Guild Wars 2

IMO, they should remove map exploration from wvw. I just don’t think it adds much, and the people that just want completion just leave anyways after they get it. I also find it pretty funny that people are really trying to look down on pve people; the elitism garnered from “map compleition” sounds pretty funny because I’m sure no serious wvw player would care about such pve things, lol. Sounds like a lot of insecurity from pvers in denial; and it’s not like karma training is particularly more skilled than pve…. In cases where you grossly outnumber your opponent, it’s quite the opposite.

I also feel this problem would be solved if they’d just randomize the color more.

Anyhow, some real advice; the majority of people with map compleition problems are those that do not play at peak hours. For example, there’s many cases where my server has less than 10 people on map, and my friends that play then tend to get frustrated…

Go on http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/ and watch the map. Typically, if you can afford to be awake late at certain times (typically night), you may notice times where people aren’t on, or at least your server has relatively more people.

If that is not possible, you’re simply going to have to brute force it. You will need

— You to be on a thief (off hand dagger) Place 6 points in shadow arts, and learn how to stealth.
— Get as many friends as you can on, preferably thieves too. If you can get siegerazer out, you have a much better chance because that tower can be used to assault bay/hills.
— Trebuchets/catapults (can help if you capture a nearby tower). Rams are possible but you’ll get overrun quite quickly.

In these cases, you no longer have to capture the structures; simply just bore enough holes to get in and go on a suicide run to the points. Use cloak and dagger to stay stealthed, in walls, and hopefully enough fighting will take down the inner walls so you may sneak in.

This will guarantee you get all towers and camps but keeps are definitely not guaranteed at busy hours.

If you fail (which will happen, many, many times) stay near the enemy spawn and gank everyone you see coming out of it. This will generally kitten them off enough to try and find you, so you may now go elsewhere to your targets. Even if you fail, at least you can take it out on someone.

You can always use yellow berserker gear with flame legion/ruby orbs, rare zerker rings, major sigils, and green zerker trinkets if cost is a problem as a stopgap. (you can get ascended trinkets with laurels anyways, and rare/exotic jewelery is overpriced) It won’t really be fatal. Using other stuff is just going to cost more in the long run. And karma gear can help with costs and would be my recommended solution.

This is my casual run build; I don’t do dungeons much and don’t care for optimizing gear for it, but it works in most pve— I think the vigorous precision trait makes a big difference.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAsdRlsApUo9CxZI8DRR8Ql7Y8i2+BtQVBAWPBA-ThRBwAX3fU+dT9H86D0cIAA8EAMrEkUAPtFA-e

Lots of retreat use.

Can glacial heart even chill multiple enemies? It seems like those proc effects with a cooldown only affect one target.

There’s not a problem with trade offs, but the trade off is apparently very large; I think OP detailed why it’s hard to put a viable build with that. While Dhuumfire could be considered to be on the wrong tree, you can still have viable builds around it; also dhuumfire is actually good and isn’t based around an elite with a long cooldown so a lot of necromancers find it worth it to put 6 points in spite (and hey, it’s 30% condi duration), while you really can’t say the same about guardians dumping points in virtues for tome.

Shield is a pretty bad choice in any case. That is not just because it is bad but also because you have to pick the one handers that are inferior in large mobile fights.

Alturistic healing is pretty standard. Your main goal is to stay up and also stay in front above all else. Oh and yes, people can single you out. It is pretty scary

It’s really bad logic to blame the victim anyways. Even if they were not selling the dungeon, the same thing could have happened.

“need help on last boss”

/kick

Blame them for playing with pugs then? Selling dungeons is a red herring. Of course it gets used because people don’t actually have a valid argument and resort to sound bites that sound wise but in reality are just intellectually and morally bankrupt, but it does do a good job of hiding these things.

So, where’s that “fix” that was supposedly withdrawn?

/crickets

Oxidia.8103:

You can actually prevent it by not selling the dungeons!

Oh, what wonderful advice. Perhaps you should add that OP could avoid it by not playing the game, because it’s clearly their fault for putting themselves in a spot where they could be griefed. Actually, it’s OP’s fault for existing. This could have been prevented if OP didn’t exist. For shame.

It might be a necro, but nothing has been resolved.

The only logical explanation to have 2/5 players being able to remove the entire party is that and leave it in place for so that they just don’t care.

Undead chickens.

Those are so OP.

Traveler runes don’t help much in a zerg because swiftness is handled like candy and the smattering of stats it gives doesn’t really benefit a power ranger that much. You are free to use it while roaming, but in a zerg I would consider investing in another set of gear but that’s not mandatory.

