Guild Wars 2

Boreal.9826:

Baladir, I agree. It doesn’t offend me in the slightest. In fact, I take it as a compliment that some players apparently feel the need to “celebrate” a 4v1 victory.

lol /signed

Boreal.9826:

My response was directed to those who apparently take such silliness as a personal insult, and then generalize an entire server because of it.

/signed

Nicely said.

Boreal.9826:

We…..
As far as idiots go, I’ve had my share of being teabagged, danced upon, laughed at, etc, by Mag, DB, and Kain after being caught solo or in a small group roaming around. Often times while being spawn camped. Of course, these folks generally had less skill which makes me think they were probably fairweathers or bandwagoners, rather than dedicated WvW’ers……As an aside, it’s nice that our thread is finally picking up a bit. lol

I guess it is all in the way you alook at it. To me it is not much different than the opposing player celebrating much like someone who has just scored a touchdown. I would be surprised if very many players corpse jumped out of malice. It seems more like clean trash talk to me. It is a way for the victor and vanquished to release some of the adrenaline stirred up by the battle. A way to laugh.

Sometimes when I find myself caught out in the open by 4 players, I might try to tag one and hope they let me 1v1. Or, I might get up and go to the refridgerator and get a soda lol. Or I might try to make a go of it. They might corpse jump me which they and I know is ridiculous because there is not much to celebrate over when you 4v1 someone, so it is a laugh for everyone. They are just being silly.

Sure there is a line somewhere, where ya kind of go, “ok, now you are being an kitten about it.” But, for the most part, I think it’s usually done in fun.

Ikarushka.9564:

RiceRepublic.9271:

Lorelei.3918:

Honestly other then a select few guilds (Oos on Yaks, Kiwi on SBI) everyone has been very respectful and fair playing. There’s always going to be a few rotten apples in the dozen. You just have to know how to take them out

What is “respectful and fair playing?” I don’t understand what you are saying in terms of fair and respectful. If you are talking about we beating 60 Yaks with 20 Kiwi guild members.. that is not being unfair. It’s called teamwork and able to use our characters. Or you may be talking about hitting you guys when Yaks are hitting you guys… That is also not being unfair.. It’s called strategies. We have caught some Yaks trying to hack into keep via wall.. That may be cheating and being unfair. But we have never done anything unfair and not respectful. I really want you to apologize to us Kiwi and take you words back.

There is so much flame bait in your post. Perhaps you guys should discuss it over a PM with a poster you replied to.

Lol, I was going to respond to the original post but now it looks like I am the last one to the party. I don’t know anyone from Kiwi but I did have the pleasure of tagging along with their guild just recently. I was able to see them in action and they run very well. They were a well oiled machine. I hate to use thr old cliche, but that is exactly what came to my mind. They play intellegently. I found their tactics to be flawless and aggressive. I had a blast.

SBI will come back as the server wakes up to the new world, I hope. Many players I think were turned off and displaced by the WvW crowd and T1 style of play we had not too long ago. The current players, guilds, like Kiwi, and our current commanders enjoy a smarter game I think. They certainly play better imo. The zergers who love to run in overwhelming numbers have left. The loyal friendly base left behind are sure to have more fun. Some of us are older and/or have left our hard core days behind us, but we are not dead yet. Speaking for myself anyway.

Anybody have any ques Friday night? SBI had none on any of the maps. Just curious.

I like that if the idea is taken one step futher. How about numbering the overflow servers much like the sPvP servers are numbered in the Mists? A player or team of players could have an option to pick an overflow server.

The rewards are significant. Individuals and groups from as small as a squad or guild to as large as an alliance could square off for a few hours just for the sheer competitive fun of it all. The player who is waiting for his server’s battleground quene to open up has something to do. A funtionality for an even paring of players, regardless of the time of day, is created. Finally, the system would allow groupings of players from any servers to play Wvw together.

zidia.3675:

DAoC didn’t break up the zergs, the community broke up the zergs by rolling around in 8 mans on the center island (new frontiers) and staying out of Emain (old Frontiers). Zergs still happened all the time and probably still do.

Zergs will always happen as long as the perceived rewards (currently Karma I guess) are easier to get in a big pile of people.

