Guild Wars 2

Nick.6972:

I guess I missed the Official Manifesto Explanation video then.
Good thing they made it known for everyone who didn’t spend time researching every bit of information posted on unofficial sites.

Maybe you should pay less attention to a 3 year old video. Just my two copper.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

I do not have a problem with ascended stats in WvW.

Don’t really care to see it removed, I worked for it and would prefer to use it otherwise I wasted my time and gold and I don’t care for that.

Didn’t you read the thread? Ascended makes no difference in WvW, so sorry to say, you already wasted your time and gold.

Glad you came around.

tigirius.9014:

aliksyian.7642:

Yes ascended are supposed to be better. Like has been said multiple times, its gear between exotic and legendary that is supposed to take time to get, and is acquired while you make legendary progress (ie Dailies for Karma, Fractals for Cores and T6 mats all result in progress towards ascended). But as you can see from the practical example, the stat bump isn’t so insane that it makes exotics redundant.

Hold on a second. Why is “better gear that takes a longer time to get” acceptable at all in Guild Wars? I thought one of the selling points was that you wouldn’t be chasing gear.

Guess it’s moot since they’re clearly going in that direction, but I just wanted to point out that that doesn’t need to be how the game works.

One of the better points against this gear having higher stats imo. It’s not moot to me. I wanted to play the game they advertised prelaunch. People will continue to post nonsense in it’s favor tho and those people are generally people who love the gear treadmill and have a five second memory when it comes to what this game was promised to be prelaunch, they also seem to have issues with the understanding that 5 points per item in 11 slots equals a 55 point advantage in any one score which adds up quickly when an entire set of gear is available with higher stats. 55 points in prec vitality toughness is very important especially in a game where only two classes can 1 shot.

55 points is make or break? Really? I guess 5 signet warriors are gods now.

Hexgame.4802:

With the new patch now live, I’m just wondering what your opinions are.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/The-REAL-Manifesto/first#post868555

So I saw a couple of posts that basically accused me of defending Ascended items to keep my privileged advantaged status.

Well, I don’t have any ascended items. I’m pretty casual (337 play hours/423 days) and don’t even have full exotics. So that argument is pretty much DOA.

If coming out and saying that gear hasn’t really mattered at any point during the entire game’s release to the outcome of a WvW match is defending ascended, so be it.

You want a level playing field? Play sPvP. I’m done being insulted by people who can’t fathom that numbers only matter when you get hit, and that the whole point of GW2 combat is to not get hit.

Also, where’s all the evidence showing us how much of an effect the gear has in real combat? Have we all just decided that higher numbers = massive advantage without any evidence?

Eisberg and I have killed ascended weapon having opponents 1v1, but that doesn’t count apparently.

I enjoy the fact that when I don’t play for a while, I come back and suddenly I have a ton of things to do. I did the Flame and Frost instances yesterday and had lots of fun.

Chase.8415:

Mackdose.6504:

Chase.8415:

Raids aren’t good for this game for several reasons:

A. It promotes class composition, forcing friends and guilds to abandon certain people because they weren’t a guardian, for example.

B. The graphics of the game is higher than the normal standard and with the amount of combat there is in the game with having to dodge and everything, would be a FPS nigmare.

C. This game is intended to be a bridge between casual and hardcore. I am a casual myself for example, playing about 2 hours a day. When you implement raids, they generally take HOURS to complete. Not only that, you have to schedule several players and HOPE they show up on time.

D. It indirectly destroy small guilds, because no one will even attempt to wait out until the guild gets slightly larger before raiding. Currently, small guilds like mine can progress. My guild for example has 8 members and we are at LvL 20 FOTM.

Not to mention the 5 man content is difficult in itself, I don’t see a reason what makes a difference.

I disagree, I think a 10 or 15 man large scale instance would be interesting. Imagine the delicious tears when the battles are 20 mobs vs 15 players… only now the mobs are meant to kill the players rather than be filler for an event.

If there were hard-mode open world events that scaled horizontally (think siege weapons, waves of large monsters amidst threatening smaller mobs, strict time limits, etc) I would be pleased.

If you really want raids, then try Fractals.
You honestly see more things change than health each level. Once you get passed 20, it’s more of a progression because of agony.

I want large scale mechanically interesting progression. Fractals are a step in the right direction, but I’d also like guilds to have something to do other than WvW.

