Guild Wars 2

My mesmer since launch and my favorite character <3

Featuring the beautiful Upper City of Divinity’s Reach!

Wife and I are personally not interested in the BETA (both want to experience everything as fresh as possible with a friends the first time), but man have enjoyed the increased population in Silverwastes doing the events! This has been great! Did VW like 3 times over the course of 2.5 hours! Keep up this silly grind for content in unused areas ANET! Cant say its th ebest idea, but I have enjoyed taking advantage!

For Guardians I have always believed the Shield is the more iconistic and ideal weapon for them, and yet, the current variation of shield makes it easily the worst weapon, with the worst weapon skill set in the game regarding the number of practical uses. I pray with the microcosm that ANET will at the very least consider reworking shields on Guardians let alone consider my ideas. So here goes;

4 – Light of the Radiant

• This ability is now a type of radial blind with a decent radius that works as a blast finisher. This would use the shield 4’s old base damage. This would be the intervene type of skill, with a sword in hand you can blink in, and blind foes, or in zerg groups for PVE use it to activate fire fields, the usage would be the same in sPVP.

5 – Vindicator’s Resolve

• Upon activation you gain a non-removable buff in the name of the skill(similar to shield of wrath). You will gain stacks of this buff for the next 3 stacks based on the number of attacks you block from channeling this skill, including aegis buffs, but not from Shelter. After 3 seconds a secondary effect triggers, this has no animation. If you choose to reactivate the skill you trigger a secondary effect with an animation, it will be explained next.
• The first-part of this ability is a 1.5 second block(half-the duration of all other existing blocks in the game) that absorbs instances of damage, with a maximum charge of 10(You may block infinite instances, but the effect only works up to 10). AFTER 3 TOTAL SECONDS, the next effect will register.
• When the time runs out, the more instances you’ve blocked the larger the symbol you drop, which provides a Protection buff, and a light field of 3.5 seconds. This heals for 860(0.20) Immediately, and allies who were standing in the light-symbol as it appeared receives the Guardian’s Virtue of Resolve passive effect for 4 seconds.

The theory behind this skill is that you use this before using your 4 ability, allowing your nearby allies to benefit from retaliation from your blasted light field.

5 – Second Activation – Justicar’s Fury

• If you choose to reactivate the ability before the charge ends, the Guardian blasts all targets in front of the shield backwards, increasing the duration they are knocked down by 0.1 second per (2) charges absorbed. They are also struck with Virtue of Justice’s Active Effect, regardless of whether or not it is on CD. Allies caught in the blast wave gain swiftness. The base swiftness gain will be 6 seconds, 10 stacks would effectively double it’s duration to 12. The shockwave itself does not deal damage. This will use Guardian Shield animation 4.

What do we know about the current shield?

It has an AOE protection buff that is lackluster. The skill itself deals damage, however you must choose between shielding allies or damaging foes, more than often you don’t get both. It has a projectile shield that is ultimately useless in every-way due to it’s duration and CD, and is used 99% of the time for a knockback / heal.

So what did I do in my variation?

For one, I put an ACTUAL block skill into the rotation, so “Defender’s Flame” trait has even more usage outside of using Shelter. Secondly, Honorable shield will now be a more desirable trait for more reliable CC outside of the hammer’s 10-year long wind-up on banish. Allowing bunker shield builds to actually be a bit more viable in sPVP in conjunction of a hammer.

Moving On-
I reworked 4 into a damage tool that provides an AOE blind on a small radius and a blast finisher. This VS the idea of the current shield 4 makes it so that you don’t enter a fight, turn around to apply protection on your allies and have a CD wasted. Guardians often are in the heart of the fight, so this is another way of protecting your allies. By mitigating a strike through blind, and in a light/water field you provide a blast finisher providing retaliation / healing to allies. You can enter a fight with a GS, finish your rotation, drop Symbol of Wrath, swap to Sword&Board and Blast the area for AOE retaliation.

I reworked 5 in a fashion that has actual usage VS it’s old variation. You have a block, that turns into a protection symbol that doubles as a light-field and a minor heal, you also have the option of using your charges into a form of AOE knockback/ micro-stun that grants a swiftness buff, and ignites your enemies.

But most importantly, the shield 5 skill, TIES INTO the CLASS ABILITIES of the Guardian. Something I wish ANET did a bit more with Guardians in general was if Guardian class abilities tied into their kits more.

