Guild Wars 2

Premades farming PUG-s is a ridiculous game design in a high profile title like GW2. All other games of this kind use either completly separate solo queue or they always match premades vs premades and only match premade vs. PUG if they cant find any other premade after waiting over some extended time.

Im typing this after playing SIX matches in a row in PUGs vs premades. I dont know if I should laugh or cry???

My win ratio in tournaments is around 30%. I never had such a catastrophic w/l ratio in any competetive game which I played for a longer period. I wonder why, hmm… :/

So yes. I kind of dont understand why all my attempts of communicating in PUG groups are hitting the wall. I am not even talking about hotjoin since I already accepted the fact that most players in hotjoin are just glory grinding zombies hunting to kill stuff that is red. But this also concerns PUG tPvP. No matter what I say, there is absolutely no response. I may ask and try to organize things. I may just try to chat asking people what build they use. I may be very polite, I may be rude and troll. No matter what I do, nobody cares to reply or react when I ask for things. I can play 10 matches with not a single line of chat appearing (other than occasional “gg”). I remember in other similar games the level of response was generally higher. Not all people cared but some did. In GW2 I can hardly find any and this is frustrating me to some point. Why GW2 is different?

There are many aspects of the game and balacing one will also affect the other. Sure, for example healing does not scale well enough in dungeons when compared to power/crit. So buff healing? And guess what, that will make Bunkers in conquest PvP be from there and after called Unremovable Bunkers a.k.a. you need 4 people to kill me. And dont forget to buff toughness as well!

Free bump for you becouse I agree current choice for solo players is atrocious. You can pick between being farmed by premades in tPvP or use hotjoin where most people dont have a kitten clue about objectives (or they dont care) and all your efforts to play for the team will be useless so all you can do is just join a zerg and ignore team scores.

The lack of solo-only queue in tPvP is what makes hotjoin still needed. If they will make a proper solo-queue I will be fine with hotjoin going down. Or leave hotjoin but make it pure deathmatch game mode.

YES PLEASE! And not becouse I would really need it. But becouse I want all the people who treat conquest like deathmatch go and play a proper DM instead of polluting objective based enviroment. Every time I join hotjoin I grind my teeth. No matter how many times I ask on team chat “guys, stop zerging mid, please fight on points, defend them, go cap something” etc. they just ignore me all day long and continue zerging bridges. I would play tPvP excusively but the lack of proper solo queue makes me join hotjoins sometimes to avoid getting farmed by premades. The level of “strategy” in HJ is absolutely non-existent. Most of people there dont even know or care wth is going on on the map. So I believe a deathmatch hotjoin would be a good thing. Even if it would force me to play it. At least I would not rage that my team is blind/deaf becouse they would zerg random areas as usual but in DM this would actually work.

I am pretty confident that with current sPvP system concept (farming glory as one of main goals) the way players are rewarded with glory needs a serious rethinking. This considers mostly hotjoin and PUG frees but I think hotjoin works as a 1st step to tournament play so it should teach more appropriate behavior.

My main concern is that teamplay and objective oriented playstyle rewards you with less glory than mindless zerging. This teaches players bad habits and many people may have problems adjusting when they will like to try something more competetive.

As it stands now, when I try to focus more on strategy, I get punished in some way. If I roam looking for weak spots and some free caps I run at risk of encountering enemy zerg and get owned with no glory to show for it. If I defend as a bunker I may tie several enemies for a period of time which gives my teammates chance to do something else. But eventually my last stand will end and I will be dead with zero glory. Trying to be more creative? Distract enemies etc? Nope! Zero glory for you!

Meanwhile the best idea of steady income of glory is to just join a friendly zerg and keep running with it steamrolling everything on the way and traveling between enemy controlled nodes for free neutralizer+capture glory. Meanwhile enemy zerg is also running around, collecting free glory from our team random stragglers and our nodes. This sort of playstyle is what will give you best glory/hour by far.

For players like me who are oriented mostly on winning matches, this system is a real pain in the kitten. Few days ago I tried to organize my team a bit on chat (no raging, just simple things like “Nobody on ruins, 1 go cap now pls”) and at the end I got talked down by someone to “stfu, your score is low”. And indeed, when I am trying to play for the team, I am very often dead last on the scoreboard or close it. On other days I just pick some tanky class and go run with my zerg and scoring lots of glory often ending up 1st on the score board but I feel something is wrong every time I do that. This system needs a rework and sooner rather than later.

Also someone around asked if you die while doing the zone (loosing 1 life), will you still get the achiev if you gather everything? Can someone confirm or deny that?

Does this achiv. only work in normal mode? Im not sure on which I did zone 1 but I think it was infantile. Now Im kind of stuck in zone 2. I pretty much sniffed every corner on the zone and still not getting the achiv. after boss. I got both chests, all 3 hidden rooms, hidden room with lots of spiders and nearby baubles on top of tree stump, the one behind shortcut worm (and inside of it), those in dark forest area, starting zone, lots of random ones on the ground. I inspected every inch of the zone like 3 times. Still missing something. Is there something that is REALLY well hidden? Or does it not work in infantile?

If this would be true I will be rather sad tbh. I loved expansions to original GW and the speed with which they were released.

Transfer to lower populated server? Isnt this obvious? I almost never have a queue for WvW and we have a healthy WvW population and good matches. Reminds me of Horde players from WoW who complain since years that queues for battlegrounds were too long.

LOCO.1785:

Thieves don’t dominate the top end tiers of sPvP, because those players are skilled and actually know how to counter stealth with ease. You won’t find any GC cookie cutter thieves running around there, because it’s a gimmick build designed to instagib noobs.