Unspecified.9142:

Lillian Wandom Hale.7102:

I could go for 100% … but why ?
I could go to do some more WvW … but why ?
I could train SPvP more …but why ?

I can play for 2 years more ..and nothing will ever change, I will stay exactly strong as I am now …

I (and other ~70% of community) have no reason to play this game past lvl 80 Exotics…

This attitude about games just makes me sad.

Maybe it’s because I grew up playing games when games were still new (e.g. from around 1985 to present). Games didn’t used to be about getting the shinies or about doing things because the game gave you some reward like an achievement or something shiny. Games were about fun and/or challenge (often you made your own challenges).

You sound like the only reason you have to play games is to get some payout of pixels and if there is no pixel jackpot to be had you can’t see the purpose in a video game.

It’s always seemed obvious to me that Anet designs games based on old-school video game mentality (hint, GW1 is the same way, there’s tons to do but almost none of it gets you prettier pixels). The purpose of games is the journey and the experiences you have while play. The purpose is the fun of playing. Designing a game around destinations is actually bad design. It just fosters the mentality that everything before the destination is a waste of time and very often just a pain in the kitten you wish didn’t exist (e.g. WoW leveling that everyone just views as a giant time sink they wish would just go away so they could play end-game only).

I know I’ll probably never change your mind but the point I’m trying to get at (and the OP seems to be as well) is that the problem isn’t with the game. The problem is with you and your preoccupation with collecting pixels and skipping as much of the game as you can in your pursuit of pixels. If that’s all games are to you then that’s fine. There are games for you, go play one.

If you ever decide you want to play a game for the sake of playing a game and, you know, have fun doing it I’m sure GW2 will still be here waiting for you to come have fun.

This. Bad RNG doesn’t affect my fun. Ascended stats don’t affect my fun. Lack of horizontal goals don’t affect my fun. Grindy goals don’t affect my fun.

I get my fun from actively playing the game, not the rewards for playing the game.

JonPeters.5630:

Actually this is not true and is something we are actively looking at. We have a number of solutions that we are talking about and when we are able to figure out which one will have the least impact on balance, performance, and testing we will put that solution in place as soon as possible.

Jon

Good luck, I salute you.

Pariah.8506:

Vol.5241:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Vol.5241:

Ascended gear in WvW is irrelevant. You will not notice the difference, especially when you consider the other bigger variables, such as orb buff, party buffs and blob size

If it’s irrelevant then what’s wrong with making it really irrelevant and disallowing it in WvW?

because the effort to code all that is not worth it? Let alone all the people who invested badges/laurels for ascended gear. We want to shaft those people?

But the effort of designing, coding, modelling, animating and testing to introduce a feature that “makes absolutely no difference” was?

Ascended gear is a armor with an infusion slot for a mechanic introduced as an endless dungeon grind to provide long term goals for players after they completed their exotic set.

It makes “no difference” to the outcome of a WvW match.

It makes larger differences on smaller scales, but never poses an advantage that can’t be overcome by smart play, due to the way combat mechanics work.

I’m kitten sure that any fight I lose to a player I would have lost whether or not he has ascended. There’s just so much more influencing fights than numbers on the gear, and that is obviously by design.

Jordo.5913:

Kalocin.5982:

Titans…Oh god the titans….Ran as a minionmancer (oldschoolterm) and then the final missions decided to make my build worthless lol.

On topic: I find 50-80 much easier than the previous levels ironically, there are more events and overall action. I don’t mind the risen because every mob in this game behaves the same: Run to you, attack, random control attack. Range remains ranged.
If there was a variation in enemy attack patterns I might care more.

lol, i remember leveling my fire ele in GW1, once you get to ring of fire, you are worthless because the titans had fire resistance….so you HAD to learn another build….i cursed quite a bit that day

If that happened today, here’s what the post would look like:

Angry GW1 Player:

Dear Anet,

Kitten you. I can’t believe you think making an entire build useless in the ring of fire is good design. Do you guys even play your own game? I spent the whole game as fire, and now I’m FORCED to switch due to this short-sighted mechanic. So much for playing the game my way. Thanks for nothing.

Flissy.4093:

Flissy.4093:

Actually less diverse now, professions that used parts of Assassin over Berserker, such as Guardian, Warrior & Ele, to min/max are now just going to sit in full Berserker.

Since when was min/maxing (read: cookie cutter max dps) a sign of diversity?

