Guild Wars 2

deepwinter.9015:

bri.2359:

@deepwinter

Yes, I know all about mob leash distances, but what you failed to understand is you need to stop at some point. Or do you just run from settlement to settlement doing nothing in between?

I don’t do PvP or WvW. I will write this again, I don’t do PvP or WvW!
So, I don’t give a toss what a Thief can or cannot do. You want to run like a Thief in WvW, then play a Thief. Problem solved!

Meanwhile the dev’s can work on fixing all the many ranger problems that actually need fixing! Sorry, but I see this SotH buff as something even more useless for PvE than the underwater weapons buff we got in the last update.

Did I mention WvW in my post at all?

Well then, allow me to retort: What “you fail to understand is” that the new Signet of the Hunt will function very similarly to another profession’s – specifically, the Thief’s Signet of Shadow. I have a thief alt, which I’ve only taken to WvW once and world PvE the rest of the time.

“What you fail to understand is” planning ahead, clearly. You can try to skip past many mobs, if you’re trying to get from Town A to Town B; you can run past mobs if you’re moving through a pack and can get to an open area; you can look ahead, see that there’s no safe place to drop aggro and choose to fight. There are a number of choices you can do and I find your lack of basic understanding disturbing.

Lastly, “what you fail to understand is” how to choose between fight or flight. Games are about choices, and if I chose to zip past a group of mobs or fight them, I can do them both with 25% movement speed. /micdrop

Adding onto this, being a great sword ranger this is a god send in both PvE and PvP, it means that if i have SotH equipped i don’t need to use swoop to engage any max ranged enemy or else have a ton of wasted running time, or you know, become a pincushion.

And then there’s the whole it increases your run speed so kiting people with a bow becomes significantly easier thing…

EDIT: Oh yeah, there’s also the whole fact IT AFFECTS YOUR PET, so if you have sig of the hunt + swiftness + swiftness training that puts your pet at 98% movement speed increase, keep in mind if you are using a longbow 3 applies swiftness, and an additional 50% with “Sick’Em!” Oh how cute, you thought you could -escape- my pet >=D!

How to play this build?
Part of how this build is played is based on weapon selection. That part comes with time, practice, and patience. Instead I’ll cover the basics of combat with this build.

Combat with this build is fairly fluid, but there are certain things that must be kept in mind. It’s always preferable to start combat at range, as it presents an opportunity to inflict some extra damage before closing to melee range. It also allows the triggering of Hydromancy when swapping in melee range. Troll Unguent should be used within the first few seconds of combat. Chances are that most players will be attempting to burst (it’s a Ranger! lol!) quickly and the passive healing coupled with Troll Unguent will negate a lot of damage. Starting the CD on TU early also allows for it to be used more frequently.

Rampage as One should be saved for opponents with lots of CC abilities. Avoid using it for stomping, as on demand quickness is available from pet swaps for stomping.

Stay near the pet! I can’t stress this enough. The pet is a major part of the build survivability. Without the pet nearby, nearly all condition removal is lost. In addition, the pet provides a considerable amount of control and damage.

Feel free to ask questions, express concerns, or provide (constructive) criticism.

Pet Selection:
Canines. No other pet performs as well in PvP due to the high amount of control they provide. Cripples and knockdowns not only prevent opponents from escaping, but it allows the pet opportunity to do more damage. Canines also have a fast attack speed, meaning that they are better at hitting on the run than other pets.

The AoE immobilize on the drakehound is arguably the best offensive special ability of the canines. Wolves have an AoE fear that is excellent for clearing opponents off of points in sPvP and for fearing away opponents attempting to stomp or res. Fern hounds can provide an extra bit of healing if needed. Hyenas are interesting in that they can provide even more control potential with the addition of a second “pet”. The alpine wolf has a decent AoE chill. All of the canine special abilities also do damage, with the exception of the fern hound and hyena.

Gear:
Gear selection is dependent on which weapons you intend on using. Stat distribution for armor should be focused on Soldier (power, toughness, vitality) or Cleric (healing power, power, toughness) for direct damage weapons. Weapons which benefit from condition damage should focus on Shaman (vitality, condition damage, healing power) and Apothecary (healing power, toughness, condition damage).

Accessories should be focused on damage attributes. Berserker (power, precision, critical damage) is ideal for direct damage weapons. Carrion (condition damage, power, vitality) or Rabid (condition damage, precision, toughness) for condition weapons.