Thieves dont dominate top end tiers of sPvP becouse they dont fit into current sole meta (controlling points, and as someone mentioned already, you cant cap in stealth). I am not a pro player and I also dont see any issue with thieves in sPvP. Yes, I got exploded by paper thieves sometimes in sPvP but that is not winning them matches by itself. They blown all cooldowns on me, they have nothing left for a while and since they are made of paper they will die from residual AoE while trying to cap/prevent cap a small circle. That is not saying that thieves are useless in sPvP but they are much easier counterable there from several reasons. In WvW however, what is the downside of being a roaming thief and instagibbing some poor sod and sending him back to the other end of huge map with repair bill to pay? He brought many friends? Oh whatever, just spam stealth and run away while looking for a softer target, nothing sort of dedicated gank squad of elementalists will catch you. You will say that that is how your class is designed and this is working as intended. I am sorry but saying “my class was made by design to own people” (becouse that is what it really means) is not a good statement for a discussion.

Doomdesire.9365:

I don’t think many people realize how Anet’s class system works.

If you think it’s about balance for each and every individual area, you are wrong. Each class has a strong area, and a weak area.

Thieves perform exceptionally well in 1v1 combat. Make a new character, click on thief profession. Now read the description

“They’re deadly in one-on-one combat”

Now if any of you played thief extensively(not just wvw), you will know that

A) They are powerful 1v1ist and even powerful in 1v2/3
B) They are exceptionally weak in ZergvZerg compared to pretty much every other class
C) They are exceptionally weak in PvE

^This, is the whole design between Anet’s balancing. It is NOT a like Call of Duty where everything needs to be on par. This is the whole point of professions and classes. They perform DIFFERENT abilities, and hence have DIFFERENT strengths, which is why people say nerfing stealth will destroy the thief. If you make their ability to 1v1 on par with every other class, then they are every other class minus the fact that they completely suck in PvE and zergvzerg. If all classes were even on the 1v1 front, why roll a thief? When you can roll a ele? I mean, every class is par 1v1, except eles perform better in zvz, perform better in dungeons, perform better as support. This is the purpose behind roles. Thieves are duelists, 1v1ers and solo roamers, hard to catch, sneaky and elusive, and thus pay by being weak in zergvzerg, and PvE.

If you run a necro and run into a thief in wvw with nobody around, you’re fighting an uphill battle in which if you both have equal skill and luck, he will win, but in a zerg fight, you will beat the living crap out of the enemy zerg, compared to that thief, who you just ran into, melting at the sight of AoE spam, or if he runs tanky, desperately trying to squeeze out those 1K clusterbombs and dagger storms while you run around in 50K HP plague form.

I think a lot of posters should review what professions and classes are and the roles they play in this game. This is not CoD, this is not BF3. Classes should have the advantage in the role that they were designed for.

This is all fun and games as long as every single class gets a niche where they can excel. And I mean a viable niche which is often demanded. Like a WvW/sPvP roamer for thieves, sPvP point guard for elems and guardians or PvE dungeon steamrollers for warriors. If thieves were designed to wtfpwn people in small skirmishes in PvP, what was is the design principle behind engineers or rangers for example?

Specific class roles can be fun if it works well for everyone (an example of Team Fortress 2 comes to mind). But current class “balance” in GW2 is not good and the thief issue discussion is part of the debate concerning it.

My main is an engineer becouse I liked the concept of the class. But atm it serves me as just that. A “main” which waits for better times. Meanwhile I use my warrior to run dungeons, I use my guardian to farm PvE and I am leveling more classes, cant yet decide which one will be my pick for WvW but it will be either thief for stomping “noobs” or mesmer for group utility. So far I submit to this flawed design but it does not change the fact that it is flawed.

Ursan.7846:

Can’t log into the game, but what is Ambient Killer?

Kill critters.
Also, level gainer works at level 80 as well, no need for an alt. Just reach the skill point cap.

LeMiranda.9026:

As I said in another annoying post, a serious suggestion would be changing Dailies for Weeklies (which would account for 7 dailies but without the “haste” or fact of logging everyday to gain the laurels).

Yes, I am bumping this idea every time I see it becouse I think it would be a very good change.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Awe.1096:

Lucky.7680:

I strongly suggest they just make a big list of 20-30 options and let people choose from that. And if they really want to add something extra then make a daily-hard achievement with all the weird stuff in it. But stop telling us how to play and have fun.

At which point every completionist around the world who tries to complete all available options would die a little inside. The new dailies already bounced the “required” set to 9 tasks. I could complete entire old daily in 15 minutes if I was lucky and “speed running” it. Now? Cant be done in less than an ~hour.

Please, please, please don’t take offense. This is not a fault with the new system. This is a fault in how you approach the listing.

(And yes, I do the same thing, “so how many of these boxes can I tick off before it resets?”)

I agree. But that is what completionists do. Some people dont leave a single player game until they get all the achievements, some people do not care. Perhaps a bit compulsive behavior but whatever. Anyway, an ideal solution would be to add the ~20 tasks to choose from and after 5 of them are done, remaining ones becomes locked for the rest of the day.

Lucky.7680:

I strongly suggest they just make a big list of 20-30 options and let people choose from that. And if they really want to add something extra then make a daily-hard achievement with all the weird stuff in it. But stop telling us how to play and have fun.

At which point every completionist around the world who tries to complete all available options would die a little inside. The new dailies already bounced the “required” set to 9 tasks. I could complete entire old daily in 15 minutes if I was lucky and “speed running” it. Now? Cant be done in less than an ~hour.

As someone already mentioned, the fact that GW1 was instanced and balanced around your group (no matter if made by players or one player with bots) makes a huge difference. In GW1 mobs were organized into packs and it was part of the challenge to pull those packs separately (unless you had a team composition which could handle more). You had all the time in the world to figure this out. I could enter an area with 6 packs of patroling mobs. Wait a bit, pull and kill 2 of them, then go AFK for a dinner and get back to continue. By that time nothing would respawn, nobody would come and kill anything or body pull something on me. It was my sandbox to experiment in.