I hope you guys enjoyed my idea of the shield. All feedback is welcome, both good and bad!

/Prediction hat on

HoT will launch on the 25th of August, 3 years from the beginning of headstart.

/Prediction hat off

Dondarrion.2748:

Am I missing a vital piece of information here?

Yes. When humans arrived in continental Tyria (and Elona) in 205 BE, it was seemingly by boat and not by portal, which was how humans were brought to the world of Tyria.

This means that humans were brought to the world at Orr, then taken elsewhere – likely given the dragon corruption per the Orrian History Scrolls.

This is a topic that is brought up only in sparing details whenever it is brought up, and each time different details.

From what I gathered, Arah wasn’t build by the gods, but renovated by them. The Altar of Glaust that is in Arah was used to free Glint, and the ritual used by the Forgotten was said to require specific geological requirements (“There have been spells that could successfully cleanse a living thing of dragon corruption (see the Ruined City of Arah dungeon’s Forgotten path, or the climax of the Pact’s campaign in Orr) but they are not well understood, require significant resources to cast, and must be cast in a particular geographic location, so they are not universally available.”) – since the ritual was reused by the Pact, that means that it couldn’t have been moved. This also explains the line in the Orrian History Scrolls where Dwayna arrived on Tyria (“[Dwayna] placed her pale foot on the stones of Arah, opened the gates, and brought humanity to the world.”) as the city would thus already have been built.

After arriving, Balthazar and Melandru seemed to have cleansed continental Tyria of dragon corruption (“[Balthazar] swept Orr with a cleansing flame.” and “Wise Melandru, oldest of them all, made of Orr a green and flowering expanse.”). This was no doubt very dangerous work, thus it makes sense that the humans that the gods brought for sake of hopeful paradise (Dwayna/Melandru) or to conquer the new world (Balthazar) would be taken out of the most hazardous godly job. Furthermore, there’s heavy implication from GW1 lore that only three gods (maybe four given the removal of knowledge of Abaddon) were in Arah when Doric pleaded to them; this begs the question: where were the other two/three? Taking care of humans in lands elsewhere is a good chance, IMO.

Going off of the Durmand Priory map of Tyria, there are trade routes from the Battle Isles to the lands to the west. Jeff Grubb once hinted that the “human homeland” may be south of either Cantha or Elona, but he was careful in using “may”; there is no land south of Cantha, thus this was likely changed during development. Before the second world map (the Durmand Priory one), I had thought that the human homeland would be the land west of Cantha, but with the trade routes I am doubtful.

We know that when humans arrived on Cantha, they arrived first on Shing Jea (“Canthans settled the northwest coast and Shing Jea Island.”) – this indicates a good chance of direction that the humans came from the west, north, or northwest. Going off of the DP map, the trade routes from the western continent hits the Battle Isles then to Cantha; if humans sailed to Cantha, then that is a good chance for the route that was taken.

Of the place where humans were before Cantha, we know but two things: Chong – now the Celestial Pig – is of those times, and the Cliffside Fractal occurs during this time.

Now, for when humans arrived in Tyria and Elona in 205, we know three things:

• The Elonians built a city and social structure within five years, uniting into a single nation. This proves that they were advanced and united enough for such.
• Thrulnn the Lost claims they arrived by boat. While he’s wrong on the fall of jotun, this may be a field he has some merit in.
• Canthans knew nothing of their Tyrian (and likely Elonian) cousins during their establishment.

The rest, past this, is pretty clear to me: Humans established Orr, then Ascalon; Doric was crowned in Ascalon in the year after its founding; Kryta was established by Doric’s son and warred, for a time, with Orr/Ascalon, but before Doric died in 1 BE he ruled all three nations. After Doric’s death, the three nations divided over time, with Kryta recolonized by Elona in 300 AE (which was also the year that the Centaur War sparked).

Sources in order of mentioning their details:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/New-lore-interview-to-Anet-lore-team/first
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Orrian_History_Scrolls#The_Six
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cathedral_of_Silence_%28story%29#Dialogues
http://www.killtenrats.com/2009/09/02/guild-wars-2-interview/
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/An_Empire_Divided#Late_Pre-Imperial_Era
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lorespinner_Ri_So
http://wartower.tumblr.com/post/49691195928/in-this-lorespecial-episode
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Timeline
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Thrulnn_the_Lost

Hello there Collin and all your krewe

I just wanted to say that along with loving your game very much I’ve been becoming a little tired of the communication issues I feel your current policy has.