Runes:
Runes should focus on survivability, but personal preference may vary. Damage runes can be substituted if survivability is already at a desirable level.

Defensive runes of note are Dolyak, Dwayna, Monk, and Water.

Experiment with different combinations.

Traits and Utilities:
There is quite a bit of room for variation in this build. The build, as listed, provides excellent passive condition removal at the expensive of some survivability when health is low. This can be changed by removing Empathic Bond and taking Bark Skin to provide 30% extra damage reduction while at low health and swapping Quickening Zephyr to Signet of Renewal. This provides decent passive condition removal and excellent on demand condition removal.

A case can be made for taking Hide in Plain Sight over Oakheart Salve, but against savvy players Oakheart Salve will save your skin more often than HiPS.

Nature’s Protection can be taken over Nature’s Bounty, which can be helpful in sPvP where there are Thieves coming out of the woodwork. Intimidation Training can be swapped to whichever variety of pet is preferred.

Quickening Zephyr can be swapped out for any number of utilities depending on personal preference. The best options are “Protect Me”, Muddy Terrain, or Signet of Renewal.

Hello, friends!

There seem to be a lot of Rangers on the forums recently claiming that Rangers have no place in PvP and are “useless” outside of PvE. This is patently untrue.

A lot of Rangers don’t want to share their builds because they’re afraid of not being a unique snowflake or something. I don’t know. In any case, I’m here to share my Ranger PvP build. This is what I use in sPvP and tPvP and it’s pretty spectacular. I know that at least one or two other Rangers on the forums run something incredibly similar, so I don’t have to worry about being a unique snowflake.

There are a few variations, but they all do essentially the same thing: provide high survivability through damage mitigation, non-removable healing, and condition removal. Damage is medium to medium-high with on command burst potential and tough, high damage pets.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcoVMzm9MmvagMmvagM9MxaxcRqcmsb

Weapon Selection:
Weapons are highly variable, as there is no specific focus on any particular weapon, just on survivability. There is a slight benefit to using weapons which benefit from condition damage as there is +300 condition damage right off the bat from Wilderness Survival. I personally prefer direct damage as the only way to avoid it is through high armor or complete mitigation (block, dodge, etc.).

• Sword
  Sword provides a lot of burst potential due to the high attack speed. Burst can be drastically improved on command via quickness through either Quickening Zephyr every 60 seconds or Zephyr’s Speed every 15 seconds. In addition, on demand evasion potential is gained through weapon skills.

• Off Hand Options
• Dagger is an ideal pairing for sword. The extra evasive attacks pair very well with the sword. Crippling Talon prevents targets from easily escaping and the poison from Stalker’s Strike can prevent an opponent from healing as effectively.
• Torch can provide extra damage for a condition build as well as a fire combo field that can benefit axe main hand by applying burning or sword via fire aura. Not as useful for a direct damage build.
• Axe has limited usefulness for most builds. Whirling Defense is an excellent counter to ranged attackers, but has limited usefulness in melee combat as it greatly limits mobility. On the upside, it can apply up to 12 stacks of vulnerability to anyone dumb enough to stay in melee range and is excellent inside combo fields. Path of Scars is also an excellent AoE column attack.
• Warhorn is the second best choice for pairing with sword, assuming it isn’t taken as an off hand for the axe in the second weapon set. Call of the Wild is arguably one of the best boons in the game. Hunter’s Call provides an excellent amount of burst and is unlikely to be obstructed while in melee range.

• Greatsword
  Greatsword is an excellent defensive option and has the potential for the highest burst when used in combination with QZ and ZS. Evasion is excellent during quickness, but otherwise requires auto attack to be turned off to use reliably on demand, which hurts overall damage. Excellent ranged defense with Counterattack.

• Ranged Options
• Axe is an excellent choice to pair with sword/dagger as it allows warhorn to be used as well. Off hand options for the axe are the same as above, though anything other than torch or warhorn are not highly recommended.
• Longbow is an effective tool to control an opponent headed into melee range. Barrage can be used to slow and damage an approaching opponent while they are softened up with Hunter’s Shot and Rapid Fire.
• Shortbow can be used as a primary weapon in a condition build. Sword/torch makes an excellent secondary weapon for shortbow, allowing the placement of a fire field which allows fire aura, as well as burning from the shortbow while an enemy is in melee range.

