Guild Wars 2

It’s so simple! Make Mesmer portals only able to teleport X amount of players (5 to me seems reasonable this way if someone still wants to Mesmer bomb they can coordinate for a highly tactical strike of mesmers to multi-portal bomb).

In combination with fixing the climbable terrain in WvW I believe this will balance out one of WvW’s defining balance issues.

Or they could pull a Kill Zone and have low res textures the farther away the object/player, its not like we’ll see every spec on that armor when its barely in draw distance anyhow.

To be honest before this AMA I was very concerned with GW2’s general direction but a lot of questions which needed answers got them. There was no silly PR cover up al la BioWare, there was no arrogance. there the “hey guys, this didn’t turn out exactly as we envisioned it. We’re working on fixing it.”

Some people might not find that reassuring but I do, it was down to earth and it was communication which was needed.

So from now on when people start screaming negativity on the forums I’ll simply go grab a bag of popcorn and watch the daytime soap without having to pay for cable.

Loading.4503:

Looks nice , but it looks like you have oven mitts on IMO

Yeah the gauntlets are a bit too poofy. Any suggestions on which would work best?

Quentin Fields.1295:

Raincrow.1840:

3) to avoid excessive repair costs (if you’re broke)

Excessive? How broken are you people in game really?

It costs 10s if i got 1 item on redly broken.I can get 5x 6x more than that atleast before i have to pay 10s.

I’ve drained my funds down to 40s before :p so I could see it being a reasonable way to deal with repair bills when you’re that stinking broke…but then again I’m a firm believer that WvW shouldn’t have repair costs because the travel time is punishment enough.

Edge.4180:

I’m a little disappointed that questions regarding grinding, ascended gear, and ANet’s philosophy on those two points seem to be dominating most of the Q&A. It’s like.. how many ways can the same questions be asked and answered? Let’s move on to something else, already.

Agreed but at this point I don’t think anyone has the right to kitten about Ascended gear anymore: Anet knows its a total grind and mostly a catch 22 in terms of where the ascended items drop, they are fixing it. A Q+A session where this information is repeated over and over is worth it for a definitive answer on the Ascended gear topic.

Raincrow.1840:

So what’s the point of it? To make sure the enemy doesn’t get a badge?

From my standpoint there’s only 3 reasons.

1) to grief the griefers
2) to combat the culling
3) to avoid excessive repair costs (if you’re broke)

Yeah FaDe opened it up today. If I wasn’t so tied up in WvW and keeping our last keep in EB safe I would have been there. Oh well next time.

I’ll be honest: on occasion I will do the ALT F4 but only when culling creates some silly zerg issues or if I get ganked by griefers who are sitting in the EB jp doing nothing but waiting at the chandelier room to ruin someone’s effort.

If I got killed fair and square then the person deserves those badges from my death and I deserve to pay the repair bill.

They really are a great guild, I was part of ONXY but there’s too much drama in that guild, while that might be cool for some people it definitely wasn’t cool for me

I hadn’t noticed that we couldn’t see custom color schemes, usually I’m neck deep in BP blood :p

The mat prices will come down I figure its around the peak of what the prices will be so I sold my ecto and powerful blood, made a easy 12g for when the market normalizes.

Abigor.4952:

Had an issue sometimes in wvwvw when grasping vines didn`t immobilize the enemy when he was running, instead they appeared behind (like the point the enemy was the moment I started casting), so for me it`s an unreliable skill.

I think last patch they fixed this, there was something about it in there anyways.

Been working on my ultimate thief look for a while (still need my legendary+celestial and possibly abyss dye) and now that I’m almost there I need some opinions. Any opinion is welcome but please, give reasons and if you think something can be improved provide the suggestion to improve it. Thanks xD

Lokreas.8421:

BabelFish! Glad to hear its been going great for you guys. That’s the spirit, never give up. If everyone just kept being down about the situation looking bad then no one would have any fun.

Although I do have this particular question. Do you mind if I ask what class and race you play? Just been curious. Wanted to get a good mental image of you.

Of course I don’t mind :p
I play a Sylvari thief. I’m pretty easy to recognize, I haven’t seen anyone with the same armor style/color scheme: here’s a screenie.

I got on a catapult today and scored dozens of kills, the trick is to alternate between gravel and the cow carcass attacks, bypassing a portion of the attack cooldown and allowing you to “double shot” so I’m not sure I follow on that part, care to explain why it needs improvement?

Otherwise I agree…the workers may be a little much but its a neat concept.