Anyhow, your gear and build is probably fine; you are dying due to poor positioning I think. I’m guessing you are trying to be on the outskirts trying to shoot people down, and then the enemy zerg goes “hey, a ranger, let’s eat him!” Some people believe toughness attracts aggro— this is wrong— rangers attract aggro.

The second reason for death is poor or non-pet management. There is really no reason to not use passive mode for big fights; keep your pet on a tight leash and close to you while switching it away if they’re low. Personally, I like the spider for more ranged damage, but have been making good use of the hound for the immobolize.

You don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb, but of course if you go standing in red circles you’ll die because rangers do not have the same defenses of say, like warriors. But you do want to circle around your group and pick off the enemy backline… so you can’t be too far off.

As for your melee set, use it to reposition yourself and do not waste your leap on attacking enemies! You don’t want to be in the middle of all that. Use your leap to get through so you don’t get cut off.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNBjYD7kRFaYx+VwWQ4axA9B16HofDge7A3/9DKZDNB-T1SBwA7U5I4+D4UH5qyvIXAQJIKND41Bs4gAgwEkmHAAgjAAZAW2CA-w

is what I use (click the U.S. flag to change to English, I don’t know why it keeps defaulting to German for me). I rarely have any trouble surviving, and support my team with spotter which is a good boost for allies. Damage is naturally weak compared to glassy rangers but enough to deal with the soft, juicy core of a zerg. Melandru runes are generally my go-to answer for zerg problems as it allows me to largely ignore condition/stun management (of which rangers are kinda bad at) but those are kinda pricey and not up everyone’s alley either. Also, the sword/warhorn is more just a support thing and to get myself out of trouble.

Also, keep moving as you attack and don’t let yourself get stuck in one place. Aka, don’t randomly throw barrage around.

Yea let’s force people to engage into more boring, unrewarding activity. That’s what wvw is about.

This post is insulting to people on severs that have played in bronze for the longest time, don’t you think? Were they never alive?

Broken game mode is broken game mode. As long as we get this non-support, more and more servers will have trouble and eventually move up find something else to do. My opinion is that such action is somewhat intentional until they finally find the excuse to put most of wvw out of its misery via closures, and the final form of wvw will look like EOTM if it continues at this rate.

But that is some nonsense for the future, as for now…

Stop looking at the scoreboard and fight. For reals. Coverage is a drug, the more you get, the more you’ll need. Don’t be like “we don’t care about ppt, we are only here for fights” because that line of BS has no value these days.

Don’t play wvw for PPT, don’t play wvw for fights. Play wvw for wvw. Trying to splinter the approaches only causes a fractured community. Why? Because what you see today may no longer be there someday in the future. Find people you know and trust and try to form a community. In the end, it’s about having a group of people on the same page. The rest is just a friggin game.

My own server has had several exodus of our own and we can be a desolate server during some weeks (literally several people on maps during prime time), but we do sometimes pull together and remind people we’re here. That’s good enough for me to stay.

oxtred.7658:

juno.1840:

Piratoz.8627:

Until several major things change, zerker meta will stay as the prevalent build for all classes in GW2. Why is that you say?

1. No holy trinity. The holy trinity remains as the primary way of designing a combat system in MMOs. It works well and is easy to make content for. However, in guild wars 2 the 2 sides of the trinity: tanking and healing either don’t exist or just kind of suck. There is no way to reliably control aggro, tank stats are pretty useless other than for personal survival. Healing power scales extremely poorly for PVE and is largely seen as useless as every class has a heal skill with high base healing. Instead the “trinity” of gw2 was advertised as DPS, support, and control. However this leads me to my second point…

2. No matter what you build, your CC and boon giving abilities are pretty much the same. The zerker elementalist is going to give roughly the same amount of boons as the full soldiers elementalist. Outside of boon duration, there is really no way to make your support or control abilities stronger. By building any stat except for damage you are really just gimping your party in a way unless you can’t survive. However this leads me to my third point…

3. Content in guild wars 2 is easy. There. I said it. You can view it how you want, but in my opinion, content in guild wars 2, especially older content is fairly easy compared to other popular MMOs because of one mechanic: Dodge. I love dodging in this game, however the ability to have evade frames for a good second at any time if you have the endurance to pay for it makes it so that even the glassiest of characters can survive almost all encounters in the game. I have a feeling that Arenanet won’t change this as they have the motto of “play how you want”. While some players may make this excuse to take strange or “unoptimal” builds, it works both ways. The full cleric guardian should theoretically be able to complete the same content as the 11k hp elementalist. This leads me to my final point…

4. Because of these reasons, there is no real need for teamwork . This is by far one of the biggest gripes I have with the game. Your thief and elementalist are dead or downed? Guardian AFK? Thats okay! Chances are, if you or the other person are good enough you could probably solo or duo the boss. Every class is self sufficient. While this does have its strengths, it really detracts from the most challenging aspect of MMOs, and in my opinion, the part that is the most fun: working as a team to beat challenging content.