Astralporing.1957:

Mackdose.6504:

Revolution.6301:

well Ascended should be there but only as a cosmetic feature. People love their skins. Love to show off. Anet just let them love and all will be good again.

And then fix the stats and let us casuals get stats easier.

Thank you

I’m a casual, and I think options for all player types is good for the game. Stop acting like casuals are losing out on something because of ascended gear, we’re not.

Not yet. Eventually, when all content will be updated with ascended stats in mind (and the devs said it will), everyone else will be left behind.

The content isn’t even balanced around exotics yet. This isn’t some “spreadsheet your max dps to wipe at 3%” kind of game. I’m not sure why you think otherwise.

laharl.8435:

Lastly, WvW is imbalanced by design. This is not a negative thing. To truly balance it would take away the fun and the volatility of a simulated war. I was simply pointing out the irony that people are complaining that Ascended will make WvW imbalanced when WvW has never been balanced. There are far more imbalanced battles than Exotic vs Ascended everyday, and most of the situations have absolutely nothing to do with gear.

NOOOOOO THE LOGIC BURNS! aHHHHHGH

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Because they were trivial to get, it allowed people to have several different sets which allowed them to experiment with a variety of builds. Ascended is a gigantic limitation and a detriment in an already fairly shallow game.

I don’t see how you require BiS gear to experiment with a build when exotics will give you a pretty good barometer of how the build will perform.

It’s not like exotics are less indicative of effectiveness.

Lisanna.9048:

Mackdose.6504:

Zullal.2061:

Mackdose.6504:

Did we all forget that we can be part of multiple guilds at a time? Rep one guild for loot per week then switch back to farm for your small guild until you unlock the content.

This isn’t rocket science, use the tools the game provides.

ever think no rep out yo go, been there done that ( i got kicked for what your saying )

Find a better guild. Rep nazis are the most elitist of the bunch.

Why be apart of a guild if u dont intend to represent them? u might as well leave and not take up space on the roster

Because I want to have a guild with my friends and rep a bigger guild while my friends aren’t playing.

Why is this a hard concept to understand?

fellyn.5083:

Aberrant.6749:

phys.7689:

the OP doesnt want progression, and he wants WvW to be fair. Its meant to not be fair. what part of 50 versus 10 people is fair? what part of 20 seige golems versus your door is balanced?

Yea it’s unbalanced, so lets just make an orbital ion cannon available for 400g. Why not! Makes perfect sense that because something is unbalanced they shouldn’t in any way strive to make it as balanced as possible. +1

Exaggerating doesn’t help make your point. Ascended gear don’t unbalance the game any more than allowing level 2 players who don’t even have a full set of white gear into wvw does.

Yet no one complains when they have to fight an up level do they?

In fact you could make an argument that allowing up levels into wvw hurts it more than ascended gear does using all the same anti-ascended arguments presented in this thread.

I didn’t see anyone complain about WvW ranks either, and that has more of an effect than pink gear does. But hey! THAT GUY HAS PINK GEAR AND IS RUINING MY FUN!

Vayne.8563:

Guild Wars 2 needs some longer quest type content. The personal story is too fragmented and the dynamic events are too immediate. It needs epic quest lines, possibly linked to the orders.

I know they take time to make, but I think they’d really benefit the game, because it’s that longer type of content that’s really missing.

This.

Oh and a player base that isn’t completely obsessed with rewards.

And more content that wrecks you, your town, your ability to WP (out, not in) and every NPC in a zone wide radius. Make me care.

WTB a massive creature who moves from node to node wreaking havoc on the countryside.

tigirius.9014:

tolunart.2095:

Mad Rasputin.7809:

But you keep on believing that is no Dev posts about looking into an issue than no issue exists. Their track record is not very good, in my book.

Several people post evidence that there is a problem with salvage rates. A dev posts that they are looking into it. He comes back to thank everyone for their efforts and says the bug has been fixed. People get free salvage kits to replace the bugged salvages.

This is not my imagination. This is the system working the right way. After the embarrassment of calling out people for posting conspiracy theories when it turned out there really was a problem, Anet cannot afford to ignore proof that there is a problem.

The thing is, actually posting conspiracy theories without backing them up with evidence will still get laughed at and dismissed.

Sooo I guess you missed all of the posts lately about the evidence from both sides that have shown that the same people get the same amount of great loot all the time with no randomness while the same people who usually get nothing still get nothing while both sets are playing the same events on a weekly basis.