Activating most signets doesn’t interrupt your dps, they don’t have cast times and don’t interrupt the cycle of attacking you’re currently doing (I use this in my PW build to regen initiative in mid PW thanks to signet use).
Not sure how you came to the conclusion they do interrupt the dps unless you were looking at Signet of Malice?

I find that most mesmers are easy now, however once in a while I run into a masmer who’s shatter deals a good 8-10k dmg to me while I wear full exotics with power/tough/vit stats. Its not often and I assume they’re so fragile if I ever sneezed on them they’d die though.

There’s fountains of stealth in the maze that give u 5 mins of stealth each. This should help bar ganking in the entrance or in the chandelier room.

Today was epic on EB. BP constantly tried to take our GoM keep, even with larger numbers they just couldn’t do it. We funneled them and when they finally forced me off that catapult and shortly after breached a wall we pushed them back again…and again…and again.

It felt like someone needed to scream “Spartans! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty…for tonight we dine in HELL!”.

And after that BP gank team we decimated in the puzzle earlier we all had a pretty good time. BP, AR and GoM were all waving each other through and generally just having a good time.

The badge rate is somewhat low but it didn’t stop me from farming over 50 of the bad boys today….mind you I had to kill a good 100+ players to do it.

Imo I think the major issue is that the Invader’s Armor is overpriced. If you want that legendary the 500 Badges is probably one of the easier (and most fun) parts of that grind.

Just played a HUGE WvWvW session today GoM and we were vs BP+AR (and their unholy alliance).

As a thief I managed to rack in well over 100 kills today. Now what did it mostly for me were these tips.

1) defend with the short bow and only use cluster bombs from the ramparts. Cluster bombs will deal 1.5k damage to the bunker builds and 4-6k damage to anyone else. It literally makes you a walking ballista. If you target those who go down not only do you do your side a massive, massive service but you’ll rake in the kills (and therefore badges).

2) Whatever weapon set you use as your secondary make sure you’re engaging when its risk free. If you’re running S/P this means you don’t go “ kitten I has a pistol whip. I press 33333333.” This means when you see someone out of position you get in, you mess them up and if you can, you finish the job…if not let the beefy guardians do the last bit of work.

3) form a gank team of 5 people and go take supply camps and cut off the reinforcements that trickle into the battles (the dead will have to eventually res and run back so kill them while they do it!). If you notice X server camping the EB jumping puzzle that is a massive opportunity to farm badges as well.

4) If your server has a defendable position that funnels the enemy get on siege equipment and start blasting away.

Unfortunately the Thief utilities in WvWvW aren’t overly good beyond shadow refuge, its more about the general goal and weapon set.

darkrequiem.6258:

You’re making me jealous now Babel. Must always be up against the wrong servers.

Try waiting until super early in the morning and weekends are never a good time for the jp unless your server is dominating and its peak hours for them.

And to be fair my server has issues with BP doing the problems you’re having. AR doesn’t do it nearly as often so I’ve figured out the best times to do the puzzle to avoid BP’s peak hours.

I’d use it, hopefully they include it next patch.

Eh in the later dungeons, especially Arah you can’t go as a glass thief bar something like P/P or SB. Lupus will poop all over you for even attempting it which is why a great deal of the time thieves are under valued in dungeons: because you can’t avoid it all and thusly you need some survivability.

[Edit by Moderator, personal fight removed]

Vawn.3041:

BabelFish.7234:

While mildly inappropriate that name is fairly tame.
If the name is racist, sexist or includes swears…okay it deserves a report but if its implying something and you’re offended by the implication I’d say that seems more like a personal problem and you’ve got more to worry about then a silly video game.

Had it also occurred to you that this might be a reference to a character in Austin Powers?

Hey BableFish,

Thank you for the response.

Briefly, to keep this on topic – The user interface should provide a way of reporting pet names. This is the point of discussion.

BabelFish.7234:

While mildly inappropriate that name is fairly tame.
If the name is racist, sexist or includes swears…okay it deserves a report

ArenaNet would ultimately decide what is acceptable, of course, as they do character names right now. But we need a method of reporting.

BabelFish.7234:

but if its implying something and you’re offended by the implication I’d say that seems more like a personal problem and you’ve got more to worry about then a silly video game.

I appreciate your response, but I’m confused about this part. Was your intention polite?

Thanks

-Vawn

I agree with the point of the discussion. There should be a way to report something like this.

My intention was to point out you can’t please everyone and some people will be over-sensitive.