I’m not saying that I hate Guild Wars 2. I love playing the game. However like most things, there are many things that could be improved in this game, one of which is the combat. There will be many people who disagree with me, however one of the best parts about playing an MMO is working with other people, often people that you don’t know. The holy trinity was an easy way to make it so that it was necessary to play the different roles and work with other people.

TLDR: I do believe that gw2 can find a way to make their “soft trinity” combat system work, but right now PVE really needs some love from the developers. Until there are major changes to combat or the way encounters are designed, the only trinity in the game is power, precision, and ferocity.

Exactly this. Teamwork is not blasting your buddy’s fire field – you can screw that up and maybe the fight takes 20 seconds longer. Teamwork is something that if you fail at, your entire party fails. GW2 does have much teamwork at all… only forces via the environment (i.e. two people stand on a pressure plate).

Q1: Ever did arah?
Q2: Ever played guardian?
Q3: Ever played high level fractals?
Q4: Ever participated in a speedrun?

Yep, the game isn’t hard at first especially if you don’t leave ac. In more difficult conditions ( something anet doesn’t want to support (ironically)), defensive support is needed. At least for offensive geared user, since ptv guards and warriors can still fail to dodge and facetank.

Oh yea, I wonder how many people are willing to give an honest answer to these questions before going off to sprout off about stuff. =p

I would have to say no on 3, those things seem really tough. :S

Yea…

Taking Elite Tomes in the majority of contexts is dumb because it defeats the purpose of going into virtues to make your virtues better… and you won’t be able to recharge virtues. For example, you can’t even say go all to virtues with elite focus and take absolute resolution because you’ll have a long as hell cooldown which can’t be recharge which cuts the effectiveness in half. And thus you’ll have terrible condi removal.

So I was wondering though, what people thought about just keeping it in virtues (either/or thing, not all)

— Compromise and make it an adept trait in virtues.
— Remove retaliation virtue and combine it into inspired virtues, Elite focus takes that spot instead
— Just make stability on tomes by default

Classic signs of immaturity:

— Determining maturity based on age
— Being demanded to be treated as a mature person (Hint: That usually doesn’t get the job done)

Considering the most pathetic fits I’ve seen are thrown by fully grown adults (And If I were to just guess age based on forum posts around here, it would seem like these forums are filled with children, but that’s a silly assumption.), I really don’t think you should really suggest stuff based on ages. Furthermore, the whole thing reeks of a false dilemma that only catering to a mature audience (whatever that definition is) is the only possible road as opposed to kid/casual friendly banal nonsense. But it’s okay, you’ll learn more about the flaws in these thoughts as you go to college and/or become exposed to the real world. Oh which, btw, I should really expose the other signs of immaturity, I just displayed

— Hypocrisy
— A insecure, condescending attitude displayed towards large groups of people that they consider lower (in this case, younger than them, thinking that they are too naive/inexperienced)

Not to mention a lot of challenging games made back in the ol’ days were meant to challenge children. Ironically, content of that difficulty would make many adults cry. You guys really have it easy. Ah, crap, my fingers hurt now, and I’ll be back after I fix my hearing aid.

Ugh, so unimaginative, people. If you design your gameplay around the fear of hacked/exploited without considering solutions, you may as not reward people for anything. Oh wait, that’s exactly what the loot system looks like now! When a possible suggestion has problems, don’t just dismiss it.

Make it so that the first 3 jumping puzzles (exclude easy ones*) offer a chest with a rare. This applies per account so you cannot park like 10 characters at JPs hoping to get 10 rewards.

Or, we could cause characters to be ejected from the end of jumping puzzles at reset.

In b4 “I have 10 accounts”.

Wow, did the forum just censor “[the opposite of soft] one”

Meta is a player made construction. That has nothing to do with the game itself. In this game, most content doesn’t time you, or cares about how much gold you collect. If you think the gear you’re wearing is limiting your ability to clear something faster, that’s your own problem for competing in a rat race that only exists in your head.

It makes as much sense as seeing a Super Mario speedrun, and then seeing that since they don’t use any powerups (because they don’t need to), then thus powerups are a broken mechanic and are useless. Then one would come up with convoluted ways to force people to use them, because if speedruns don’t use them, it clearly doesn’t matter.