Honestly, if you want small group stuff, they have it, it is called SPvP…

sPvP is not even the same thing and not nearly as much fun. sPvP is like Little League. Wvw is like sand lot baseball. Hugh difference. WvW is unpredictable, ever changing, and full of surprises. sPvP is full of predetermined roles and robotic repetition.

Before GW2 went beta I checked out GW1 trial and I was very impressed with that pvp from the god mode perspective. I saw large raids of organized teams in a large area of varied terrain, full of unforseen events and full of possibility. sPvP in this game is on too small a scale. The game lacks any kind of support for large, evenly matched events in WvW as currently designed. All we can hope for are changes to Wvw.

Good comanders have “leadership.” It is a quality that not everyone is capable of. Knowing what to do and leading others to do it are two entirely different qualities.

One tool successful leaders usually have, not in this game btw, is the ability to boot players from a group who detract from the groups success. This is called disipline lol. Anet has decided to take this tool out of anyones hands in WvW. They have also decided to not allow a commander to select the players on his team. No commander can truly be successful without these abilities.

This happens to be why many of us are so happy the free transfer deadline resulted in an immediate and almost complete exodus of “zergers” to just a few servers. Why the happiness? They are now gone and not on our servers any longer lol.

Now, many commanders and players are likely to have more success and more fun, but with fewer players.

I am not sure I understood a single thing you said.

So, the 24 NA servers would be divided into 3 alliances. There would be 24 maps, one for each server. And then what?

I have to agree that if the score was removed, alot of the qq that goes on would go away, but that would be because many of the players would go away. There are alot of players who are hooked on the score in this game. That is not going to change.

Not coincidently, those same players are in the top tier servers where they get to play with like minded players from other servers. That is where they will stay. That sits just fine with me lol.

sostronk.8167:

Dalure.4691:

Like we all mentioned on forums…..merge the bloody servers….NA with EU you get 24/7 coverage……hope Arenanet will listen if it comes to merging servers.

/Peace

I don’t think thats possible. Latency on NA servers is bad enough as it is. Add another 200 ping to that and forget culling, you won’t see anything, ever.

It wouldn’t solve the issue anyway. There are always going to be servers with better or worse oceanic population than their competitors. Either NA or EU players will be still complaining because each others “overseas” coveage on their server is substandard or non existent, exaclty as they do now.

Dee Jay.2460:

Wow, wasn’t expecting the “night-capping” debate to resurface.

But yes, while we’ve chewed through this whole debate many times before the fact that 10 people at night achieve more than 100 people during the day seems like a pretty broken system.

We’ve pointed this out to ANet for months now but they never bothered to change anything about it.

The issue was more or less forgotten when WvW matches became more balanced and fights were on more equal footing but the problem still remained.

If you look at the official response to the night-capping debate it shows ANets completely disregard for the issue. So I wouldn’t expect them to change anything about it anytime soon.

As for me, I see no downside as to why the point accumulation should scale with the current player activity.

Yes, well, all was mostly well in Wvw land until a handful of nitecappers moved servers to as low as T8 and subjected every server in Na to thier brand of play on their way to T1 lol.

On the face of it, some kind of handicap system that balances points and player activity sounds like a good idea. I wouldn’t want to be the person with the responsibility to come up with one that’s for sure.

Any scoring handicap system they come up with is not going to be correct the first time out of the box. I can’t imagine the uproar that will ensue as the devs implement one and then have to make the inevitable tweeks.

If we use professional sports as a model, it works pretty well and is actually what anet is already doing or has the capability to do. What professional sports do with cash restrictions for teams with higher skilled players, anet does with server populations and que times.

I’m not necessarily a big fan of lower transfer fees to lower tiered servers, but I can see how that could compensate in the extreme case of a T8 server who can not compete in WvW at all, or to a lesser extent other lower tiered servers. I am anticipating with dread the unintended consquences of encouraging an oceanic guild, like War Machine, and the resulting bandwagoners invading another T8 server, such as Kaineng, and disrupting their Wvw community, again.

There is hope lol. Hopefully the fees are adequate enough to forestall large moves as we saw before the free transfer deadline. Hopefully the tier matchups will settle down quickly enough and be competitive enough that players can get back to the business of enjoying the game.