GW2 however uses persistent world. You will come into interaction with other players. You are also alone and not with 7 AI controlled helpers. In GW1 mob packs that you pulled could had more complex interactions (like they healed, buffed or ressed themselves) becouse you had means to counter that with your team build. In GW2 you will fight with 2-3 mobs at maximum and on some classes mostly pick them one by one. Add to that the chaotic element of rapid respawns and it becomes clear that the complexity of GW1 mob pulls would just not work in GW2.

I agree that it feels like some sort of loss but this is a price to pay for the persistent and open world. If you would ask me, I would prefer the instanced solo style of GW1. I liked that system more and I think it offered more immersion and challenge. But nowadays general population wants that persistent world. If GW2 had GW1’s system, lots of people would complain that it is a “stupid single player game” (like they did on GW1). So I accept the reality. Bottom line is, less complex enemies are needed to make the multi-player persistent world working as intended.

Antihero.5429:

I solo que a lot of frees and usually get 3/5 first timers on my team about 60% of the time but even then 3 tourney wins in a month isn’t dreadful at all.

It only requires an average of 1 win every ~10 or so days which is nothing and really the reward for the monthly isn’t that good for anyone that isn’t looking to play paids.

Yeah, you are right that getting 3 wins over 30 days is not hard. Its easy, even by stupid luck. But in such case this achievement, when considered for players who only queue solo, should be renamed to “Get stomped by coordinated teams for 15 hours in order to earn your 3 randoms wins.”. Not cool. As I said, it was better before, but I guess lots of casuals left PvP few months after release.

If you guys at Arena.net consider monthly PvP achievement to be intended for luring PvE and casual players to PvP content then just get rid of this . Up until December or so it was fairly OK to solo queue to tournaments and win every once in a while. Right now this experience is just horrifying. Considering that you need to wait for 8 teams to form up (looong queues). Considering that more often than not you are faced vs. a premade or 4v5.

For the first few months after release I did the “3 wins” thingy in one evening. Also queued to frees sometimes for a bit of fun. I remember already in January it a was a pain, and this month it is just atrocious. I guess all the casuals got tired of getting owned by premades so they stop joining and right now you get even MORE premades in the rotation. I dont know how many hours I spent already trying to win THREE kitten games in frees while going solo this month. My win ratio in 2013 in frees must be something like 5%. I dont know, change the 3 wins requirement to 30 games played requirement. I am sure that right now it is easier for soloers to play 30 games (you will go AFK half the time anyway after realizing that you are 4 pubs vs. 5 guys with same guild tag) than actually win 3. As it stands now, trying to win 3 frees is the most dreadful experience I get in GW2 and I even actually like PvP here (I liked frees till around November when more casuals played it, and I still like hot-join despite the zerg wars).

As already discussed in several threads on this forum, lack of solo queue for frees is a major pain in the kitten right now. At least for the time until it gets fixed somehow, free us from the urge to queue for this mess by removing the requirement from the monthly tab (yay for all the overachieveres!).

Enferian.2705:

Divus.3175:

You know what’s the problem? Afkers and guys, who don’t know how to read chat, don’t want to get any strategy, and doing dumb mistakes.

and also people who never check the map or the group health bars.

So if u are in a pug make sure u dont do any of the above mistakes, its the only thing you can do for the time being and it goes a long way in winning some matches.

Antihero.5429:

When you have 3 longbow hunters fighting a bunker guard at mid for 5min+ only to instantly get burst down by a mesmer/theif, they aren’t going to be having fun and most likely will never set foot in pvp again.

also if you are in a pug dont do that… if u cant kill someone in 3vs1 after a while just leave.. there are another 2 bases to cap and remember that while u fight 3vs1 at the middle your teammates fight 2vs4 somewhere else.
Some decisions are bad whether you are against a premade or not

You expect people in PUG to know that? No. Playing with your premade or a decent PUG is far from what you will get from average PUG. You know how many times when I queue solo I see three people in my group rush to cap our node and the other one engaging Svanir only to get stomped and get it stolen by enemy invading party? When you PUG you will encounter warriors who cant press anything else than 100 blades button. You will encounter glass cannon elementalists trying to snipe you with their staff skills. You will encounter thieves who apparently got all they keyboard keys bound to Heartseeker. And so on and so forth. Such teams will never win vs. a premade. And such teams needs to be separated from good teams in queues. Becouse it does not matter if you are a gosu gamer or a monkey. You should still get your portion of fun, just on a different level of rewards gained.

My main is an engineer but I also run dungeons on warrior, guardian and soon more classes (I like to mix it). While I understand why warriors or guardians are often prefered for group content I also laugh at kittens kicking other classes from party.

Sure, a team of warriors will steamroll some of the content by using greatswords with 100 blades of skill but encounters in dungeons are varied. When situation doesnt allow to faceroll in melee, warriors turn into lumpy turrets with decent damage but kitten worth of utility. Then you get lots of noobs rerolling warriors to “own” and all they own is themselves. I’ve seen lots of warriors spending their good time in downed state becouse apparently their “100 skills” did not worked as intended. My engineer is doing less damage (assuming I am not competing with a downed/dead warrior) but good luck downing him good Sir. Just nope, with all the utility, control and mobility, engineer is a great survivalist in dungeons. Then I have to run around and keep ressing those brave warriors who tried to “100 skill” a champion Ettin in the face. If I would pick my team for a run, for ranged fights I would take engineer over warrior any day (not saying I will dismiss any of them just becouse of their class).