In any case, considering the difference between a bad zerker and a good zerker, it makes it clear that gear is not the deciding issue but how well you understand the mechanics of the fights. I don’t really have a problem. As for other stat spreads being so called useless, it’s not like you can’t complete the content in them.

And sure, you can choose to not work together, but you can still work together for even better results.

Run Greatsword/Scepter/Focus and stack lots of power. So the gear would be power/precision and if for some reason you feel bad, take some power/vitality. The content is generally so trivial that you’ll just be using GS 95% of the tine and use scepter to range the last bits like champions or whatnot.

Use staff to leech off zerg events. That’s the only use until you reach level 80.

Skills: Retreat! (Swiftness and block), Bane Signet (damage), Save Yourselves! (overall buffs and stunbreak)
Traits: Get Superior Aria (so you may run faster with retreat and also pick up vigorous precision), Fiery Wrath, Unscathed Contender, and Two Handed Mastery, in that order. Fortunately, the first 3 are just adept level traits and easy to unlock.

Food— before level 30 it doesn’t matter what you use since the content is too easy and the bonuses too meager, so take the cheapest one so you can get 10 exp from kills (that’s any food). Roasted meaty sandwich for 20 power isn’t bad. At level 30, zucchini bread and then 40 just buy cheap regen food: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Food#Regeneration I wouldn’t spend more than 30c for any leveling food.

Utility Consumables generally suck at low levels, thus you’re pretty much only using them for the +exp bonus. I would use oil over stones until level 80 because those stones are just overpriced for the content

As you reach level 40, you will notice gear starts to get more expensive due to requiring more expensive materials to make. In these cases, I would suggest you enter world vs world and talk to the weaponsmith/armorsmith and try to buy some equipment with karma. Check every 10 levels or so, but don’t go too crazy.

Finally, salvage all white/blue/green items that aren’t leather and check trading post before you vendor something. In general, don’t vendor stuff unless you absolutely need money now. You usually can salvage materials that are worth a bit more than vendoring, plus it’s more time efficient.

Shelter is amazing and does what it’s supposed to do— block burst damage. Healing Signet is of course really strong and sort of ridiculous in some cases but it falters under burst damage unless the warrior can manage a counter offensive. As for the ele heals, well, I think playing an ele would make it obvious why the heals are so strong. Both heals are also heavily kitten with application of poison, while shelter suffers reduced healing too, it doesn’t matter as much as you were using it for a block.

It does suck to go on full cooldown if it fails and I think that may be too big of a punishment. In the end though, the amount healed isn’t that important— if it were people would be taking signet of resolve more, but there’s a big reason why a lot don’t— people can just burst you down as you heal, even if you ignore interrupts.

Oh, and btw now that’s a heal skill,
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_Turret

Hmm, I guess OP doesn’t really care about farming gold, but I think it’s fine to leave the speed runes for now. I actually use them when alone and haven’t thought about replacing them until now because I find the vitality pretty useful and while traveler runes are better by a bit, I don’t think it’s that big of a difference. Traveler runes offer 252 stat points total vs 175 from speed, but 36 are completely worthless (condition damage), and another 36 is pretty irrelevant for this kind of build (healing power), meanwhile the small smattering of power/precision/ferocity is okay but nothing groundbreaking since precision and ferocity aren’t equal to power when it comes to damage, so it’s mostly for boon duration which other guardian builds handle better. Granted, I have no idea why swiftness is on runes of speed, which is sort of a waste, but whatever. If guardians didn’t need 25% run speed, I wouldn’t give either set the light of day.

However, in a group of 10-15 the 25% movement speed is kinda useless and you’re end up only going to use that when you’re meeting with them, meaning it doesn’t really help in a real fight. I think Pack Runes are a great idea, and cheapie flame legion runes can be something out of left field that can be fun.

I’d also take a point away from radiance and put it into virtues. The extra group support from inspired virtues is going to mean a lot more than removing a boon off some person every 10 seconds.

The metabattle build suggests soldier armor + zerker trinkets. That’s a big difference between either full soldier/full zerk. Basically it just gives you enough defense so you can ignore some incidental damage that flies around. In any case, there’s a whole host of stat spreads that isn’t just zerker or soldier.

Furthermore, a lot of staff attacks have notable casting times, so it’s significantly easier to survive as a ranger because you don’t really have anything that sticks you in place aside from barrage which you really shouldn’t spam anyways.