Sigils:
Personal preference plays a large part here. I personally put Hydromancy on melee weapons coupled with Fire if dual wielding. Energy on ranged weapons coupled with Fire if dual wielding. The reasoning is that swapping will happen in melee range and Hydromancy causes an AoE chill effect and damage. After finishing an opponent in melee combat, the switch back to a ranged weapon should happen, replenishing any energy lost through dodge rolling. Fire is my preferred damage sigil as it does a good amount of damage and it’s an AoE.

Axe DPS is kinda weak, even with a straight power/precision build with the 10% crit.

Axe is by far my favorite pvp weapon. I love hitting thieves with it after bouncing it off someone else. Mesmsers with illusions/ phantasms/decoy spam + stealth, It completely ruins their day.

I never understand the obsession with torch off hand tho, I prefer axe/ axe, it wont do much against smart players (or so I’ve heard), but I’ve come across plenty of not so smart players.

Sleepy.2647:

Weakness comes from Winter’s Bite on pet next attack.

I always forget that some attacks do things for the pet. Mostly because it only shows up in the text and because pets are unreliable so I just consider it a bonus and not a selling point.

Thank you for pointing it out. I can’t believe I used an Axe for 300+ hours on my ranger and didn’t know that… :-/

Thanks for the update Jon.
A lot of people are counting on this quality of life improvement for Rangers that we did not receive last patch.
Don’t put another bullseye on you for the next one, although I guess currently you could just side step out of the way

JonPeters.5630:

Agreed. Signet of the hunt needs to and will go to 25%.

how uncharacteristic of an anet dev to be so definitive with their words

we will hold you to it

RyuDragnier.9476:

Dante Dragonhand.2538:

He is a casual player who thinks because he fights bads and beats them he is good. Sorry but ranger isnt great in pvp, troll on.

Depends on the build sparky. ANY class can be good or suck at PvP depending on the build and how you play them. I’ve seen guardians who have died at the hands of my ranger easily.

Now try against a good guardian. Idc what you say, thousands of rangers arent making this up. Ranger has no viable build that some other class cant do better, our damage is so pet reliant that when it dies, we pretty much just have to die and respawn. Its not that I dont try my best to make ranger work, but when I go on another toon, put 50% less effort in, get 100% more results, it gets frustrating. I go on my guardian, or thief, or rifle warrior, or engineer all running glass cannons and I can kill faster, survive longer, and not get obstructed or have my dmage cut in half every time a aoe hits.

I can guarantee you that the first moderator to spot this will copy the link and email it around their office with a "LOL" or "Check this out" in the subject line. Once they get a good laugh they will close this thread.

Everytime this comes up, I can never quite figure out how “My pet dies alot in dungeons” leads to “I should get a buff when it dies” as opposed to “We should make it die less often in dungeons”.

Yes the inability to remove immobilize, or as you say at least move back even if still immobilized, is a regular complaint on the forum.

Looking at ranger and thief overall, I see more need for ranger to have this type of ability. Thief already has a number of ways to mitigate immobilize and is natuarally a harder target to cc because of its stealth and mobility skills. Ranger has the signet on a 60sec CD as the only way to break immobilize, has less mobility than thief, has no burst (so even if another class is immobilized ranger can’t one shot them), and really is one of the prime targets for any burst class- therefore LR being a stun+immobilize breaker with a jump back makes great sense.

Note also that in spvp, most half decent thieves will apply a stun+immobilize then unload a burst which will kill or nearly kill any non-tank ranger who is not running the signet build or protect me (which won’t always save you anyway).

I think the community was looking for something like an update to this skill rather than better underwater skills in the recent “buff?” patch.

Da Poolp.6809:

Everybody forget something with the GS, the #3 and #4 deals good damages too.
The #5 give to your pet +50% damage on his next attack too, the GS is the best melee weapon to burst.

ranger can’t burst. thats one of its problems.
PvP is controlled by burst classes and those without burst get left behind

deepwinter.9015:

Dahkeus.8243:

I tried to look at the OP’s build, but the link goes to a blank Guildhead talent calculator page.

Hi Dahkeus. I’m sorry that you’re not able to view the build I linked in the original post. I’ve checked the link and found that it works on multiple computers. Try refreshing the page or clearing your browser’s cache.