I am not hating on warriors or any other class. In fact I play all of them and I like all of them for what they are. Balance is not yet perfect but any class can be useful in a dungeon when played properly. Some combinations will be better on some bosses but thats it. Sure, if you want to faceroll Subject Alpha, you can take 4 warriors and 1 guardian, stack on him and use 400 blades. But for example I would say that on Lupicus engi is better from warrior. Unless you try to melee him which is a viable tactic, but 95% will stick to ranged since melee is so error sensitive. And good luck Lupicus Sir with trying to down my engineer. Just… no.

TLDR: People who refuse to take X class to a dungeon are kittens. Ignore them and be done with it. You will meet more reasonable players for sure.

Note: One exception which I would say kittens it a bit and justifies class discrimination is Simin (Dwayna boss in Arah P4). But this fight is poorly designed and I already ranted on it in other thread. She is getting changed btw. so with some luck this issue will be resolved soon.

Yeah. A decent ranger is pain in the kitten when camping on underwater node in Raid on the Capricorn. You just cant take it away from him unless you zerg him. It is good that Capricorn is not part of the “pro” meta but still some minor tweak to their downed’s “3” would be good. As others mentioned, “3” on land is perfectly fine and if its bugged in any way, it should be fixed as well.

No Walking.6349:

So you want to be able to form PUG tourney groups, that are as good as pre-made groups?…..lol ok there bud.

No. I want to be able form PUG group that will fight another PUG group and not a pre-made. PUG-s are just a cannon fodder for premades. In the long run nobody wants to play a role of a fodder.

So I started to queue solo to frees tonight again.

Game #1: us 4 (randoms) vs. they 5 (premade, same guild)
Game #2: us 5 (randoms) vs. they 5 (premade, same guild)
Game #3: us 4 (randoms) vs. they 5 (premade, judging from class setup and teamplay)
Game #4: us 4 (randoms) vs. they 5 (random or premade, cant tell, it was a close game we lost 474vs500, they were either trolling us or really bad).

And you have to wait 5m-10m for each of those fails in a queue.

Please, HELP! I need a hug We need some proper queue system right NOW!

From a casual PvPer perspective I actually like the concept pf hot-join. It allows me to skip the waiting and instantly join the action without fear of getting stomped by some premade. Yes, I will sometimes roll a bad team and I well get stomped regardless, but luck sorts it out in the longer run and for every bad game I will get my good game eventually. I could agree that 8v8 for hot-join might be bad becouse it promotes zerging which destroys the standard meta game. Switch to 5v5 hot-join can be beneficial. However I still prefer for hot-join to remain in place. Unless they can introduce in its place a solo-queue only 5v5 matches with some sort of ELO system trying to balance both teams. Even then, I would miss the zero waiting boon of hot-joins. Current free tournaments? If you solo-queue they a clusterkitten far worse from hot-joins as you get constantly farmed by organized teams which dont have anything better to do (which is also an issue, give those teams something better to do other than pubstomping).

zone.1073:

Frees and paids, no there is no seeding.

In the upcoming monthly tournaments, there will be a Qualifying Point requirement for teams to sign up. This will naturally help filter out inexperienced or unskilled teams. Depending on how strict the QP requirement will be, only the most competitive teams will have the opportunity to sign up.

Upcoming seasonal tournaments will have requirements too (minimum amount of monthly tournament wins, etc). This will also help filter out teams and ensure that the cream of the crop is competing in final rounds.

Well that is all fair. But I was specifically refering to frees. The ruleset you mention will probably consider paids or whatever will be replacing them.

As a solo queuer you can only consider frees atm. And all the concerns I mentioned in original post remains valid.

For instance, my approx. “stats” from tonight. Can be off by 1-2 matches if I forgot something but not much. Played around 7 games in frees, solo queue, doing hotjoin while waiting. Those 7 games, all 7 lost. 4 matches was 100% vs. premades or partials (confirmed on chat by some. given away by guild tags). 3 times my team consisted from 4 players, 1 time we had 3 players. Enemy team was always full. Few times at start of the game I observed my team “sending” 3 people to near cap, someone else going for Svanir. Obvious signes of people not understanding how sPvP works. Meanwhile, enemy team most of the times send one invander, guardian on the central point, other bunker safekeeping home cap etc. Ie. they knew what they were doing. I guess you could say that I had a back luck today. But such experience remains consistent with my solo queue history in sPvP. I very rarely win when I join solo. Most of the times the outcome is already decided within the 1st minute. On the other hand, when I queued with team (didnt done that since a while, last time in November I guess), I remember to have quite positive experience at least in the 1st round. And none of us was really pro at this, more like just few friends joining, our only advantage was voice-comm. So again, I smell some sort of seeding going on. Also, if not seeding, why always the difficulty goes up dramatically when you reach 2nd round? If I queue in team, we stomp 1st round and in 2nd it starts to be serious business. Isnt this becouse both premades were paired vs. “random noobs” in 1st round? Im guessing, perhaps when you solo queue, it finds 5 players, forms a team, and then says “hey, now lets find some premade for you to play against”.

I was wondering. If there is some sort of seeding in the non-paid tournaments? Meaning, for example, that if the system finds a premade, it then seeks out a buch of randoms to match vs. it in 1st round etc. To ensure that there is highest chance that “best” teams will see it to the final round. Pretty much like in normal sports, tenis for example, where high ranked players start vs. lowest ranked and in this way if all bad players will be eliminated fast, only best and most popular players will see it into quarters, semis and finals.

Such system is obviously good in professional sports (marketing reasons) but I would question its viability in a computer game if no sponsored pro-gaming is involved.