I sometimes am the engineer with a mesmer and I always wanted an extra guardian. =p

Guardian is generally better due to the cleanses, blocks and engineers could use some. Aegis is amazing in small scale fights, and now that Retreat! is only 40 seconds untraited, it’s a decent choice. It also helps since mesmers and guardians aren’t exactly known for their mobility and would have to resort to something like traveler runes. >.>

There’s nothing to stop you from rangers and immobo spam though. Engineers have a field day against stuff that can’t move. It’s honestly pretty funny. Rangers tend to be highly survivable and self-sufficient but group support is lacking. Honestly, your ranger/guardian friend should pick the class they’re better at.

Edit: Also consider Elixir S instead of Rocket Boots for stunbreak/stomping.

Also, don’t take blood injection. That 130 condi damage isn’t worth sacrificing other traits such as backpack regenerator, leg mods, hair trigger, incendiary powder (please take this on a condi build!) or well, anything really.

They ought to remove the item completely, and make it like how you buy bags and bank slots where you just click a spot in your inventory and it asks you if you want to buy it.

Likewise, there could be a spot in the hero menu with your name and a “change name” option where you’d have to confirm the name and then it’d charge you. People that already bought it and didn’t use it would get a free use for each one they have.

It still doesn’t change the fact that the video is pretty bad though. Using a shield in 95% of the content seems nonsensical. I do remember that one boss in the queen’s gauntlet where it was best to kill all the bosses simultaneously and you wanted to destroy and not reflect near the end so shield was used. I remember they asked me to use a shield and I was like “wtf?”

Well, you certainly want to know how your allies’s skills work and why it’s a good idea to drag people in? At least Ragnar up there wants to. Sure, I would agree that it doesn’t matter, but it’s good to learn more.

Anyhow, the hammer is better in utility as nobody would argue, but sometimes damage from the greatsword also helps and in bigger fights the GS pulls a lot ahead as the hammer presents the disadvantage of the light field and I think you’re underselling the mobility a bit as you don’t want to be behind your warrior buddies who are far better than you at pinning down people. The GS also pulls people into a localized spot which makes it perfect for AOEs, and I think they’re merely separate roles—some guardians can run GS and others running hammer seems more effective anyways— with pulls and others immobilizing.

That video was made by Nemesis, I do believe…

Only gear. Small minded people may think not stacking toughness or vitality translates to “all dps” but that just displays a fundamental misunderstanding of game mechanics.

The main problem is that guardians have mediocre cleanses outside of pve where you don’t need that much.

Now, you might say, “dude my pure of voice/trooper rune” guardian cleanses stuff like mad!". Which is true, but you have to realize that Pure of Voice is utterly trash after it was fixed and is reliant on a runeset to make it not trash.

So we have contemplation of purity (long cooldown, selfish), and purging flames. It’s all about purging flames, or you can go deep into virtues for Absolute Resolution. You could also try for passive condi removal with signet of resolve (which really isn’t a choice) and the so and so purity.

Is there not a problem with this?

Necros are great at single target damage, but they do not have necessarily the best aoe dps. It’s shocking but true— necros’s ranged weapons are very limited!

I mean, their staff autos are about on par to guardian staff autos, axe only hits one target and the auto is bad. scepter is a condi weapon, and dagger actually does damage but it’s melee and was only recently upgraded to hit 2 targets from 1. While you could do a lot of damage with dagger and using warhorn 5 to run through a crowd, it’s not for the faint of heart. They can make up with it with their Death Shroud’s Life blast— a finally decent ranged attack, but drumroll is also single target unless you trait for it in which case it takes up spots for some other very valuable traits.

What necros have are corrupts and unblockable burst damage via wells. Those have long cooldowns but can do quite a number on suspecting foes. Staff marks are also reliable AOE and can also be made unblockable. In addition, necros have death shroud and lich form that can also result in damage bursts. There’s also tricks such as Spectral Wall that can cripple zergs that no other class can really perform.

It’s sort of apples and oranges. Either eles or necros are important to a good group; just like how you really can’t say guardians or warriors are more vital to a zerg.

So, I wonder if pretending the problem doesn’t exist will make it go away. Or maybe they should just tell us they don’t care about griefing and leave it as that.

Mace can’t really frontline as it doesn’t have the CC or mobility to keep up and the autoattack chain is like only slightly faster than hammer! It’s more useful to go in for surprise damage with protector’s strike, most likely so usually I’d attempt something like this.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNApdWlsApWoNDxVI8DNBDBlVLwODJ/DXHhDEAA-TFTBABBt/ggaCMTJ4VKzi4BAUp6Klp0AP9ALcIAwUlCNOCAAcCAIDwyWA-w

Focus is used mostly for the occasional ray of light and shield of wrath won’t protect you from much but the blast finisher and sudden damage is fine. You can also elect to use torch and troll people by tapping 4 twice, tossing a zealot’s flame at them.