In other words, I have nothing really to add lol. Except to say, let the moves the devs made eliminating free transfers, setting server maximums, and insisting on que times, to encourage the servers to balance out and reach a kind of steady, flat, and calm sea state. Then we can see if there is a tier out there with oceanic players who are constantly rolling their tier competitors in a permanent matchup.

Kromsin.6359:

Everyone knows that tears feed the Zerg machine.

Lmao. yes, lol. Not much chance that they will learn the error of their ways and tip-toe around those of us they catch out in the open?

For me, Wvw creates random matchups with random players of random skill and random numbers under random conditions, ie terrain, openfield, siege, floor to floor battles in a keep, 1v1, etc. Often enough I get something I really have alot of fun with. WvW is way more of a challenge than Pve.

Ireniicus.2167:

This is a very silly idea. I am impacted by nightcapping however those in Oz could just as easily say when NA zergs come on that “you are nightcapping their stuff”. NA servers are for a Global audience not just Americans

/agreed. Neither NA and EU servers’ prime times match up with Austrailia and Asian prime times. They get to play too lol.

o m g You are advocating WvW for the sheer fun of the game with no impact on score! You forget something. What happens when no one wants to leave the que? Ok, ok, more constructively. What if the opposing players have no one in a quene and hence no one in the overflow?

Nialls.2851

I’m with Rezzet on this. I’m getting tired of losing to coverage, and having a 10k+pt lead to wake up with us losing. I’ve just about come to the conclusion that I’d rather sit in queue’s for 1-2hrs, and lose to better players, than lose because of server population.

imo, it’s not losing.

I was going to come in this morning and post how nice it was for me to read a thread in the forums that talked about how much fun everyone was having with a minimal emphasis on the score. The fact is, the scoring system is arbitrary and heavily weighted to NA servers that have the best overseas coverage. It doesn’t have a kitten thing to do with anything else. Doesn’t indicate in any way the quality of the players or the commanders. The high Tier teams have the best overseas coverage and therefore attract quene stalking NA prime time players who want to “win”. So, yes, if someone wants two hour quenes, zergy play, and a high score, that’s the place to be.

The new scoring methods hinted at in the summary of upcoming March changes will be interesting to see. How anything could compensate for an offshore imbalance is beyond me. Or, any imbalance in numerical strength in the field that follows a greater WvW population on a server for that matter.

So, anyway, my original post. I am so happy to see the fun that players have been having this week. It’s a win for all of us on SBI. This kind of play is a 1000 times more challenging and satisfying to play than what we had been subjected to for many months. Two thumbs up for the “pay to transfer” model that brought about this abrupt change.

My condolences to those who were caught unawares and left behind. Truly.

Zephyrus.9680:

I’m usually running solo flipping camps etc… but here’s the first time I saw WM’s zerg (or rather, first time when it wasn’t being insta-wiped).

http://youtu.be/xok2x4PKrdk

What incredible discipline and organization!

Zerg of 18 can’t even take a camp from about 6 people (was less when I got there, before I started recording).

Why on earth would a zergball stay balled up vs a disorganized force of ~6?

Why do they NEVER split up to clean up and take the camp? Has a WM zergball EVER split up?

Why don’t they stomp downed players (or even finish them)? Just run by and let them get ressed.

Why would they let us res the superviser over and over and ultimately fail taking the camp, leaving before things actually get messy?

Why don’t they touch anything behind them or to the side right next to them?

We already know the answer to all these WATs…

I’m guessing multiboxing isn’t against the GW2 ToS. It isn’t on WoW from what I’ve heard, though I’ve never played that game. But it’s just stupid fighting them… feels like PvE.

Im going to go out on a limb here and suggest it is because WM likes to Pvp, against players.

They have admitted in the past to allowing walls to fall so they can Pvp the opposition who then enters. That is way more fun than siege warfare and siege defense.

They have admitted in the past to allowing opponents to have some towers etc. so players will come out and Pvp. When dominance is absolute, players stop going to WvW and Pve instead.

From the video, a couple things. There were way way more dead players than your claim of 6 defenders supports. Secondly, I think it likely they saw many more of your allies than you did because of the new culling system.