I just saw this post today and I thing it was worth sharing. It’s quite long, but please read it. It summarizes what many of us feel about the current policy.

I know you can do better! Deep inside we all have faith in your capabilities!

You might post this over in the API sub-forum, as well, if you haven’t already.

Good luck.

I have also noticed no recent deviation in the levels of social ineptitude clogging the chat during world bosses. If anything, I expect it will soon be increasing, as the people who bought the game during recent sales will be reaching the point where they can do all the bosses.

I read on Reddit the other day one guys suggestion which was to remove all titles and rewards from all players, then have them log back in or re-visit the HoM to get given their proper rewards that they earned again. Sounds like a logical and easy fix to me but they will still need to find a perma fix for it in-case it ever happens again. I imagine it’s that which is taking all the time.

Cantha.
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Dondarrion.2748:

Jae.5138:

Let me elaborate… wiki states that currently, if you’re the high scorer in your team, it’s less likely that you’ll lose points when you do lose a ranked game.

This strongly discourages defending. I literally just had a game with a guy who was basically a bot who kept running far over, over, and over again to enemies’ home. He died countless times and contributed nothing but he got the highest point from decapping and hence will probably lose nothing. The fact that he’s even made it this far with his gameplay suggests there’s clearly something wrong with the way rank points are awarded.

Really?
The way I read the articles about leaderboards, etc. (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/finding-the-perfect-match/) was that it’s your TEAM’s final score in the match, and not you personally. So, if your team only has an odds of winning of 20-39%, then still if you get 300+ points in that match, you’ll come out with 0 or more points.

Which source are you reading?

dondarrion it seems i’ve made a mistake! thank you for showing me the way <3

Kinda a suggestion. Cultural armor is one of those really cool ideas in GW2 that was poorly executed in my opinion. A gold sink to get this cool armor that doesn’t have allot of prestige. I’d like to see new tiers of cultural added to the game to help diversify the races a bit more by giving players more of a reason to play as each of the races.

T4 cultural should be quested for not bought. You guys have presented us with a cool idea of questing and crafting for precursors and even did so for the Luminescent armor. So why not for cultural? Another idea is make it a unique quest for each race. It should reflect each of the race’s culture and you should have to do something different for a charr or a human. Although i’d like unique quests for each armor tier as well as each race that might not be reasonable. But I would like to be able to have a greater connection to my chosen race and feel distinctly different from others through questing and crafting this prestigious armor.

(now on the right forum.)

These should be the splits:

Unranked (Conquest+deathmatch+stronghold)

Ranked Conquest

Ranked Stronghold

Velimere.7685:

Is it too much to ask for a kitten neckbeard?

But that’s poor hygiene.

I too like that anet devs have good visibility and you can follow them and see that they actually play the game quite a bit. Too often with MMO’s you question changes that are implemented in the game and feel like “do the devs even play this game? Why would they do this?” When those devs do play they’re on secret accounts in private guilds and often in invisible mode or something, and the only “devs” you ever see in those games are just GM’s, moderators, not actual developers. But here at Arenanet, you can easily see Hugh Norfolk, one of the PVP developers at Arenanet, in heart of the mists, queuing for matches, playing PVP, maybe even on your team or against you, and it’s encouraging to see that the devs are playing the same game we are, and they’re a friendly sort.

I try not to bother them too much but from time to time I might axe a question.

My favourite part of reela’s story is the fact that they didn’t ban his account, they just removed the offending gold.

Poetic justice has been served:-)

Like DotA: they don’t care if disconnection was intentional or an internet drop off, they just punish the same way.

“Oh, but if internets drop off?” Whatever, the match was lost the same way because of a disconnection, if you don’t have a stable internet, don’t play ranked.

I am in the same shoes as you. I bought a new account too. And the level of stupidity of this so called ‘new player experience’ is astonishing! You can’t see POIs, Vistas, Nodes, etc. Only hearts and the occasional events show up. I say alright they don’t show up…., but I can’t even interact with Skill Point nodes until I’m on the level ANET thinks I should be. WHAT???

One would actually think that leveling up is so easy. Nope. If I can’t see what I’m supposed to pick up on the map it just isn’t the case. A handful of low level hearts and a couple of events barely made me lvl 4-5. At that point I was already going in on the 7-8 areas which would be punishing for a new player.