Saying there is no evidence and there not being any evidence is one thing but ignoring evidence and claiming it’s not there is not evidence that everything is working properly it’s evidence that someone isn’t paying attention. There’s been multiple posts about this.

You know what, I’ve read your posts about loots drops for months now, and at this point, livestream / FRAPS or it didn’t happen.

This thread.

Seems to me there’s a lot of crying over spilled milk. Dislike the fact that people with alts get more rewards? Tough.

Up until now, the game was largely unfriendly to the altoholic crowd, specifically laurel rewards. Now the chest drops good loot but only once per day, per character. Good change IMO.

Please explain to me how this punishes you for repeating content when you still get event rewards from the task and you still have fun playing the content (I assume, else why are you repeating it?).

ScribeTheMad.7614:

I mean, if someone has one character they can hit, say, the Frozen Maw once. Someone with 8 characters can hit it 8 times.
If it is indeed possible to hit it on guested servers then the gap becomes 3 times for one character and 24 times for 8.
This means people buying more characters can potentially reap considerably higher rewards .
In essence, it becomes a pay to win scenario.

How? Can I buy gems to make more hours in the day? I forgot Anet sold hour-packs to make my play time longer so I can afford to grind the same event 24 times in one sitting.

But the thing is, at least that way everyone had the same opportunity for reward, the same number of rolls on the RNG slot machine, because it didn’t matter that player X was swapping characters to redo the event, player Y could do the event just as many times and get just as many chances at loot with a single character.

So you’d prefer a completely unsatisfactory and unfun reward chest that you get every time? In my opinion, 1 good reward beats the hell out of 5 bad rewards. I’m sure I’m not alone in this thinking.

Secondly, you can always find another event that gives a chest and play that instead of repeating which ever one you deem the easiest.

McSlappy.1372:

In WoW the 2200+ rated players had access to weapons that are only 5% above the non 2200 gear and it makes an enormous difference. People think it’s just a few % and they fail to realize how math and game mechanics work. Your hitting that % harder on your opponent meaning your doing damage that much faster. Your healing that extra but more. Your mitigating that much more damage. So when you add it all up that 5% really compounds to be about a 20% better character. So apply that to GW2 with what 8% you said? That’s simply HUGE.

WoW’s gear curve was exponential and the ability coefficients are much higher. Also, you can’t dodge or actively mitigate damage in WoW without barriers or healing. There are vast differences in the math and action of combat between the two games and to compare them directly using non-absolute numbers is intellectually dishonest.

In GW2, I can avoid large hits and tank light hits. If I do this better than my opponent, I can out damage him. If I out damage him, I win. This is the core of all GW2 combat.

My chances of winning are directly proportional to how good I am at avoiding getting hit by large attacks and controlling my opponent’s ability to use those attacks.

Because my skill can make my opponents damage “zero” for a large amount of time, gear is not nearly as significant as my class, build, and reaction time.

Skill > Gear

clay.7849:

@Kichiwan

We’re not taking about employees getting jobs elsewhere, we’re taking about the founders of a company leaving over creative differences.

Except that didn’t happen. They moved to NCSoft from Anet in 2008 and then left NCsoft in 2009.

Jeff founded Undead Labs.
Patrick went to work as COO for En Masse Entertainment.

Stop making things up.

NDwarf.1867:

Thank you for this AMA. I see they are going full steam ahead with this gear grind nonsense. Had I known in September the game was going in this direction I would of never purchased Guild Wars 2 as I’m not into the hamster wheel/token/gear chase.

Release Hype:

“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

then they state on AMA:

“I would also like add that we have never said there would be no vertical progression. We do intent to focus on horizontal but we will have vertical progression moving forward with the focus on zero grind and a very low power curve.”

throws hands up

How can you straight up lie and say “we have never said there would be no vertical progression” when the original “We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs” is out there for all the world to see and AND have to run the FOTM dungeon over and over and ove…nevermind I give up.

Only my second post on these forums but like a lot of players I was waiting for a straight answer on the direction this game is going. Guess it goes on the shelf with SW:TOR and log on every now and then to check out events and such.

1. Vertical Progression != Grind, stop using them as synonyms.
2. Vertical Progression has been in the game since launch, it’s called leveling to 80.
3. “Very Low Power Curve.” Probably the biggest point, it means that you won’t need the gear to participate. It’s the reason I can do explorables in blues.

