death breakdown after you get killed. It just doesn’t show by default anymore.

Warriors are in a really good position right now and have been for close to a year thanks to some absolutely huge buffs they received last Summer. They are considered OP for various reasons but the only real problem with them at the end of the day is Longbow as a weapon is pretty much broken because of all the utility it brings when synergized with various traits.

Oh, and Berserker Stance (prevents new conditions from applying to you for the duration) lasts a little too long (10s.)

In a similar vein, I’d like to remind people that just because something can be countered doesn’t mean it’s not overpowered. You need to keep the balance of risk vs. reward in mind.

But having said that I fear I may have just reassured everyone that whatever they dislike is OP.

a t s e.9614:

I can get the same armor in SpVp while having a ridiculous regen of 800 hp per sec and unload people with condis. Look at this abomination

You’re a monster!

Yeah, Shinryuku!

The third ability in your downed state is “Vengeance”, which revives you to full health with a slight damage increase for a few seconds before killing you. You have a chance to clear Vengeance when you kill something but it is unreliable unless you get the 20 discipline trait that causes it to trigger all the time.

If you’re not hitting Vengeance and this is happening, I’ve experienced in the past insta-dying after reviving but only when returning to waypoints after death. Never on an actual rally.

You’re just going to want your run-of-the-mill 0/0/20/30/20 Hammer/Sword+Warhorn WvW Frontliner build only slightly more defense-oriented. Since you’re a commander you want to be a little bit beefier. You’ll probably want a little over 3k armor and around 25k health with the rest going into whatever DPS you can find.

Traits will be Dogged March, Cleansing Ire (or Hammer Mastery/Balanced Stance), Lung Capacity, Quick Breathing, Vigorous Shouts, Adrenal Shouts, and Destruction of the Empowered (or Mobile Strikes).

All zerg-oriented Warrior builds are some variation of this (except for the occasional Destroyer, but you’re a Commander so you don’t want that.)

If there is an ICD with that 6-second duration this talent will see no play what-so-ever.

If there is no ICD I can see some interesting Destroyer Warrior WvW builds running it with Forceful Greatsword.

I have 8 80’s but I main a Warrior so people don’t allow me to have an opinion.

Korimor.2406:

nope, although it wouldn’t make much since if its somehow the same build lol then the point still stands

Well, it won’t be me who does it because I’m awful at video games but I feel like a Mace+Shield/GS Warrior with Lyssa Runes, Throw Bolas and no Stability could give you an extremely boring “whoever kittens up three times in a row first loses” fight.

I didn’t notice Balanced Stance proccing at all (but I didn’t watch both videos in full) so I’ll just talk like you don’t run it: You lack stability but you have “Shake it Off!” and “Fear Me!” at your disposal to help counter that. Since you don’t need to hold “Shake It Off!” for condi cleansing you pretty much always have that for a stun break. If you get two hard CCs in a row you have “Fear Me!” as backup. If the other Warrior was able to prevent the fear then you still have a “For Great Justice!” shout to recover about half of whatever damage he could do to you at the time.

You have damage recovery via shouts and Heal Sig. He has mitigation through blocks and shield reflect plus Heal Sig. If he plays intelligently he will not engage you near your fire fields and reflect your longbow 5 back at you (that’s the only real important one.) Then he basically has to wait for the stars to align and for you to waste your shouts on cleansing the reflected condis (also using Bolas to bait, because you’re not going to want to tank a 3+ second immob) and go in for the stun (jumping during his animation to help mask it because like kitten you’re going to fall for a vanilla stun like that.)

Eventually he manages to do that three times in a row and you go down and he doesn’t stomp you because he is too busy reflecting on what he’s doing with himself.

… as I am right now because I just spent the past 15 minutes thinking and writing about how it’d go down.