It is also possible to use communal defenses/shattered aegis for some fun with mace, but that is largely a gimmick and you need coordination with others so in these cases you wouldn’t run mace to begin with.

But this is why Greatswords and hammers are considered standard, as pulls, immobolizes, blast finishers, easy protection or leaps change the tide of the battle often while mace has really none of those things

This is what I use personally, can’t really say it’s the best because it is a bit more selfish than most builds, but it is mostly survivable and does damage and stuff (and tags, but what guardian build doesn’t?):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARWlsApWoNDxVI8DNRCBl1Mw+DPPEXHgLcAA-TFSBABBt/gZKBvS5Xlq/gnugFOEAacFAA4BAEAAB4m3MbezAHd5Gd5G9o1mH9mH9mlBYZLA-w

Blackmoon.6837:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Adult concepts do not necessarily make a story “better” just for having them.

Relative to saying “death doesn’t make a story good”. Like I said, that’s not what I’m suggesting. The problem is that GW2 already has adult concepts. They simply haven’t implemented them correctly or at least in a meaningful way.

ArchonWing.9480:

Your concepts are sound, although the particular suggestion of yours is not really adult storytelling as much as it is “teenage angsty storytelling” which I don’t think is particularly better and I’m afraid it gets confused with so called “mature storytelling”.

That was a very narrow and blunt example. Given appropriate details, it could have far more significance. I suppose something I should have mentioned is how character’s should be dense in their own right.

As it stands, the lot of characters in GW2 are way too versatile. You could pretty much swap them around and nothing much would change. Instead, especially when you have such a vast selection, they all need to be more focused and centered around deeper conditions. So when there’s collision, it provides a powerful event that then leads to further conditioning.

Characters are nothing more than the harbinger for emotive emphasis. Constructing meaningful adult storytelling inevitably means taking advantaged of how far you can push those emotions so that the audience is able to develop better connections for or against; then leading them on a well-rounded path.

Yea I understand, it’s just that there’s a very fine line between these kinds of things.

I think for that to work, they would have to really have to decide on what to focus on. At the moment, I guess they are trying to focus on a few characters, but a lot of it just isn’t being bought though I guess Taimi actually works to some degree taking things into context.

As it is now, I think the writers have to take a step back because the question of “What are we trying to express beyond having stuff to happen?”though I guess that is standard RPG fare.

Your concepts are sound, although I’d claim the particular example of yours is not really adult storytelling as much as it is “teenage angsty storytelling” which I don’t think is particularly better and I’m afraid it gets confused with so called “mature storytelling”.

The point of having change in characters is to illustrate concepts of significance. You can’t simply just go “well, bad stuff happens, and then people react badly”. I mean you can, but that is not really particularly more engaging than anything else. Naturally this just isn’t possible when you introduce satellite characters just to be killed for shock value. But you can write stories, about say, subtle changes in someone’s demeanor that will never disappear due to trauma, and other stuff that lets the audience picks up the pieces rather than with the approach of holding a neon sign saying “wow, she is so kittened up now” But I guess this game tends to like neon signs.

I think what you really want to illustrate is to have impact, a storyline has to have real impacts, as in not killing off no-names or what not. On one end, we have the cartoony aspect where nothing really matters and our hero comes to save everything blah blah blah.

There have been good examples of stuff that worked, such as destroying Lion’s Arch; it wasn’t all just death and destruction, but there was that and it had lingering effects. On the other hand, a lot of season 1 just felt like “Hey, let’s watch Scarlet ruin everything while everyone runs around like their heads are cut off because she’s totally ahead of you”. That’s just simply banal.

In the end, it’s not really a point to label the relative maturity of concepts but rather if the story sets out to do what it intends to do. Unfortunately, the writing often usually doesn’t aspire to be much, and thus comes across as lacking. Sup Mr. Tree Savior guy.

Meh, you don’t want to bring that kind of stuff in dungeons but general pve is fine for so called “support”. But damage is generally king in most situations and Obal’s guide has the best builds.

For WvW, try this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARWlsApWoNDxVI8DNRCBl5M+P2fIEl4yAcBA-TlSAwAauAATV+Vc/Beq/AwEUEzPw0F84QAYRJonnAAZAW2CA-w

Greatsword is just the easiest weapon to get around and just hit people so I tend to recommend it for everyone. You can still use mace/focus but I think it’s a bit hard to use right. This build doesn’t really require much of anything besides leaping to your allies.

To be fair, the engineer and ele icons do look a bit similar.