I also took a look at your build and, with the axe/torch secondary, it doesn’t appear to be a “direct damage” build – rather, its appears to be a condition based one. The torch provides no significant direct damage and the Axe is one of our lowest DPS weapons. It’s been stated in another thread by (by you, as a matter of fact) that, despite the Axe’s ability to bounce between targets (even hitting one of two targets twice) it still under performs. In addition, its second and third abilities provide no significant direct damage.

Yea, but don’t get caught up in that. If you prefer, use a different secondary set. Either way, you’ll want to use your short bow the majority of the time. I just have the axe/torch because it’s handy to light a fire combo field before fights. A longbow works with this build just as well if you prefer.

As for viewing the link, I’ll just check later when I’m at home. I’m at work at the moment and we have an old version of IE, lol.

Best thing I’ve seen a pet do since beta:

Quarktastic.1027:

Dahkeus.8243:

Quarktastic.1027:

Dahkeus.8243:

This trait is a must for any PvE build that uses a bow.

Yes, you won’t be able to get the pierce effect in every fight, but once you pierce even with 2 enemies, you are doubling your dps. There is no other talent that comes close to increasing your dps that much.

Your utility abilities on a bow also suddenly become AoE utility abilities. AoE stun, AoE cripple, etc.

By investing in marks, you’re also getting a boost to your power, which is your biggest dps stat.

There is simply no reason to pass it up if you’re doing any PvE.

Your points would have more validity if the ranger didn’t have any weapons with built in AoE attacks, but we do, so it kind of negates the point of Piercing Arrows. It’s a nice trait if you want to use both bows, but I find that the shortbow and longbow don’t play well together.

I recently dropped all my points from Marksmanship, in favor of higher Wilderness Survival and Beast Mastery. I don’t miss Piercing Arrows at all.

The shortbow is by far the highest damage weapon that a ranger has. The only way you can compete with this damage is to use something like the 1h sword with a torch offhand and that still only compares in an ideal situation where you’re able to stick on your target with the problematic rooting main attack and where you’re not attacking a target that already has a full duration of burning applied.

You can also tag a lot more mobs with piercing arrows than with a melee cleave weapon. Instead of chasing around mobs and having to have them grouped up, you can pivot at your position and unleash without any down time. When mobs are spread out, you can simply use Poison Volley.

So, yes, you can pick up a melee weapon for the cleave, but you’ll be doing significantly less damage and will need a bigger investment in survival talents. If you’re rolling with a tanky build, then that’s fine, but if you’re going for a damage dealing role, nothing compares to a short bow build with piercing arrows.

You’re forgetting the mainhand axe can also hit 3 targets, and they don’t have to be lined up. In addition, if you’re only attacking two targets, Ricochet will actually deal more damage than crossfire, since it will hit one of the targets twice.

The axe is our lowest dps weapon on its auto attack and can only come close to decent damage when you use splitblade on a target at melee range to stack bleeds.

Let me put it this way:
When there’s one enemy, the shortbow does about double the damage of the axe autoattack.
When there are two enemys, you may do slightly more damage to one target and half damage to the other by using an axe.
When there are 3 enemies, the axe still does half the damage of a shortbow hitting the same targets.
When there are more than 3 targets, your bow can hit every one that is lined up while your axe will only hit 3.

The lateral bouncing of an axe will hit targets that your linear bow attack won’t, but this doesn’t make up for the drastic loss in damage done per target along with the limit of targets that you can hit and as soon as you’re down to a single target fight, you’re at a very distinct disadvantage with the axe.

This is before we even take into account that you can apply bleeding, cripple, stun and poison while continuing to AoE with your shortbow.

It’s a good weapon, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just not practical to use one as your primary weapon. It’s good for applying bleeding and can keep up mediocre damage while you swap to use an offhand, but it will never replace a shortbow that can pierce.

Go out to Orr and see how many mobs you can tag with your axe, then do the same with a piercing bow. You’ll see the difference.

HTech.8016:

Cempa.5619:

You realize how difficult it is to turn off auto attack on #1? Not the atcual physical act of doing so, that is easy: You need a top notch PC and top notch connection 100% of the time. You may have that but I think many people do not, at least not 100% of the time.

If you have even the slightest lag or FPS drop in WvW or any place then #1 with auto attack off is made useless because the window is so small to press again!

---

You design a game with a hardware and connection target and then design one ability for one class that breaks that target, why?