In short, this kind of thing isn’t talked about very often. Inexperienced players think it is “farming” but it is not. Given the option of fighting and getting rezzed so I can fight again without running back, getting rezzed is far more preferable to dying and having the battle end. The score, or counting the number of deaths, or zerging is for chumps. The real fun is in the Pvp and that is not going to happen if the camp is taken or the opponents are wiped and the guild moves on.

It’s no accident that many posts from “Non” bandwagon servers speak of the fun of playing Wvw, even if the only things that are in their hands are a couple of towers and camps in their own borderland.

agreed. There is very little capability to ambush in this game, and virtually none with seige or other equipment to even the odds.

Seige takes too much supply, too long to set up, and is too expensive to use in the open field to oppose an incoming zerg. Simple as that. Yet, it is the only thing that would even the odds in the openfield, allow smaller groups to have a chance defending in the open and encourage players to get out from behind walls into actual combat.

I like the ops idea. What about equipment that could be used exclusively outside of towers and is less expensive and easier to set up?

Kaleden.9386:

Baladir.2736:

You know, like what is an elementalist supposed to do in WvW lol. Like that.

Any hints that you’d like to share? Honestly, I’ve found the class to be so versatile, it’s kinda ADD. Staff for range, support, fields, fighting at gates/walls, and fighting large forces. Daggers for mobility, open field fights, fights against few to moderate size forces, and harassment. Focus for major defensive skills (incl. siege defense). Scepter for medium range, condition spam, tracking thieves/mesmers, and hitting targets without LOS (hopefully the devs will fix this).

Or was the training aimed at teaching what fields to use and when? If so, that sounds incredibly useful and something I know a lot of classes would benefit from.

ok lol, lets highjack this thread. It’s already a lop sided story anyway.

I already can’t hit line of sight with an elementalist. How is it he has to stand on top by the very edge of the wall to hit anything below that is still 50 feet from the wall? How is it that standing up one top on the surface of the keep by the short stub of the wall that almost nothing is in both line of sight and range? If we are ground targeting, that is.

More to your point, however. Sure, for the elementalist who is maybe level 10, that’s an exageration, has no idea how to play the class, and just got all his skills. Let’s cut the player some slack and some mentoring is a nice thing. For the elementalist who is in full exotics, level 80, and knows what they are doing, or presumably so, its a bit odd.

Straegen.2938

Kaineng is actually guilds from high level servers that have added on as they rose through the ranks. It will be no surprise to many when they hold their own in T1/T2. I would say it will be a surprise to many if they do not dominate T3 assuming they land there.

With Kaineng’s oceanic population, anything less than T1 would be a big defeat for the large number of NA players and guilds who moved there. The oceanic population is definately T1 material. It is what kept SBI in T1 as long as it did. If they fail it will be due to the NA players.

Straegen.2938

They were a mess before the announcment. Kaeneng and Maguuma both trounced their tiers before the announcement.

WarMachine moved to Kaeneng and with them soon after many other players and guilds. The server cutoff however magnified and added urgency to server transfers. What began as normal server to server stuff was magnified 10 fold by every wanna be WvWer who felt they needed to rush to just the few servers who were perceived to have worldwide coverage and a chance at domination.

The players doing the moving are in many ways a player of a different personality and they are all moved to just a couple servers, displacing the local population in the process. Unlike the guild PvX and the alliance on Henge in the beginning, who wanted to see if they could dominate and then broke up because zerging was no fun, these groups now on these few transfer stuffed servers live off that feeling. Just check out the scores.

Pendragon.8735:

I think the truth is there is a certain percentage of migrating players that not only like zerging with overwhelming numbers, but only like zerging with easy victories. And the paid transfers won’t solve this because its going to be extremely cheap, or maybe even free, to transfer down to low pop servers.

So as this group of free riders we’ll call them are on a server that goes up and gets spanked, they will simply eye the next bandwagon server near the bottom, probably tag along with the first good guild that moves down, and then repeat the same cycle again till that new server gets toward the top and gets challenged again.

Just read the release notes about cheaper gem transfers to lower tier servers. If that results in what you say, that is a real big bummer.