I never need to grind to have fun in GW2, Period.

Just because a grind exists, doesn’t mean you must do it to participate.

Read it again.

Stop being held hostage by other players mandates and previous MMO behaviour, stop blaming the game for not being able to get things thing you want, but not need, and stop saying that the game is doomed based on a miniscule stat increase.

AmBoSS.7129:

You are right of course, but that mostly happend in very hard dungeons and content, as far as I remember. But getting the skills required for certain builds was pretty easy (exeption beeing things like those stupid PvE-Skill, Ursaway and such).

And I do believe, and I think you will agree, that getting a few skills in GW1 was much easier than getting full exotic gear in GW 2.

Aren’t Fractals meant to be very hard content past a certain level? I mean, from what I understand you gear for fractals by doing fractals. So you gear up by playing the content you need the gear for. That’s why I’m scratching my head about this backlash.

I don’t feel cheated, and after Ascended becomes easier to get (which it will, with time) it’ll be the new Exotic, the plateau is back with infusions being the only thing that changes.

I’m just really tired of the arguments against the gear being “Hardcore players will be hardcore players, and that’s not fair to ME” News flash, there are many people like you who don’t have time to be Hardcore™, and I’m one of them. I’ll be happy to run the content with you without ascended gear because I enjoy playing Guild Wars 2 and I’m sure players like me outnumber the straw-man army of elitists.

Hawkian.6580:

And by the way, it’s not a binary state. It’s a continuum.

I’m a semi-casual semi-hardcore gamer.

This is known as a “core” or mainstream gamer.

Amiron.1067:

I’m going to eat my words now. They are indeed nerfing zerker gear (by ~10% they said), and I’m very disappointed with the dev team. Here I was hoping they would actually make other builds more viable.

Instead, they make the strongest build 10% less strong, while doing absolutely nothing to other stats to make them more desirable in pve situations. Shame on me for having even the slightest amount of faith in ANet.

Yeah, instead they should’ve introduced a never ending stream of power creep by bringing every other stat allocation up, that would make the game much better.

/sarcasm

clay.7849:

Also, my reasoning for this game not achieving the goals supposedly set out for it, is that it has really fallen in to the same cycle of evey other MMO that has failed to achieve those goals as well. Sure, it may be different, but I see nothing yet to make me think it will. B2P or not has nothing to do with it.

What cycle of every other MMO? Define the cycle.

And what nebulous goals is this game (and apparently every MMO) failing to achieve?

All that trouble adds up to:

1. Joining the mists.
2. Joining an empty room in the browser.
3. Having your friend join on you.

Yeah, that’s really a lot of effort to practice. Oh wait, no it isn’t; and PvPers have been doing it since the BWEs. It gives you exactly the environment you’re after with dueling, and get this, you actually practice on the maps in play.

You should really take the time to build a solid argument for why dueling should be implemented sooner rather than later, because as it stands, it’s redundant.
Anet has already stated in a GW2guru post about 6 months ago that dueling is a feature that the community wants to see and they may implement it down the road. I think it would be a cool QoL feature, but it’s not needed for the game to have legs, as you seem to think.

In conclusion, thanks for completely missing the point of my post, instead opting to attack me as “trying to be a Anet feature rep.” You truly are the king of non-constructive posts.

To be honest, I think this is more of a player issue than a game one.

Yes, the guild design is what enables players to guild hop, but it’s the players themselves causing guilds to “fail.”

For instance: no one uses /g chat anymore, instead using Vent, TS or in my guilds case, Skype. Why chat if you have your main members in a 25 slot vent? This creates an atmosphere of no one talking. After a while, someone sees an ad for HUGE GUILD
and reps them instead, because having that amount of players, people are bound to be G-chatting

The fact the the article concludes with “they need a dungeon finder” which would basically solidify guilds as throw-away if implemented, kind of makes the whole of the article’s complaints moot.

Jaldy.6285:

Aside from the selfish aspect of my post, an official roleplaying server would still be nice.

Agreed.

All for Tarnished Coast as the Official Roleplaying Server?

How about the “stand in the main city while waiting for Q to pop” phenomenon that made WoW’s continents completely empty?

It makes the game less of a world and more of a fancy lobby.

I fail to see why this is an Anet issue, you can’t blame the company for kitten players. And you can’t say it’s ANet enforcing the attitude, you’re just projecting.