Decided I do some city exploration for extra XP. Nope. ANET’s new experience says you shouldn’t do that so easily. Being lvl 5 and only Waypoints on the map. Good thing I already know these maps by heart. But a new player gaining some fast levels early? Good luck with that.

Also the dailies. Why does a new player get only 3 of the dailies. 1 of each category? I guess ANET wants them to try out all the game modes. But then again, why LEVEL LOCK EVERYTHING???!!?!?

Seriously, the first 30 levels as a new player is simply horrible. It’s a slow grind.

I can’t even change Mail delivery animations untill my first character reaches lvl 71. Why? What’s the point locking that behind an arbitrary level?

I have a feeling that they changed this so they can say: ‘Oh but we added so much, Look!’
Yeah ANET changed the old leveling system- which was in no way hard to grasp or understand, but actually fun and fast to level without any restrictions on the player whatsoever- just for the sake of changing something in the game.

I really hope when HoT launches Anet will actually take a good look on this because there is no way anyone would find the new leveling system/experience or whatever you call it actually fun and enjoyable.

I loved GW1, but I don’t miss GW2 at all. I’ve gone back many times, to help people with various achievements for the HoM and each time… it hurts.

• Very slow combat.
• I press [space] and …instead of jumping, I follow whatever I’m targeting.
• No massively multiplay (unless you count the towns).
• No TP, so you have to wait (and wait and wait) to find a buyer/seller.
• Missions that depended on NPCs who couldn’t find a path if their life depended on it (and sometimes, their lives did).

I do miss some features: saving builds, the original mesmer class (although I like GW2’s, it’s barely related to GW1’s), and all the festivals.

I think the expectations of the MMO fans are unrealistic. They seem to want a game to provide endless entertainment for many hours a day, over the course of years. No game can provide this. Wow came closest, but even it suffers from “lack of things to do” complaints. Since no other game has even come close to generating the revenue WoW has, they cannot be expected to have the same budget, and it is budget combined with creative direction that produces content.

As to ANet and GW2: I believe the game originally offered great value for the money. I’ve played somewhere approaching 3K hours now. For the amount I’ve spent, that represents excellent value. As far as MMO crowd expectations, I think ANet failed to generate endgame content that looked sufficiently like WoW’s (or other, similar games) to satisfy the “standard” MMO crowd.

The problems stem, I think, from two things.

1. ANet thought that content would be repeated because of fun. MMO content’s fun rarely lasts more than a few months. GW2 is 2.66 years old.
2. Cosmetics were asked to do too many things, and were resource intensive (i.e. armor sets) to produce. Thus, while there are a lot of skins available during the leveling content, there are nowhere near enough to provide for a robust cosmetic endgame.

I very much doubt that ANet will revert to instance-based endgame. I do expect they will continue to experiment with persistent world content.

keep creating outfits, thanks to them my wallet is fat and lazy like it should be.

This from today’s exclusive interview with Colin.

- Source: http://www.tentonhammer.com/interview/guild-wars-2-exclusive-interview-colin-johanson

- Ten Ton Hammer: Lastly, now that you’ve implemented Guild Halls and Guild versus Guild (sort of) can we expect a change of heart and the arrival of capes?

- Colin: This isn’t really a “change of heart” kind of deal. I haven’t met anyone yet at ArenaNet who is against the concept of capes! It’s just that capes currently don’t work with our animation and armor system. Hopefully someday that can change – cause capes are awesome.

Quote end.

This feels to me like a double edge dagger stabbing me in the back :S
they do wish to have them but, [censored] dang it when will capes become a priority !

simplesimon.2084:

I hope you have upped your detection methods. I’ve never been falsely hit with a RMT ban, but I know others have.

One thing I learned from WoW was that people who said they weren’t RMTing when they were banned… they were.

Hmm, lets check that annoying RMT site we keep getting ads for. 1000g on sale for $120, down from $129. That $120 buys 9600 gems which is about 936g where $129 would be 10320 gems or about 1000g. Ignoring the new delivery problems, the big annoying RMT isn’t really offering much of a deal nowadays.

So why the frowns RMT users. ANet provides a similar safe service, with ease picking up your cash bought gold, while being only 6% less than the RMT with the possible shaddy gold supply. So …