A dude on /r/guildwars2 did a nice exposé of WvW twinks a few weeks ago. Read all about it here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1ygin9/the_experiences_and_secrets_of_a_wvw_player_part_2/

Level 2 toons are the kings for scaling up, and easy to do too! Starting from character creation, you’ll want to decide what stat you want to max first depending on race. The reason for this is the Level 2 quest from each respective starter area is where you can get the only accessories you can have at this level. Human is vitality, Charr is precision, Asuran conditions, etc etc. Finish character creation, finish the first quest. Congrats! you are now ready for WvW. Once again, if you have the Hero’s Band item, great! If not, just balance out your stats with an extra divinity rune. Now, buy “Adorned” level 0 prefix upgrade jewels from the TP, which costs several copper. Buy for whichever stat you want to get. Important note, I will highly suggest you go the power route over conditions, because there are few ways an uplevel can apply conditions. As an uplevel, your stats can “cap”, where it goes no higher as a base stat. For each stat, the cap is roughly as follows: 3700 attack, 91% crit chance, 120% crit damage. Toughness is class dependant, heavies at around 3.5k and lights at 2.9k. Vitality is also class dependant, with Necros having the highest at 35k hp. Work out if you’ve capped each stat, and stop allocating attributes into that stat if you have. Example setup: Hero’s Band slotted with Adorned Garnet Pebble x2 Iron Legion Primus badge with adorned garnet pebbles x1divinity rune, x1 hoelbrak rune, x1 fire rune, x1 lyssa rune minor sigil of force on weapon. This should cap out your stats for power, precision and crit chance at level 2. Then, seach for “Handful of Bjarni’s Rabbit Food” on the TP. It’s a 1 hour buff that will give you about 9.5k hp in WvW due to how scaling works. (20 vit = almost 10k hp not OP at all)

Play around with it, work on min/maxing stats from trial and error. The whole setup should not cost you more than 5 silver, and you can keep the armor for continuous use through diff level 2 characters.

Is the challenge nulled if it’s another Warrior that beats it? :P

These are all excellent examples of teamwork and individual skill.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Holy mother of misinformation…

<SNIP>

Thank you, Proxy. This is the only fully accurate post in this thread, listen to this man.

People originally started bringing Warriors on their teams to hard-counter Necromancers with their control and spike-defense. Of course now they have more roles than that, but yeah, the class right now is in a spot where it’ll hard-counter the average Necromancer if the Necro isn’t ready for them.

Arkantos.7460:

I feel warriors will also get permavade like thiefs if they can get every 5 secs +50% endurance refilled …..

It’s a bit ambiguous, but Sigil types will have independent cooldowns, not individual Sigils. So two of the same on-swap Sigils will still have an 8 second ICD on them.

Otherwise we’re gonna see a whole new kind of double Fire Sigil spike meta.

No. There’s so much defensive power but it ends up diminishing severely because of how much you’re stacking. You’ll still get killed, albeit about 10 seconds slower, but you’ll do absolutely no damage.

SBI > Mag > Yak

Maguuma will only tryhard PPT to
A. Make it into Gold League
B. Not lose to Yak’s Bend

I don’t think it’s a good idea, honestly. There is really nothing to be gained with it. It’d just invite a lot of kittentalking and toxic behavior to an already angry playerbase.

I’m one of the worst instigators on Maguuma and I’m saying that!

Vyx.8607:

Just as a heads up, if you want to help post your guild or find other guilds interested in GvG, starting a running list here
http://www.gw2wvw.net/gvg

I can’t see it, it good?

Over 150 participants, over 130 spectators on Blu’s channel and our Obsidian Sanctum got queued.

The GvG scene is a ton of fun, guys, you should get in on it!

100% probably Deany Kong.

You should transfer to Maguuma. We’re much more friendly.

Brode.7689:

Shhhhhh I heard they forgot about anything WvW related again. So as long as no one gets infracted……

That’s kittening stupid, shut the kitten up you lying sack of poopie-doopie.

Big ups to FA for their impeccable garrison defense. Normally we’re more than happy to do 45-90 minute garrison fights but we’re tired tonight. We’ve gotta wash our hair. We’re having our monthly visitors.

It’s almost time to say goodbye, guys.

;-;

Put all of your 1v1 losses in a video and commentate on where you made your mistakes and how you could’ve won them.

Frag videos are only so exciting, in-depth analysis is a lot more interesting, imho.