We can all see what anet is trying to do of course. They are hoping to give lower tier servers a recruiting advantage so as to increase their WvW population and to spread the WvW players out among the servers. I for one never expected a mechanic designed to discourage movement among servers to encourage the movement of guilds, who do not want to put up with long que times, to bottom tier servers!

I think they are trying to accomplish what free server transfers could not. As a member of a former top tier server moving rapidly down, I was hoping never to run into those players again lol.

This will not be the last we are hearing about this. Many in the native populations of the recently flooded servers have not been happy. Much no doubt to the surprise of the invading masses who feel the natives should be thankful for their recent success.

It’s no little thing for a server to feel a sense of community and have that invaded by others who feel superior and who tell you that, on top of putting up with our attitude, you are doing it wrong too. I say keep those who want WvW victory in any way and at any cost in a world all their own.

WM is why all those guilds went to Kaineng in the first place, they wanted oceanic players to compete at the high tier levels. A great deal came from WMs former server SBI actually. Right now Kaineng is doing great against servers with no oceanic players because they are loaded to the brim with Wvw players who flooded the server before the transfer cutoff. Rather ironic that WM is not really involved. Will be interesting to see what happens next. And all those transfers hoping for WMs assistance. Shame.

Imo something far different than anything seen before can be expected from the servers who recently recived a large infux of players. In this game there are a large number of players who think zerging and overwhelming numbers is fun. Many of those players just all flocked to the same servers.

There are players who actually like to zerg and get vast amounts of pleasure out of that. Heck, anet had to try and implement a npc system so a server could capture a single point because, already, many servers were happy to take everything and camp spawn points too. There used to be some of those players everywhere. This sudden server transfer deadline may have, seems to have, just sucked all those players off of any server that had no more potential to overwhelm, and concentrated them on just a few. Where they have ended up, they are going to stay put. I doubt they will be paying to move servers anytime soon.

How the competiton plays out when the newly populated servers meet the perennial top servers will be good entertainment. I expect with some certainly it will not be a clean affair. As for me, a player on SBI, I am looking forward to a lower tier. I expect the quality of play will be very high with low que times, good sportmanship, and fair play. I have seen that already. I don’t know of any players who will be camping spawn points or jumping puzzles, etc. on SBI. They all left.

In short, a match up between those servers who retained their top guilds and seasoned players, and those refugees who bailed into just a few servers who had room and oceanic guilds, is coming soon.

/grabs popcorn

I get a kick out of players who think this score has anything to do with anything in this matchup other than sheer numbers. If the numbers were even it would be interesting to see what the results would be, but that would be idle speculation.

I have never had so much fun on SI since so many of the members who get a big kick out of zerging and overpowering by sheer numbers left the server and went to Kaineng. Now those very same are showing the power of the zerg on Kaineng, are having fun, and I couldn’t be happier that they are there.

Since they left, the teamwork on SI has been wonderful. I am finally seeing the WvW the way I thought it should be, but wasn’t.

It has been the best for everyone. The zergers who left may actually learn to play. They are having undergraduate 101 classes on Wvw over on Kaineng. You know, like what is an elementalist supposed to do in WvW lol. Like that. And for SI? We actually have towers, now and then, that have supply and siege in them. We rarely had towers with supply and siege before. We also have good comanders and alot of fun. It’s a good time for playeers who don’t get tied up in the score.

Waraxx.4286:

Naurgalen.2374:

Highest dps increase? you mean might stackin s/d? Maybe, but s/d has no tons of combo fields (only fire fields in fact) or utility (vs staff or d/d) at all. And we CANT swap weapons in combat, so we haven’t both things at the same time. Do you play ele at all?

you don’t have a clue, do you?

we bring a 80% uptime of fury to all party members ( in a organized party that is)
lets say the average party member have 25% increased crit dmg. by this fury we increase the party’s overall dmg with 0,2*0,8*0,75= 12%. and, yes, that is with a staff build. combining that with 2 firefield witch other proffessions can combo inside and you bring even more dmg with might, but others have fire fields aswell but they don’t have the same amount of fury that eles have.

but imo dmg isn’t that essential and is not all that important in comparison with crowd control skills like mass chill or immobilizes and cripples… witch we have. fancy that.

so the real question is, do you even have a clue of what a ele is supposed to do in a dungeon?"