The reason I am suspecting something like this might be in place is my game track from free pvp tourneys. When I solo queue I very often get paired vs. a premade team (I judge from either the guild tag or the way they react to game dynamics, ie. they obviously communicate on voice chat). Now obviously I cant be part of a premade if I solo queue so that is OK but I somehow question why I have a feeling that majority of teams I face are premades? Are there so few solo queuers in frees? I also often get a match where my team starts 4v5 and this means a swift loss. At the same time I have NEVER been in a game where enemy team starts in 4 or less. I mean, you could say about bad luck, but when I get 4’rd like, I dont know, 20 times and then I never see enemy team in same situation, it starts to get fishy. So I start to suspect there is some sort of seeding going on behind the scenes. Unless that is already a common knowledge but I am noobish enough to not be aware of it. Yes, I know there is no matchmaking system atm, but that does not negate the possibility of some other form of structurization. I am just curious at this point.

Skyro.3108:

They should really just remove hot join and have the hot joiners solo queue frees once they put matchmaking in for frees. This would solve 2 problems – the hot mess that is hot join and the long free tourney queues.

No. I like the hotjoin where it is, tyvm. It allows me to play few simple casual games when I feel like it. Without queues and all the drama. Just join and play.

As it stands now, free tourneys play looks like this:
Join, wait 4 minutes, get stomped by a premade
Join, wait 5 minutes, get stomped by a premade
Join, wait 4 minutes, get stomped by a premade
Join, wait 4 minutes, start 4v5, loose
Join, wait 6 minutes, get stomped by a premade
Join, wait 5 minutes, even match but you still lose becouse you are bad/whatever
Join, wait 4 minutes, this time they have 1-afker, we win

Meanwhile I could play 10 hotjoin matches and get roughly 50% win ratio and no downtime. Yes, its a bit random, but I take it over free spvp any day.

I dont want to sound condescending but you guys in Anet should really look at how you store our achievements track in your databases. There were already several occurrences over the past few months when people lost their achievement tracks. Some were just a display issue which was later fixed, some were just broken but easy to fix by players (slayers 999 series), some are still broken and not easy (Golden) or impossible (Pumpkin Carver) to fix. If this will continue at this rate, one day some disaster will happen like, I dont know, reset of WvW kills achievements back to 0 or something similar. Take a good look at your scripts and databases before this happens. Thanks.

Amodin.1092:

Pure disappointment and frustration out of this last path – but I guess that is the mentality of the developers – to only develop what 5% of the game population can pass, right? Mad King jumping puzzle was designed this way – why not this?

Just for the record. I would not compare Mad King jumping puzzle to Simin. Failing on JP was completly independent from profession or spec you are playing. It was also 100% up to you to complete it without the need of proper gameplay from other people. If someone failed to do it, I would say tough luck but that is fine. Simin on the other hand is asking you to fight an uphill battle if you bring sub-optimal party setup and/or if someone in your team performs sub-par. Also Mad King was not “bugged” in any way while on Simin there are several mechanics which sometimes behave in a questionable way. I dont dispute the need for content which is hard. I dispute however if the content is too hard in a way which does not belong to the core concept of the game. Manual dexterity on a jumping puzzle is something that belongs in GW2 by design. Simin does not belong in otherwise rather uniform concept of GW2’s dungeoneering.

Malediktus.9250:

There is nothing to laugh about. I am sure I could beat Simin with any given class combination. Only difference is some combinations might need 1-3 phases more but thats it.

Killing the trash groups is easy, if I would have to guess it would take about 15seconds per group. We do it this way, we go behind an edge so all trash group mobs go into one spot, guardian puts up wall of reflection against the projectiles and 4 warriors dps on it. If you try it you will be amazed how fast and easy the trash groups become.
The way the line of sight works in this game already small edges will break LOS and the enemies will stack up in one spot directly infront you.

You are again trying to prove something using an example with team using 4 warriors and 1 guardian? Fast and easy. I fear you might be trolling good Sir. You are min-maxing with that setup, and I am assuming all 5 players are way above average in terms of game skill.

This game is not balanced in PvE class performance. Perhaps a bit better in PvP but still I guess many people will find several flaws like in any game. The point is, it does not need to be balanced in PvE. I dont care if some other class is doing 50% more DPS from other. The game design should make it irrelevant for progress. Simin is one of the rare cases where it is not the true. Sure you can compensate with superior skill and experience but still you are making this harder on yourself when not doing it with optimal setup. Another example, Lupicus, you can play with him all day long if people know how to avoid damage. He will die eventually even if you are doing DPS of a sponge. So will all other bosses. Apart from Simin. Her mechanics might be nice but IMO they are a bit overtuned compared to what all other bosses in game are demanding. Make her a separate boss in some challenge dungeon? Sure, why not. Make her a random boss that kittenblocks your random team without reason? No. At this point the Dungeon Master achievement should be renamed to Simin Master.

People complaining about nerfs to Simin and making content the “omg free loot” should rethink again which game they are playing. Or at least IMO there is a conflict between certain concepts of how game is working and what is it’s intended goal.

There are certain other games, names of which you should know well, where progressing through content of increasing difficulty gives you some bragging rights and gradually more powerful loot. Or perhaps not to you as entity but more to the guild you are representing becouse any tougher challenges are always a group content with the toughest ones reserved only for like 1% (often less) of game’s population. This all spawns different layers of competition. Like who does most damage, who has best gear, who killed some boss first etc. etc. Now those are all elements that are OK if you enjoy this type of goals but as far as I remember, they were never a part of the Guild Wars franchise. And as far as I remember, GW2 manifesto ensured us that, if anything, this will remain to be the case.