Celeste Lightblade.9253:

Regarding the flashy animation of skull crack… ever heard prediction? If you play a lot you get a feeling for situations where your enemy is going to do something insanly stupid/predictable and you abuse that.

Yes, that’s actually how I play most of my fights. I’m less reactive than I am proactive. Unfortunately I’ve been finding the past few days that I don’t know thieves as well as I thought I did.

Celeste Lightblade.9253:

Also after seeing your video I can say that you weren’t that much into real PvP before, right? I don’t want to offend you here. I just saw you doing a lot of stupid “beginner” mistakes like wasting dodges and using skills at times where it wasn’t useful at all. Without them you could’ve killed that thief!

No, and none taken. I see absolutely no point in uploading frag videos like some people like to do. I always try to include my failures so I can learn from them and get input from honest people like you. Even if 9 times outta 10 the feedback is “lol ur kitten trash ked”

wtb more non-Maguumies at OS

Alatus Rufus.5461:

where do you get the cavalier weapons at?

I honestly have no idea how you get the inscriptions outside of the TP and salvaging existing Cavalier’s weapons. Not sure where they drop from. Probably Fractals.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Mesmers can win 1on1 fights, news at 10.

If I learned anything from the official forums, it’s that everyone on it has no idea how class balance actually works.

Therefore I do decree that based on this discussion: Mesmers are the worst 1v1 class and need a buff.

Oh, yeah, I definitely agree with you there, but us life-long Warriors are used to our rollercoaster of balance. The only thing constant in the Warrior game is that people think we’re OP regardless of what state we’re in. :P

And honestly, I don’t really mind if there’s class builds out there, whether they be Shortbow Thieves or PU Mesmers, that can consistently beat this build. That’s what counter-play is all about. In fact, our ability to counter-play things like Condi Cleave Necros is what got us into sPvP again.

I don’t need to tell you that there isn’t a Warrior build out there that’ll let you beat everyone 100% of the time, but I am quite happy with the state of this Skull Cracker variation and I hope that others will find some pleasure in it as well.

Harper.4173:

So you’re basically saying " bring warrior back to where he was a while eago when he was kept from being viable".
This is an actual quote " kept warriors from being viable". You basically just flat out stated you want this class kept in a non-viable place. Aka nerfed into the ground.

I’d be okay with that, honestly. I miss the days where outplaying someone in a fight wasn’t met with “lol no skill warrior scrub.”

… ah, who am I kidding, even when Warriors were trash people still said that. :P

Bsgapollo.5364:

Can you please go back to the warrior forums ? If you don’t know what you’re talking about you have no business here.

If you can’t beat the average fotm summer-time Warrior on a D/D or S/D Ele you are complete and utter trash and should uninstall. A high-level Warrior should give you a run for your money but you should still be able to maintain a fairly even win-loss ratio against them.

In a Warrior/Ele fight it’s all about who makes more mistakes in a row. Both classes have the ability to recover from what should be fatal mistakes, both classes have the ability to kite and control, both classes have the ability to heal to full when they aren’t pressured. Warriors and Ele’s are like peas in a pod.

Chaos.3579:

GW2 was made with the intention of skill-based pvp and content.

<snip>

This has become very apparent in a few of the class’s. Warrior is the greatest example.

Excellent post, Chaos. You perfectly described the biggest issue with GW2’s current PvP meta.

I’d like to note that before Warrior became OP garbage, they had almost no passive play: it was all reactive. Which pretty much made them UP garbage. Their improved Health Regen and Condition Management (through mitigation and auto-cleansing via Cleansing Ire) was what pushed them over the threshold much farther than was necessary.

KarlusDavius.1024:

So what your saying is that you think this build in a more skilled persons hand can accomplish great things?

Yes, this is not a build for fotm Warriors who only touched the class after they got significantly buffed.

KarlusDavius.1024:

Condi builds are really good at pressure. The video actually draws on it’s downsides more than it’s upsides.

I had very little condi management in the variation I was running during those duels. I typically prefer to run Hoelbrak/Melandru + Lemongrass when running this build. If I were the Poison uptimes would not have been any problem for me.

The only reason I was running Lyssa that entire time was because I’m too cheap to waste Lemongrass on 1v1s. >_>

Also,

KarlusDavius.1024:

Chopping game play. Using main abilities when opponent has there massive telegraphed skills happening.