Its rare that you see people lead another player in the right direction?
I always do that if we wave each other by. There’s no need to be a prick in the jp, most of us there are trying to get our legendary or invader’s gear.

Scootabuser.4915:

As soon as you get good at PvE you’ll realize how useless vitality, and how COMPLETELY useless toughness is, on a thief; wishing you had gone berserkers.

Also if your going to try to talk scientific, it’s not LUCK its PROBABILITY. And yes averaging in probabilities is a scientific way of determining accurate things.

Vit/Toughness are important, you can’t kill stuff if you’re dead because you have 10-12k hp and were one shotted by X mob/boss.

The trick is not over investing into said stats hence why you see people talking about using things such as Valk gear+Berserker’s to give them some cushioning vs things such as condition damage.

[Edit by Moderator, personal fight removed]

sorrow.2364:

BabelFish.7234:

“I am talking about weapon sets, to me there is no doubt that thieves are the most mobile utilizing utilities and weapon sets together.”

Good for you, ignoring comments which dictate someone’s opinion.
Have a nice life, I certainly won’t be contributing to it any longer.

“Every S/x weapon set has better mobility than any warrior in this world, without counting any utility or steal itself.”

If it is your way of discussing about something, I don’t see the point of making this thread.
If you wanted to enforce your opinion and nothing else, you should have sent an email to ArenaNet telling them your surely founded opinion or talked to yourself in front of a mirror, not opening a topic in a public forum and then avoiding any form of argument.

Oh I’m willing to discuss it with people, just not you. I know your type and I know its best to avoid people like you. I don’t need that kind of drama in my life.

In case it wasn’t clear last time I’ll say it one last time: have a nice life Bye.

You need to pick a time when you know people will be more civil to do it then.
2-6am weekdays is usually a good time as most people on at that point aren’t out for ganking the jp.

If you try during peak hours and are getting ganked-well kinda your own fault.

Had a jolly time with a bunch of friends ganking BP all over EB last night. If you catch them unorganized they’re total push overs…it’s only when you run into the team speak ones that things get hairy.

sorrow.2364:

BabelFish.7234:

Whatever dude, you can continue to get uppity and I’ll continue eating cheesies and not feeding you your drama fill of the day.

You made a clearly unfounded and non-sense statement and now you’re trying to give it a reason with weak arguments, in order to make the thieves look like the weak one and warriors as the op who needs a nerf. And there you are with that sentence whose clear scope is to avoid to answer my reasoning.

Well done.

Every S/x weapon set has better mobility than any warrior in this world, without counting any utility or steal itself.

“I am talking about weapon sets, to me there is no doubt that thieves are the most mobile utilizing utilities and weapon sets together.”

Good for you, ignoring comments which dictate someone’s opinion.
Have a nice life, I certainly won’t be contributing to it any longer.

While mildly inappropriate that name is fairly tame.
If the name is racist, sexist or includes swears…okay it deserves a report but if its implying something and you’re offended by the implication I’d say that seems more like a personal problem and you’ve got more to worry about then a silly video game.

Had it also occurred to you that this might be a reference to a character in Austin Powers?

I’m not entirely sure, almost everyone but warriors got nerfs last patch so I’d assume so but check their forums.

Tulisin.6945:

BabelFish.7234:

Koeril.2057:

Tulisin.6945:

Non-sPvP gear and food gives more potential for precision stacking which is fairly important for the initiative-on-crit trait.

I’m still not seeing an init-on-crit trait … ? The closest I found is “Initial Strike” which he doesn’t have in the build, plus it is a flat 7% on strike rather than crit. I’m wondering if this was why I was having trouble?

Probably, I don’t use it because its a % on a % which is unreliable,

It is 20 % trigger chance, which with a 50 % crit rate ought to pull in about 1 init per PW on average. Plus it isn’t like there is much opportunity cost with it being a passive.

It still matters because its not guaranteed which in turn relies on luck. For the sake of testing you don’t rely on luck, you go with guarantees to prove a thesis.

Now if you prefer the trait in a combat situation, great but we are talking about a isolated testing environment.

Tulisin.6945:

BabelFish.7234:

I’m just surprised that thieves who are supposed to have the greatest mobility don’t.

Whether the most mobile thief weapon set is the most mobile weapon set in the game is debatable.

Whether thieves are the most mobile profession in the game is not. Between utilities and things like the Acrobatics traitline, it isn’t even close with very very few exceptions. Mobility heavy elementalists can keep up with your average thief not specialized for it, for instance, but a mobility-specialized thief is all but uncatchable.