If you’re playing with 3 seconds per frame, chances are you will have trouble playing any of the classes right. That’s right, you have 3 seconds before the next skill in the chain will disappear. That’s a massive window for you to use that skill again. Having a good pc has nothing to do with this.

As far as most of the other people go: The devs have clearly stated the sword is working as intended. You can complain all you want, but I think the sword is in a fine position right now, as long as you turn the auto attack off.
“But HTech, doesn’t that mean they made a bad design?” No, it does not. I do not know why most of you here seems to think this way, but let me explain myself. There is no rule for basic attacks that states they are not allowed to root you, nor is there any rule that states they have to be good with auto attack turned on. What the devs made was a weapon that has a high skill ceiling and is very different from all of the other basic attacks. I like that, it shows they are willing to try out new stuff.
Now, you might not like this kind of skill, there is nothing wrong with that. Nor is there anything wrong with finding it difficult to adjust. But the sword is not bad, it has a clear purpose which is to stick to your target and cripple+poison him, allowing for your team to catch up.

That logic is flawed. There’s no rule that a sword can’t have a chance on proc that it falls out of your hand and cuts you, but that doesn’t make it a good idea.

Being unable to cancel an attack at a split second to dodge a potentially devastating attack is more crippling than the condition the weapon applies. Sure, you can dodge after the animation or even use the extra evade that the sword provides, but being unable to do so when you’re actually attacking means you lose a lot of dps on a weapon that still does less dps than the shortbow even in optimal conditions.

I mean, if you lost a leg, you could still get around to do most of what you’re clever and strong willed, but that doesn’t mean that it’s suddenly a good idea to cut off your leg.

Every
single
other
weapon
in
the
entire
game
has an auto attack that allows you to move and dodge normally. There is no good reason to make the sword the exception to this. Even if you could legitimately work around this, it leads to a very clunky disjointed feel to gameplay that downright sucks!

One of the biggest reason many of us chose to roll a ranger is because it’s generally a very mobile and agile profession, which makes being rooted with your basic attack even more frustrating.

You can argue ways to work around the root issue all day, but it still doesn’t change the fact that the mechanic flat out sucks and is not fun.

If it isn’t a bug, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need fixing, which is something that people should understand. Just because something is working as intended doesn’t immediately make it the best thing in the world that can’t ever fail.

Having to make special allowances to use the basic attack on a weapon that adds a high difficulty level to a weapon without tangible and significant benefits is, at a base level, simply bad balance. If using the weapon was extremely difficult, but it also had a large amount of potential damage/arbitrary bonus then it would be balanced. As it stands, though I find using the sword to be extremely fun, I also can’t justify using it when there are better options for damage with much less required on my part to actually get the damage.

Hello again.
Many ppl are intresting about my trinket mix , so i thought it will be better to add them right here. Ofc any pm/question, its always welcome:)
I use Beryl amulet and 2xBeryl rings all with exquisite beryl jewels and 1xemerald accessory, 1xancient karka shell(Lost shore event) both with emerald jewels.The 72% is with full stacks of perception(50% without it) and my build is 20-30-20-0-0.

This, along with ranged traps, is one of the reasons that rangers are one of the best farming characters for tagging mobs in events.

This is my #1 most anticipated bug fix by far. I really hope there’s a patch to address this soon…

yep, canines are strong. their balancing factor is long cooldowns on their actives & passives ( 20s & 40s ), where other pets can fire off their passives much quicker ( cats have 8s CD burst ability for example ) with shorter CDs on active as well.

if you use a bow & want a melee pet, it’s hard to say no to canines.

So, rangers get the only weapon that #1 autoattack has to be turned off. Sure, it may take some practice, but its practice to get around using what really seems to be a bug and not a feature.

I’ve tried to use 1h sword in non-auto-attack mode, but it just makes my finger weary. And demoing on non attacking golems just doesn’t do it for me.

I’m also unconvinced that including something like a movement skill in a chain is a good idea. Its only available at a specific time in the chain, and everyone knows that.

The lack of communication between the development team and the community is a downright embarassment. There’s a clear disconnect between the Developers and the forum moderation team, which makes the gulf between the player and the designer that much wider. We get punished for voicing our opinions, making jokes, being honest about the state of rangers as a class and then lied to about animation bugs as though we won’t know any better. And if that animation bug is real? Prove it. We’re adults, we can make sense of complex information.