I didn’t quite understand what you were trying to tell me here, can you rephrase?

mini.6018:

Lol at OP stating skullcrack still has success.Yes against pv mobs and totally clueless players.So does my rifle lol.MAce is useless now for interrupts or anything else not pared with shield stun 1st increasing the skullcrack cd by 300% or bull’ds charge.

I can understand how you could feel that way if, but if you read the guide or watch the videos I cover how to make the build effective even when you actually have to try to land your Skull Crackers.

I have used this build in more than just random roaming situations against uplevels. I’ve tested it against higher-level players of every class in roaming, fight clubs, and even sPvP. It is still effective and it can still be successful, it just requires some actual effort and the ability to surprise your foe with unpredictable movements.

If you want more proof I can give you more proof.

Stark.3085:

Anyone who plays less than me is a scrub. Anyone who plays more than me is a no-lifer.

Flissy.4093:

The game isn’t balanced around hotjoin lol.

Nor is it balanced around WvW roaming builds.

I wish more people would realize that. :P

I hear you, Wilson. PU Mesmers are nasty nasty nasty to fight against in a 1v1 situation with food. The Stealth isn’t even tough to deal with, it’s their in-fight mobility and the way they can use our cleave against us.

I got D/D and S/D Eles down, my main focus right now is figuring out the proper way to counter those thieves then I’m diving right back into PU Mesmers. :P

Maguuma has spent the last 3 months trying to find new people to GvG. Now we finally find someone and they’re Oceanic-only. And now we’re the ones being accused of not wanting to GvG.

#maguumaproblems ;-;

Epic.3950:

healsig

I wanted Heal Sig nerfed a long time ago because I hate passive play, personally (something like lower the base HPS and increase the way it scales with Healing Power.) But if you find yourself against someone with semi-decent Poison uptime you essentially have no heal anymore. Sigil of Doom is surprisingly good at keeping Poison up unless the Warrior has a lot of self-cleansing. If they do then they’ve already made the choice to be more survival than offense.

Furthermore, many many classes have the ability to heal to full when you aren’t putting on sufficient pressure. Elementalist, Thief, Guardian, and Mesmer come to mind. If I let them away from me for too long I’ve essentially let them reset the fight. I think it’s somewhat reasonable for Warriors to be able to regen if they aren’t being attacked.

Honestly that’s one of my favorite parts about Healing Signet: it keeps people from kiting me for too long because they know the longer they’re not hitting me the more HP I’m gaining.

But yeah, Healing Signet is a little too effective for my tastes but it’s not nearly as OP as people claim it is. People need to accept the fact that sometimes you need to do some counter-play. And Poison is a pretty ridiculous counter-play.

Epic.3950:

maceGS

Skull Cracker has been nerfed to have a 1/2 second cast time with a flashing animation (like the Ogres in PvE world.) It’s very difficult to land and if the Warrior does land it he deserves the free hits. That’s kind of the entire point of stuns (unless you use them defensively.)

Because of the longer cast time on Skull Crack it’s much easier to dodge or prevent. Often times unless there is some setup CC the target will be just out of range if they’re moving away from you. Or they can dodge, blind, aegis, etcetera. A Warrior should not find himself landing Skull Crack every time unless they’re up against someone who does not know the Warrior tells.

Most classes have some kind of get out of jail card for when they get stunned anyhow, so even if the Skull Cracker lands there’s no guarantee the damage will work. A Warrior against a skilled foe will have to land probably 2 Skull Crackers over the course of 20-30 seconds if he actually wants to do the Hundred Blades in order to catch his opponent when they have no cooldowns left.

Epic.3950:

s/s lb

I can’t comment on this one because I have never been able to run a Condi Warrior build. They’re a disgrace to our name, imo. :P

. . . . . .

I post this just about every time I talk about Warrior balance because this is my stance on Warriors: they are an extremely newbie-friendly class to play now and they are quite difficult for newer players to counter. But in higher skill levels it takes much more effort for a Warrior to be effective. Once you learn how to counter Warriors they are far less scary.