I am talking about weapon sets, to me there is no doubt that thieves are the most mobile utilizing utilities and weapon sets together.

sorrow.2364:

BabelFish.7234:

Half of what you mentioned has nothing to do with mobility -.-
And no, it wasn’t.
GS offers the Warrior amazing mobility which at the very least is on par with the Thief.
I haven’t even mentioned Elementals and how they can be just as mobile too.

Only the shadow art trait has nothing to do with mobility, but that was an answer to the guy who said that warriors have a trait which removes immobilize.

So, if you are not exaggerating, you have no objective view, because it is clear that thieves mobility isn’t comparable to the mobility of any profession in the game.

Whatever dude, you can continue to get uppity and I’ll continue eating cheesies and not feeding you your drama fill of the day.

sorrow.2364:

Bluebird.1890:

Sorrow:

Whirlwind attack has about the range of an Infil arrow. Bladetrail has a double cripple on it, and it can hit a ridiculous amount of targets. Rush is basically the distance of a shadowstep.

And with Mobile Strikes, the movement abilities remove all movement impairment.

So, yes, they have some ridiculous mobility.

Whirlwind attack has half the range of Infiltrator’s Arrow.
Bladetrail isn’t a movement skill.
Rush doesn’t give you the ability to get back after you rushed and have also a pretty high travel time compared to thieves’ teleports.

Infiltrator’s Strike and Shadowstep remove conditions and doesn’t need a trait.
Withdraw and Roll for Initiative remove all mobility impairment conditions.
A Tier 1 Shadow Art trait remove a condition each time you go into stealth (actually 2 if you stay into stealth for 3 seconds).

So thieves have far more mobility than warriors, also defensive mobility rather than offensive.

BabelFish.7234:

I’m just surprised that thieves who are supposed to have the greatest mobility don’t.

This is a clear exaggeration.

Half of what you mentioned has nothing to do with mobility -.-
And no, it wasn’t.
GS offers the Warrior amazing mobility which at the very least is on par with the Thief.
I haven’t even mentioned Elementals and how they can be just as mobile too.

Koeril.2057:

Tulisin.6945:

Non-sPvP gear and food gives more potential for precision stacking which is fairly important for the initiative-on-crit trait.

I’m still not seeing an init-on-crit trait … ? The closest I found is “Initial Strike” which he doesn’t have in the build, plus it is a flat 7% on strike rather than crit. I’m wondering if this was why I was having trouble?

Probably, I don’t use it because its a % on a % which is unreliable,

I’m just surprised that thieves who are supposed to have the greatest mobility don’t.

…you ran people off a cliff, caused 1 to die that way and one logged off.

This was by far the most epic troll ever.

wwfam.2495:

Kirrund.2654:

My god your screen. How do you see anything with all that clutter? You’re like looking through a port hole.

like a port hole full of dead gom bodies

And that is why I don’t zerg very often with GOMMIES.
Without a commander I find our server is like a bunch of virgin’s on prom night, lots of flailing and not much else. Heck, even with a commander sometimes its that bad.

Don’t listen to everyone saying how OP the thief is, they’re just butthurt because they have glass builds and are undergeared so backstab does 8-10k dmg to them.

Thiefs ARE good but they prey on players who don’t know what they are doing (and the stealth bug makes them invisible for longer then they are supposed to be which is a HUGE issue in WvW)

Elementals in PvE are squishy but good, Thiefs in PvE are god-like when played properly.

Tulisin.6945:

BabelFish.7234:

Tulisin.6945:

Koeril.2057:

Been trying out this build in the mists and I can’t seem to find any such rotation that gives you the ability to spam PW and keep it going for a minute – especially with haste thrown in.

Roll in – PW – haste – couple PW’s – steal – couple PW’s – signets – couple PW’s – no initiative left

Not an exact rotation, but this is generally how it goes. Am I missing something?

Non-sPvP gear and food gives more potential for precision stacking which is fairly important for the initiative-on-crit trait. That said, OP said he was going power/toughness for gear so if he was able to pull out enough initiative to PW for a minute it should be doable in The Mists. Also note that he may have been consistently using PW against 3 targets, which would result in much better initiative returns.

All that aside, there isn’t much practical use for being able to spam PW forever. Use it for the evade/hit volume, but you can auto attack for more DPS/mobility in most situations.

He forgot that Signet Use gives 2 initiative back, Fast Recovery gives some back and natural init regen as well.

The guy I was responding to stated he used OP’s build and had signets as part of his rotation, so he should already be utilizing those things except Fast Recovery, which apparently the OP can do one-minute PW spams without.