The engineer’s strengths are a bit more subtle. Can eles put forth better healing, cleanses, and water fields? Maybe, but they have to switch to water and put their last attunement on cooldown. An engineer that has healing turret equipped can arbitrarily spray his toolbelt skill and go on as nothing has happened. But obviously exploiting something like that is harder than just smashing your face in the keyboard. And that’s the other problem. With all this toolkit switching and having to click every time for grenades, it can be pretty stressful to play.

A lot of people (from my observations in forums and in game) tend to analyze a class by looking their skills and traits in a vacuum without any analysis on how they work together in practice so that thus people see hundred blades do a lot of damage and assumes that warriors are the best because they get the biggest numbers. And that pretty much answers OP’s questions.

Bomb heal builds are definitely very solid since the bomb kit itself gives a lot of utility. I might suggest something like this if you want heavy support. (WvW)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUp6q9ZxdLseRiaBF6bsxAAqLIyQmlPFBA-TFyGwAAeAAhV/RvSQjK9CqMI9+Di1BQ4CAQGgitA-w

I like to use elixir gun for these purposes because fumigate really helps out people, and Elixir B is the only way to get stability but at least it’s group. Heal bombs with sigil runes = good.

I remember making a joke about jumping in the water because the enemy zerg probably had crappy underwater weapons, and it was true! The damage to us started dropping like a brick leading me to wonder if some had level 1 water weapons.

For some reason, everyone tries to kill me when I’m on my engineer, so I’ve picked up a few things here and there from being splatted into the ground.

Swiftness isn’t good enough because a zerg has it too and you will be slowed down once in combat— and there’s always people in the back of the zerg not in combat. If those catch up to you, you will die instantly. BEWARE OF NECROS. They are like the bane of engineers and if they start fearing you, you are screwed. Fortunately, they’re also the least likely to catch up to you.

Elixir S is good if you have a headstart. If you are already being hit, then use it and then make a sharp turn, dodge and then use toss elixir S. If you aren’t in combat, run, toss elixir S, and keep elixir S ready as backup. . Rocket boots is also decent but it’s been buggy lately. The humorous part about most regular zergs is that they have a hard time adjusting to sudden movements such as turning (they really are trains) but they are really good at mowing down w/e is in front of them.

Elixir Gun Leap is possible but the acid bomb may put you in combat if they run over it so that can be troublesome. The toolbelt stunbreak is good at not being mowed down.

The minor trait transmute can help a lot; it will convert the first incoming condition into a boon so that may prevent you from being screwed too. You may also consider investing in tools to pick up leg mods because the classes most likely to catch up with you (thief, warrior, other engies) are going to be spamming immobilize/cripple on you if they get the chance. If you get far away enough, chances are you will only fight the people that caught up to you (although at a disadvantage). If they’re true zerglings, there’s a chance you can win.

Anyhow, also remember that every moment spent chasing you is a moment of them not touching your server’s stuff inappropriately, so even if you die, you may have helped your server out a bit if you manage to lead them on a chase.

Also, sometimes you may try jumping in the water. A lot of good skills do not work underwater, and they would also be forced to dps you to death (no stomps underwater). Nobody likes underwater fighting, so you’ll at least kitten them off especially if you do some crap like stealth before entering it.

Zadarh.1932:

Tommyknocker.6089:

If you can’t beat em, join em.

My thoughts exactly! When ppl cry about thieves I’m always thinking “You know you can make YOUR OWN thief right?”

It’s easier and faster to complain though.

Nice video! I think it’s important to get people to test your limits so you know what you can and can’t do, and using friends to beat you up in said exercise is a good way of figuring that out.

Ranged damage is useful but not dominating in zergs due to the overabundance of gap closers and cripples/chills/immobolize/stuns that get tossed around.

Guardians of course give stability and damage, so they are indispensable and one of the largest parts of any decent zerg along with warriors.

It was in a patch notes, which was subsequently removed, because there are more important issues at hand like umm… yea.

The River Drake is generally superior in every way unless you need condi removal, and you rarely need that much in pve. In general the bear does nothing and even pets with less health can “tank” in open world so that makes the bear redundant.

In theory, I guess the condi removal in bigger wvw fights could help, and it’s the pet most likely to survive stuff or you could use it for “protect me”; however there are generally more solid options to rely on and groups shoudn’t really rely on rangers for condi removal. In smaller fights, you’d be better off using a dog to knock people down or spiders to immobolize, or ravens to dps rather than the unreliable condi removal pet that can’t do damage.