If there are so many people who are worried about being “left behind” (whatever that means) wouldn’t all the “left behind” people be such a high number as to not matter?

All of the “left behind” casuals (like myself) can find each other to complete the content, right? I mean, hardcore players are so few in this game (according to the forums) it’s completely bonkers to assume that if you don’t grind every day you’ll never find a group.

Raine.1394:

Mackdose.6504:

Raine.1394:

They have shown the ability to make huge missteps such as the addition of vertical progression. We saw it empty the open world, fragment the community, and introduce, perhaps, the steepest grind for gear in the history of gaming. 30 days for an amulet. Really?

Steepest grind in gaming history? Really? Really?

Come on, you and I both know that isn’t remotely close to being the case.

Name me a grindy game where you grind thirty days to get one item in one slot. I now have 8 level 80 characters. To have them equipped with max level gear, that’s what, eight months for one slot out of how many slots are we grinding gear for?

You did say gaming history, then moved goalposts to one item for one slot. I’d argue that you haven’t played enough 90s JRPGs. Those are some of the longest grinds in gaming history (I’m looking at you Dragonquest).

As for my example I pick the low hanging fruit: WoW. Grind heroics to clear a raid once a week to have a chance at gear you want, not even guaranteed BiS. Keep in mind, I’m talking the whole of WoW, not its current incarnation.

People in my guild during WotLK never got their best in slot weapons despite perfect raid attendance. The time between content patches was much longer than 30 days.

Then there’s WoW’s legendary weapons.

And this is just a casual glance. I’m sure you could look at EQ, EQ2, DaoC and find grinds that are much more than 45 minutes a day for 30 days.

Still want to contend that laurels are the biggest grind in gaming history?

Should I respond to your “you don’t really need the item to play the game” here or should I wait your you to state it?

No, it seems like you have that concept understood pretty well by now.

Now the alt situation you bring up is easily the biggest flaw of the laurel system (one month of waiting per alt, per build? That’s some bullskritt), and I completely agree with you that it needs to be addressed ASAP.

Flissy.4093:

Grats! This sure is going to make me pick up Clerics, Soldiers and Magi! Good job ArenaNet, diversity has been promoted!

/endsarcasm.

Actually less diverse now, professions that used parts of Assassin over Berserker, such as Guardian, Warrior & Ele, to min/max are now just going to sit in full Berserker.

But even as a whole, this is a fair change for regular dungeons, maybe players will have to take note of mechanics of bosses now, because as it was the “risk” by dropping the defensive stats was nowhere near the reward obtained from the offensive stats.

This little change could be enough alteration to burst damage of groups that, for example, they now need to acknowledge Kholer’s spin, and may have to find a source of vigor/extra dodge for Subject Alpha.

You do realize you just neutered your whole point with that last paragraph, right?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

A few missions haven’t even been completed by our internal testers yet (but they came extremely close).

I, for one, welcome our new hardcore group-content overlords.

Color me hyped.

morrolan.9608:

Suddenflame.2601:

Stop thinking of yourself and think of other people. Your play style is not the only one that exists.

Pot meet kettle.

Suddenflame isn’t advocating taking away benefits that players worked for because he doesn’t want to work for it.

Ashen.2907:

Mackdose.6504:

Eisberg and I have killed ascended weapon having opponents 1v1, but that doesn’t count apparently.

No offense sir, but no it does not count.

Anecdotal examples are not evidence of statistical performance.

Was his skill level comparable to yours ?
Was his build comparable to yours in terms of 1 v1 performance ?
Was his internet connection comparable to yours ?
Were any of his key skills on cooldown ?
Was his endurance bar at all depleted at the beginning of the fight ?
etc.

I mean a glass bottle filled with gasoline has defeated a tank in the past, would you be inclined to go one on one with a tank armed only with a bottle of gasoline based on such an example ?

I beat a competitive chess player once. Not sure I would want to count on that as an example proving that one does not need to know how to play the game in order to beat someone who has spent years studying it.

Again, I see your point. Skill is very important to performance in GW2. That does not mean that the numbers behind character performance are not also a determining factor.

Here are the determining factors in a fight from most to least influential:
Number of Participants
VoIP
Latency
Class
Level
Build
Skill
Passive buffs
Boons
Gear

Anyone going to argue with that list? Seems pretty common sense to me.

Numbers only matter when they actually come into play. I’ve been locked down so hard no gear would have saved me.