These forums are supposed to be for class feedback, yet the act of giving feedback will often get you moderated, because the intentionally vague TOS and forum guidelines leave too much room for interpretation. There’s evidently no oversight of the moderation team since they won’t tell you what rules you’ve broken or how long you get banned, simply saying it’s due to some internal “accumulation of points” which could honestly mean anything. How do you appeal a ban you don’t know how you’ve obtained? It’s apparently easy to get banned for some honestly trivial bullkitten, and when people come back they’re just going to be more bitter. It should come as no surprise they will become repeat offenders. If I don’t care about arbitrary forum moderation in the first place, temporarily banning me without telling me why isn’t going to change that.

I think they’re acting as though the player will always be there for them to abuse but I don’t have to play this game. I don’t have to care about whether or not Rangers can perform well in PVP. I want to have fun with this game and I want rangers to do well, but if you honestly want me to just accept this completely non-transparent (and inconsistent) forum moderation, well…

-People have been confusing barrage with arrow carts in WvW so we removed this skill
-The 4 skill has made a minor inconvinence against melee users such as thieves and warriors.
-These skills have not been replaced, the long bow is fine as is. The longbow will still use up both hand slots. We have no intention on fixing this.

Friend had an interesting bug earlier where he zoned and it took away two skills. Asked me to post this on the forums, so here it is. Enjoy your new ranger buff, guys!

Well, I hate to have to admit it, but I’ve been doing some (kind of goofy stuff)…

My first character to 80 was my Ranger. My second was my Warrior. While leveling my Ranger (which was right when the game released), I was thinking to myself “Man, this is awesome. THIS is what the WoW Hunter always should have been”.

Once I got to 80 I had a terrible time in Orr, and tried several dungeons and felt like I had made a mistake: my pet just kept getting killed no matter what pet I used or how I specced. I switched to my Warrior, and had an easy as pie time no matter what I did: doing map completions in high level zones, soloing champions, running dungeons… so I switched to him for a while.

I went back and forth between the two, making money getting gear, and by the end I had 2 full exotic sets on my Warrior (Rampagers/Rampagers, and Knights/Berserkers) and one on my Ranger (full Zerk everywhere, including jewelry).

Now that I know the ins and outs of the game, how to play it and where everything is, and there isn’t much to do at 80 once you’ve gotten your toons to look exactly the way you like them and completed the zones… and because I really love GW2… I deleted both characters.

Then I made a new Ranger and a new Warrior.

That being said, the more you know about this game, and the better you understand it, the worse the Ranger looks. I really want to like my (currently level 64) Ranger, but at this point I’m just going to finish him out with a buddy I duo with so I can put the gear I have banked for him on him, and never touch him again until there’s some kind of massive overhaul (or enough small fixes over time) that I feel he’s worth playing again.

There isn’t a single solitary thing my Warrior doesn’t do better. It’s a kitten shame.

Respect is earned… respecting someone just because they have control of something you like is nothing but an attempt to manipulate the word for what seems could be your own gains…

Aaaanyways, nothing Anet has done so far (in relation to PvP) has been worthy of respect…
They’ve been oddly silent about balancing to classes and the few tidbits they’ve given have been terribly misleading…
I mean, they released a game advertised for competitive PvP, yet left it leaps and bounds from being able to support it at launch and months from launch… even look at this last update, their main claims were to tone down spike dps and fix the ranger. Tons of people were phyced for that… but wait they somehow saw that best done by killing thief s/d while leaving the d/d spike spec entirely intact, oh and buffing ranger underwater combat…

Nothing in that is worthy of respect.
WTF with all these house analogies… if a landlord continually beats you up, answer me this, if he constantly says he will help you, leaving you sitting out on the porch for a few hours with paintbrushes and no paint, giving only vague reassurances that he will be there to help soon… for months… how the kitten does that have anything to do with respect?
Sure you can move out, but how does that make what he is doing any less kitten’ish

There is accountability, just like you are accountable to pay Anet for their game they are accountable to deliver on what they said that game entails….
Or, well, yeah, people leave.
And this game goes into that endless cycle of hype->disappointments->dead that every game short of WoW, LoL, exc. has… they have time because of the lack of monthly fee, but still they are losing players that will be extremely tough to get back… the whole group of people I knew who were heavily into PvP played GW2 for 1~ month before moving on and, for the most part, dumping MMOs for the time being… GW2 is just terribly, lacking, atm for that to be the case…