Now what is Simin? Is it too hard? Probably not. In fact, for the group of 5 prepared and skilled individuals this boss will be underwhelming, like pretty much everything that they will encounter in GW2. But there is one flaw in its design IMO. This boss fundamentally differs from anything else you encounter in game and from no apparent reason. All other encounters in GW2 could be summarized with one word – survive. If you learn to survive, you will emerge victorious. This sort of design was a natural effect when resigning from the trinity model. Why no boss in GW2 has enrage timer, a mechanic which is so popular in most other MMO-s? Wait there is one. And its called Simin. She will not enrage and 1-shot you, but every micro-cycle of her “vanish” is an enrage timer on its own which will reset the fight when not treated with proper speed and dps numbers in response. When this sort of mechanic is introduced to the game, we start to require new tools which otherwise would not be needed. Like damage meters for example. As of now, in GW2 you will know that you have a bad teammate if he is getting downed constantly. That is your indicator and not getting downed is an elementary thing that GW2 player must master. In “that other game” an equivalent of such mastery would be how to deal the best damage I can. This further pushes us into shady grounds like class balance and elitism. If all I need to do is learn how to stay alive with my class and deal some damage or provide support, the concept of “play with what you want” remains viable. Bosses like Simin which are in concept closer to designs of “those other games” are breaking that principle.

In GW1 I could complete the entire content of PvE while playing solo. Including the hardest things like hard modes of Slaver’s Exile or Mallyx runs. The source of prestige were grindy titles like “God Walking Among Mere Mortals” and to be honest I never expected GW2 to be different. Things like legendary weapon or achievement points are just a long grind and nothing else. I think that was the intention. The “no grind” philosophy from manifesto remains true and it concerns the fact that you dont need to grind to have a viable character to play (ie. gear). Again, bosses like Simin are messing with this. You are an engineer? Oh well, tough luck, GTFO. Or at least that is how you will be treated by PUGs trying to beat Simin. It took some time to solo in GW1 and it was more difficult from playing with a team of skilled friends but it worked. GW2 introduces content which is not doable solo (unless gimicky or not trully intended by designers, like warrior soloing Lupicus) so I need to rely on my team. That is cool as long as we stay away from natural elitism that plagues other MMO games. Trying to kill Simin and kicking 10 people from your group on the way (becouse they obviously suck since the boss is not dead yet, the hell with the fact that they are never getting killed, they understand how sparks and tears works and that they still do damage, but NO, the boss vanished on us at 10% HP, damage is too low, KICK THEM) is bull*** and IMO does not belong in a GW game.

To be honest Simin is the only boss in GW2 on which I wish I could have access to damage meters. To see if we dont have someone in the group who is doing 50% of damage he should during the burn phase. I think this a problem becouse in general I am delighted by the fact that GW2 is not about damage bars and I always protest the ideas to put meters into it. There is this other game for people who likes this style.

I am lucky enough to have a full berserker warrior alt so at least I can get a spot in a team aiming for her. But I imagine someone running, say a necro or an engi might not be so lucky. In fact, I like my engineer in Arah. I did one path with it. Good control and pretty nice on Lupicus. But I would not dare to bring it on Simin. Maybe just to throw tears but mesmer is so much better for it (time warp).

OK, could someone please explain one thing. We had a group which lacked the DPS to bring her to 0% after using the 4-1 method. She restealthed on us again at around 10% on best try. So we figured we will just run the 5 sparks fast after that and kill her before she goes back to stealth again or just wear her down over time like that. We did the 5 sparks run OK and she appeared back at around 40% HP (was below half HP for sure) but only to stealth on us again after merely ~15 seconds which I measured looking at my cooldown which I used when she appeared. Other people in group could confirm that observation.

W managed to bring her to maybe 20-30% during those 15 seconds which was worth kitten becouse if we would run 5 sparks again, she would repop at over 50% pretty much resetting the fight. This was just soul shattering and after that the group decided to leave after spending entire evening learning that boss and fine-tuning the class squad.

WHY did she vanished after 15 seconds again if she appeared below 50% HP? What sort of sick DPS you would need to overcome such healing rate? Was our encounter bugged? I dig through all info google can serve me but I cant find nothing that could give me a clue.

This thread concerns the [EU] servers. I noticed a similar one but it mostly contained people from [NA] so I decided to create a new one.

Hey. Im looking for a team who will help me complete The Ruined City of Arah explorable dungeon. This would pretty much be close to regular runs with the additional gold fee that you will charge (name your price as long as its reasonable). So some extra free coin on top of standard loot/badges never hurts, right?

To explain better. I am a fairly experienced player with ~800h played, ~5200 achievement points and multiple runs on all other dungeons and fractals. The reason I never did Arah is becouse it was bugged and rarely visited for some time and after that I was focused on other vantures in game. Right now I am trying to finally complete those last missing paths but everywhere I look, people always require you to be experienced, knowing how to do speed-runs etc. Otherwise you get kicked faster than you can manage to type another sentence with explanation. I cant get any sort of experience if without it I cant even get into the bloody place. I could try with a guild I guess, but mine is not interested in doing this sort of content. So after few weeks of trying to find some Arah group (without lying how super experienced with this dungeon I am, I prefer to not cheat my way around) and failing, I decided that perhaps I can hire someone to help me out.

I can find my way around inside pretty fast I think as long as someone wont mind to stop for 30 seconds and explain my basic assignments before tougher bosses/areas. Stand here, press that, kill that, simple stuff. I am fairly decent at GW2, at least for the level that is needed in PvE. I can come with an engineer (support) or warrior (damage oriented) both with full exotic gear, depending from what you prefer. No need to get all the paths done at once, no need to do them all fast. I’ll be content as long as I will finally be able to complete this dungeon within next few weeks and not getting instant-kicked from every group each time I tell I never did Arah explorable before.