Unfortunately, there’s no way t3 can be balanced as we are back with the sitiation where no other t3-4 server can compete with DB/FA atm. SBI has been barely t4 atm and probably less with LS updates, usually only showing in numbers on reset night, and we didn’t even have a queue on Friday only an hour after reset. [Guess it was a good thing, since I crashed.]

In the past it was merely a coverage issue, so there were still fights at peak hours, but this isn’t the case. DB is quite populated and I wish them well in t2.

You sure those 6 people weren’t mesmer clones?

So I ran around with the build listed in OP and with signet of the hunt which doesn’t seem too bad. The only exception is that I have full berserker and need to craft some pieces (it’s actually my pve set) and my melandru zerg set isn’t going to help matters. Although I don’t really feel too squishy. I still need to practice on moving around in general. I also took wilderness cooldown reduction (not sure why I did that in OP) and healing spring because the low armor means troll ungent may not heal fast enough.

The only enemies that seem to give lots of trouble are mesmers who I simply can’t get out of my face and confuse me even when I target the right one— especially when they just disappear, spawn tons of clones and conditions, and even are able to reflect. There’s also thieves which are sort of a toss up; either I cannot react to their conditions or burst or I just CC them into oblivion. Although I understand in these cases that they’re just as dead as I am if they screw up so I would think issues are on my end. The condition ones seem slightly easier to kill.

Another annoyance are probably warriors that can simply ignore all CC and hit me in the face, but as per my experience after that most recent warrior nerf, have been largely a nonfactor alone unless they are assisting their friends. Most seem to be one trick ponies that are simply countered by lightning reflexes though there are always exceptions that surprise me.

People don’t just play one mode of the game you know…

RedStar.4218:

We’ve been waiting for updates for every aspect of the game. At least PvE gets some attention every 2 weeks or so.

You’re complaining about the PvP “update” when in the ends it doesn’t add a lot to the PvP scene.

And finally, I doubt Anet is so low on people that they have the same team who’s workin on PvE work on PvP.

Also, this because it’s highly unlikely PvE and PvP updates are mutually exclusive.

EOTM is actually decent in concept , and it has more creative features than wvw. Unfortunately, the problem is extremely poor balancing, annoying terrain that doesn’t allow for good fights and also a rewards system that is better than regular wvw that causes trouble. But then again, I can’t really fault eotm for having decent rewards, it’s just that wvw rewards are bad.

Oh yea…. I keep forgetting about hunter’s shot. It’s just like a ranged cloak and dagger; I’ve never actually thought of using it on ambients.

GS4 is pretty funny. It’s like a giant LOL NOPE to silly wannabe thieves that think they can just burst with impunity.

Press ~ to weapon swap to scepter.

Also, curses is not just 300 condi damage. You get random bleed stacks from barbed precision and can also take weakening shroud, and we’re just talking about the first two traits. There’s also terror which can do good damage. Which is better than random blood magic.

The ultimate problem is “meta” is a player defined creation.

Sure, changing the game will change the meta, but it has nothing to do with game design.

Players decided they wanted rewards faster, so they could move on to the next dungeon faster, and the best way is to kill faster. Not everyone wishes to partake in that, because getting gold and tokens faster is a valid goal, but it’s not a universal goal. Why should Arenanet change the game based on player goals that they never even intended for? They never decided it was going to be a race. I don’t see a timer. The game doesn’t keep track of times. If you want to, that’s fine, but don’t force them or others to think it is one.

This isn’t player vs player that requires balance.

The zerker meta exists, because it is the collective goal of dedicated players that want to complete the content as efficiently as possible. There is nothing wrong with this, because you can complete the content without following this meta. Anet cannot and should not dictate to the letter how a player should play or what they should find fun, because the collective skill of an entire community is always going to outpace the developers or the mind of a single person. That is why trying to design a new “meta” is simply a foolish aspect. It is no different then trying to whip a strait into obeying you.

Because let’s admit it, a lot of suggestions (including my own) are written from one’s own perspective with one’s own interests in mind. Trying to portray others as selfish (and implying one is on some crusade to make the world better for all— please don’t— a lot of tragedies have been started because of this) is simply dishonest. At least I will admit that when I post, I speak for myself and people that think like me, and do not assume some silent majority is cheering me and treating me as the voice of the unheard(even if they are, duh). One just can’t ignore the impact on others with changes. So, “I play the way I want” until someone interferes with that ability. Until then, I try to respect others as such. Oh, and if the way you want doesn’t happen to be “meta”, well, that’s your own problem if you try to force it into something it was never intended to do.

Instead, game balance needs to be made taking the current meta in concern and finding ways to provide additional challenges. Reinventing the wheel every time a problem is perceived runs is not a good idea.

tl;dr Fix condis