A minute is a total hyperbole.
At maximum you can spam 11 PW in a row which doesn’t add up to a minute in duration.

If you don’t believe it go into HotM with a toon, trait for Signet Use, Fast Recovery and 15 initiative and without using haste go to a practice dummy and test it.

If you time everything right you’ll do 10 or 11 pistol whips, just remember stealing with give u 3 initiative, signet use gives u 2 initiative and get a feel for the initiative regen since if you don’t time it right you’ll lose initiative regen to having maxxed initiative. You can practice this on a test dummy.

Bluebird.1890:

Huh? The guardian greatsword has one mobility move (Leap of Faith). On a 15 second cooldown/12 second cooldown traited.

My bad its actually the Warrior.
Point being for a class that’s supposed to be more mobile then the others its surprisingly not as mobile.

I was thinking about hockey a little while ago and it got me to contemplating “couldn’t WvWvW have a league system?”

Essentially twice a year normal WvWvW would be put “on hold” (it wouldn’t actually be on hold, there would just be a new option for lvl 80s to compete in a new WvWvW) and even numbers of level 80s would compete in a tournament of round-robin (highest score wins at the end of the week) until there is semi finals consisting of 4 servers and ultimately a final consisting of 2 servers.

The winner of the tournament would give their server a server-wide set of boons of
(just examples) +25% MF, +25% exp and +25% karma which are all stackable with other boons until X period of time.

This would give lvl 80s something more to do, would encourage server pide and be a window to GW2 becoming a potential esport (balance doesn’t matter, look at LoL and SC2).

The only trick is the tourney would have scheduled times for the matches to take place, would have to consist of equal teams, etc, etc.

Makes a Warrior more mobile then any weapon set a Thief has considering our survivability is directly linked to our mobility.

I believe this is a issue worth looking into.

You could run a S/P+SB thief.
It has decent survivability, high and consistent dps, works well in a zerg with cluster bombs making you a walking ballista (infiltrator’s arrow gives you good mobility as well) and works amazing with a party of 5 roamers (shadow step immboilizes, Pistol Whip stuns/evades, haste makes your burst damage so high its scary-at the cost of mobility-)

When done correctly you turn into a badge farming machine and one of those players that you never-ever want to 1v1 and not because they’re gimmicky using stealth but because they’re tough as nails.

The playstyle is generally use your SB and wait until someone is out of position, then switch to S/P, shadow step in, use PW then Haste and PW 1-2 more times. If things get scary use Shadow Return to teleport out.

In a roaming party you can usually keep your S/P out because you’ll always be on the move, the GS guardian will probably be faster and slow the target down initially then you support by immobilizing and stunning while providing high dps.

at lvl 80 I think 21 precision=1% crit chance.

Tulisin.6945:

Koeril.2057:

Been trying out this build in the mists and I can’t seem to find any such rotation that gives you the ability to spam PW and keep it going for a minute – especially with haste thrown in.

Roll in – PW – haste – couple PW’s – steal – couple PW’s – signets – couple PW’s – no initiative left

Not an exact rotation, but this is generally how it goes. Am I missing something?

Non-sPvP gear and food gives more potential for precision stacking which is fairly important for the initiative-on-crit trait. That said, OP said he was going power/toughness for gear so if he was able to pull out enough initiative to PW for a minute it should be doable in The Mists. Also note that he may have been consistently using PW against 3 targets, which would result in much better initiative returns.

All that aside, there isn’t much practical use for being able to spam PW forever. Use it for the evade/hit volume, but you can auto attack for more DPS/mobility in most situations.

He forgot that Signet Use gives 2 initiative back, Fast Recovery gives some back and natural init regen as well.

When you do the proper rotation you can spam PW 10 times in a row…if you felt inclined to (which you shouldn’t, there’s no reason to do this).

I’ve swapped my Emerald Orichalcum accessories out for berserker’s, otherwise the build is the same and with the higher damage I find its a good WvW build too (you use the SB mostly then when someone is out of position swap to S/P, shadow step in, Haste+PW, take the kill and Shadow Return back after or if things get too hairy).

When farming in PvE I also tend to take Furious Retaliation instead of Signets of Power.

If there was a ton of GoM then why didn’t anyone come when called?
Do I need a commander title for people to not act silly?

Badges are totally RNG

Today in my first bit of WvW my 1st 6 WvW kills got me 2 badges each. I logged off, came back in got 1-2 badges for my next 6 kills, logged off, came back in killed another 20…got 5 badges.