Feel free to contact my on priv or directly here and we can discuss your terms. Any help would be greatly appreciated

As an alternative, if you are also a player with a similar situation to mine and you are looking for a group, feel free to contact on this board or in-game (forums prefered as I am often invisible in game when doing PvP to avoid hate whispers) and perhaps we could arrange a team. I might have 1 or 2 friends willing to join.

PS. I know about GW2LFG. Its a great tool. I use it often and I am trying with Arah but it is not effective in this particular case.

Also worth noting that the points from this achievement are not counting to total. Maxed Pumpkin Carving is worth 17 points and that is exactly how many points I lost after logging in post-patch.

Revolution.6301:

Awe.1096:

The solution is easy and was already implemented in GW1. Hard mode. In GW1 you could enter to every single zone in game with hard mode toggled. Same thing could be done in GW2 where every zone could have a mirror version filled with level 80 mobs, events and resource nodes. Perhaps it will happen one day. HM was added to GW1 few years after game release and it brought some life back into it. Might be the case for GW2 in the future.

that would be difficult since unlike guildwars this game is not ‘instanced’. No comepletly different animals + if you make a hardmore orr then the Tunnel grind will still be better.

Oh but it is instanced. Each time you enter a different zone you have a loading screen. You could simply make two different versions of each zone hiding behind that loading screen. Normal one and hard one. Also as for Orr, perhaps the hard Orr would be better in terms of profit per hour but not overwhelmingly better. Right now if you go to for example Metrica Province, you will not find there orichalcum nodes or top tier crafting mats dropping from mobs. No chance for lv80 yellow drops as well. In hard Metrica Province you would see those. And if hard Orr would provide 10% better yield? Honestly? I would not give a kitten

Revolution.6301:

Grind doesn’t make up a game since effectively all games that are an RPG in some form have grind (even Dark Souls) but its how its applied is what makes or breaks game.

My friend and I yesturday was discussing on how detailed and intricate the game world looks but you are stuck in a city (LA) or the island (Orr). The devs put so much detail into the game it seems wasteful for those 2 areas to be the areas people are at the most. I was just looking around the beginning area and was struck by the level of detail they put into it.

All of us just want to see the world be put the use to its fullest, only less then 10% of it.

The solution is easy and was already implemented in GW1. Hard mode. In GW1 you could enter to every single zone in game with hard mode toggled. Same thing could be done in GW2 where every zone could have a mirror version filled with level 80 mobs, events and resource nodes. Perhaps it will happen one day. HM was added to GW1 few years after game release and it brought some life back into it. Might be the case for GW2 in the future.

Naoko.7096:

I have to be honest.
GW2 end-game mechanic are far worst than traditional mmorpgs.
In traditional mmorpg, when you grind, you feel it’s worth it.
In GW2, there’s no point of grinding except extra gold.

Again I shall disagree. In “traditional mmorpgs” if you dont grind, you will fail to keep up with adequate power curve and in the end have problems with finding people wanting to play with you. I spent thousands of hours grinding in WoW and thanks to that my gear was always good, I was able to do good DPS/healing/whatever thanks to that. I felt pressure to grind. If would stop, I would quickly fall from the special snowflake podium. In GW2 I do not feel this pressure. I see this as a good thing.

ATTHWSM.7840:

GW2… literally the ONLY game in history where the players ARE MAD that everyone isnt equal.

Your serious? Your mad that someone better than you, with more time spent, and an overall better grasp of mechanics HAS BETTER gear than you? Are you serious?

This game needs rewards, and NOT SKINS. If your banging out FotM lvl 30 with an amazing premade group… (which im nowhere near) then yes, YOU deserve more gold, better items, cooler skins… whatever.

How does someone having more gold, or better items, or cooler skins than YOU, directly hurt YOUR game play? Good lord GW2… grow up.

Well to be fair in terms of gear power and stats GW2 was marketed as a game where achieving the ceiling is relatively easy and grind-free. As opposed to many other MMO games where you need to constantly grind to not fall behind the gear curve. This is how GW1 worked and this is how GW2 is working for the most part. I am a bit confused about the pink gear casus but we shall see what A.net will do about that this year.

Now as for OP and his complain that this game is grindy. Yes, in some way it is. GW1 also had some extreme grinds. But there is a key difference from, lets say, WoW grind. You dont have to do it in order to remain competetive. The grind for legendary weapon is extreme but what shall you get for completing it other than nice skin and an achievement? Nothing. Or at least nothing that, if not completed, would get you stomped in PvE or PvP. Therefore, as some people in this thread already mentioned, start enjoying the game. Dont focus only on things that provide best gold/karma/items per hour. Focus on things that you think would be fun to do at this particular moment and dont think if it will bring you less gold than farming Orr. I play GW2 in this way and even though I spent a lot of time with it, I am not bored and I am looking for more. I would quit months ago if all I would do would be farming skeletons in Orr.

Yes, of course. Classic rebuttal. It is all L2P issue, the elem who stomped me is just a better player and I am bad. OK, OK, I get it. But in such case please enlighten me. Why is that I never (or once in a blue moon) meet an engineer who is a better player from me? I mean, not a single good player rolled an engineer? Why is that? Also, why there is so few great players playing rangers? Perhaps good players dont like pets? Do pets smell bad? Or maybe good players dont like to wear leather armor?

I had my share of grievances from thieves for example but it mostly concerned WvW where glass cannon thiefs were roaming and instagibbing unsuspecting players. Not fun either. But regardless from this, I am really a great fan of current meta where all good skilled players picked elementatlists. Well some of them also mesmers, but mostly elementalist. All those players who rolled bunker elems are so skilled that I cant kill them 1v1. Clearly a L2P issue. Oh well, at least for the time being I can roflstomp all the bads who rolled engineers and rangers. God, those players are so bad. All of them are total noobs, this must be their 1st video game they play haha. I love owning noobs.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

This is the most elitist sounding topic I’ve ever read. I’m tired of listening to children discuss the ONLY viable build the ele has and tearing it up because they want to use their cookie cutter strategies against the elementalist. Everyone against the ele tells their story which nearly always involves them playing some glass cannon build (not an ele) and dying slowly. Everyone for the ele actually plays the elementalist and backs their information up with statistics or factual information.

So what is the hard counter to elementalist D/D bunker? Please teach me becouse if there is one, I will gladly reroll it instantly to fight with all those elems running rampant now in PvP. Even if it means being weaker in other aspects of the game.

KieronWolf.5108:

I still find it funny that this was considered the worst class in the game a few months ago when nothing has really changed for it up until now.

This is becouse after the game started most average players tried to play elementalists as archetyped in other similar games. Mage, glass cannon yadda yadda. Not all of them but “average player” is what constitutes the majority.

And such eles are honestly a bit weak, I myself considered eles to be weak becouse they were very squishy and their damage was easily dodged. However since the D/D bunker ele meta got more popular (I cant really say when this happened) eles suddenly became the worst nightmare for me in PvP. Since they are FotM spec now, you get tons of eles in games. And like 90% of them are bunker D/D. I agree that their damage is not amazing. But honestly, trying to kill one is as hard as trying to kill bunker guard. Except bunker guard does even less damage so you can actually outlast him when playing safe. Trying to outlast an elem? No kitty way. I long abandonded hopes to go 1v1 vs an ele. If I see one around the node and no one around to help me, I just go somewhere else. Guardian warding the node? I still go for it. Couple that with amazing mobility, group buffs and decent damage. They can easily escape a fight if overwhelmed which makes attempts to fight them in the open field a pointless waste of time.

I can agree that this whole situation may be caused by only one game type available. Maybe in some other game types it would be different. But then again, what game types? For instance I can imagine in CTF play D/D bunker elem would again be the best pick.

I also agree that eles require more skill to play well than say thief or warrior. But IMO this does not mean that higher skill ceiling should mean better overall result. In a single player game or some casual party game, yes. But this is not how a competetive game should be designed.

daydream.2938:

I solo Q for tournies alot. and its not infrequent that someone on my team notices we are fighitng a premade and decides to afk.

Which is so annoying as it completely messes up the rest of your teammates. HOpefully a matchmaking system would cut down on this. I dont mind fighting tougher opponents, but i hate having teammates who constantly give up/afk or outright quit.

Why are you surprised? I know this kind of giving up is not cool but with current matchmatking (or lack of it) it is often the best thing you can do for your own sanity. I also sometimes queue to solo tournament. 1st round is a lottery, you will get a premade around half the times I would say. Second round you get a premade almost all the times. Getting to 3rd round while joining solo is a rare event to behold.

I often check enemy setup at the start and if they are running some cookie cutter bunker/mesmer squad or similar you already know its a premade which joined frees to farm noobs. Such games usually end with scores 500-50 or something like that. Then you have some kitten from enemy team spam your chat with things like “easy”, “noobs”, “uninstall GW2” etc. To spare yourself some rage best thing to do is to just go afk for 5 minutes.

I am waiting for some sort of matchmaking system becouse as it is now, hotjoin is the most enjoyable mode for me mostly becouse my win ratio oscilates around 50%. This should also be the case in tournament mode (if it would use some sort of ELO system or whatnot) but sadly it is not yet the case.

Calae.1738:

I’m surprised you could tolerate this kind of gameplay for more than 5 minutes.

Steal, C&D, Backstab.

I would of been bored in 30 seconds.

The example you provide is perhaps a bit extreme but to address your point, I for one get bored with the opposite kind of gameplay. The most boring playstyle in GW2 for me is bunker play. Which sadly is the dominant meta in tPvP and recently also more and more in sPvP. You just sit there like a rock, tanking all that comes at you and slowly wearing down you enemy by poking him with a hammer. I enjoy the high-risk-high-reward playstyle much more. Which is why the current state of the game (go bunker or die) is worrying me.

Hey. Is there any particular area where I should look for those “snow dispensers”? I only found that one mound of snow in LA crafter district. I wandered a bit here and there but so far nothing else. Someone knows where can I find more or are they not up yet?

wildcode.5403:

and again one shot by something, was on the presents jumping up to the end box …

Well. You are nearly there! In your OP you stated that “only master jumpers can complete”. So was that statement false or are you a master jumper after all?

Eslyn.4682:

I’d say four hours of trying is pretty patient. I also don’t think it is asking too much to want to complete holiday event things. I still haven’t gotten through the jumping puzzle myself.

You dont need to complete the JP to get the meta achievement. The rewards from JP are also insignificant. Take it as an optional challenge. You are not loosing anything if you fail it. And you have like 3 weeks to do it, not 3 hours. You will do it eventually. And if not, you will do it next year.

Jaga.2084:

Halloween all over again. No thanks. It’s a chore, not fun. I want to disable this information tab on the right side of the screen. I do not want to do this jumping “puzzle” reflex test or the verbal abuse PvP Arena. I like the less stressful winter activities in other mmo’s more, and, guess what, I’ll do them and stop playing GW2 during this time.

Less stressful = easier? I guess. But please. Stop asking developers to keep nerfing everything that doesnt just fold when we look at it. Its a plague of modern games. There are several things in various games which I cant complete becouse they are too hard for me. But I just keeo trying to improve and finally beat it or I walk away knowing that I am not good enough at this particular test (which really doesnt make me a “noob” or a “ret***” or whatever). Its not like GW2 is too hard for you to level up or get exotics gear. Its just an optonal jumping puzzle! A challange mode give or take.