Also, with the staff, a staic field around mobs is a combo field that will proc vulnerbility with projectile and whirl finishers. The fire fields you mention will stack burning with projectile finishers and whirl finishers also. The list goes on……If the fields are well placed, the party doesn’t have to do anything special to use them, just attack as normal.

The thing is, a player has to be willing to play unselfishly to enhance the overall strength of the group, something very hard to see, and can’t be looking at how big his dps is, which he can easily see.

But, the answer to your question is, many players do not know the effect a well played ele can have in a party.

One big reason was the sophistication of the party support role. The elemental has some decent damage numbers on its own, but is also able to hugely affect the outgoing damage of the party and reduce incoming damage. Healing capabilities are good. Condition removal and application is good. Crowd Control is good. Buffs are good. A party with a well played elementalist is enhanced in many ways.

The current state of the ele honestly has to do with how you like to play.

There are some unhappy players because they judge the class on a very narrowly defined set of criteria ignoring, or example, support roles of the class and instead emphasizing, for example, certain single target dps failings.

In other words there is always something to complain about. Overall, the class is a blast to play and far better than any other class in this game for me. I have yet to try the messmer yet though.

This sounds like fun, a setup that will also compliment a conjured weapon.

I don’t subscribe to min/max theory either. The idea that a grandmaster trait. or any skill trait for that matter, is only good for one selection is simply wrong. The same goes for weapon selection, or gear, or any other options. I get so tired of hearing bunker this and bunker that, of 0-0-10-30-30 and so on I could stab myself in the foot. The fact is that in Wvw and Pve there are many many good builds that work just fine and are fun to play. Grats to you for looking outside the box.

DeTechTive.9251:

…. Just keep your mouth shut,…..

/agreed with the rest of the post. Early on, sure, you can probalby get by with following the group, but chances are sooner or later a player is going to hit a spot and not know what to do. The best approach is to speak up and be honest. Ask what to do. Ask how to do it if it is not apparent. Then do your best to do it. Everyone has been there.

Sigils will share the same cooldown if there is one. The cooldown for Sigil of Battle is 9 seconds during that time Fire sigil would be on cooldown too. If every 9 seconds you switch weapons, the Sigil of Fire would never have a chance to proc. Or, if you proc the Sigl of Fire, both sigils would then be on a 5 second cooldown and if you changed weapons the Battle would not proc.

Has already been said and I agree, at least in the early to mid levels.

Scepter/Focus for ranged dps and defense.
Earth Elemental to tank and hold agro.

I only dropped the Elemental when the Elite Elemental skill became available. Still usually carry arcane shield. Condition removal is not as important for Pve but you will certainly want to load that for WvW. For that reason, my build includes condition removal.

*sigh Went looking for a Bell Choir thread and sort of expected this is what I might find. It was at least what I was thinking too.

I have seen musical intruments in other games with wonderous results. I think most of a player base at least has an appreciation for the work that goes into a good effort.

A well played bell choir is a beautiful thing to hear. I was kind of hoping there might be a few players around. Apparently not many who also have bells.

Right mouse button always pressed. Turn to face the direction you want to move next before you land. That direction puts your target dead center in the middle of your monitor before you land. Then all you need to do is move forward and make the next jump. Releasing the jump button, space bar, will stop your forward motion in the jump. Tilt the camera with enough of a downward angle so that you can see when you need to stop to land on the target and release the jump button. (Then make your turn for the next jump.) Turning down the graphics to maximum performance gets rid of noticeable tenths of seconds lag. Split seconds can make the difference. Some wireless mouses or keyboards do introduce lag. Be sure you are aware if there is any and are compensating. Or, if you have a choice, plug it in.

I laughed pretty hard when I first got owned by a box of Princess dolls in the Charr starting area. Getting owned by the cute pretty little things was definately worth the price of admission.

Turning the graphics down to minimum definately helped me. Not with the loading but with the split second timing lag that could cause me to miss jumps. Much crisper and faster turns and jumps with no delay on minimum settings.

[quote=1035988;Unspecified.9142:]

Treeline.3865:

---

The questions are:

- How easy/hard do you find it to get the new minis? (Mystery Box & Giant Wintersday Gift droprate)
Too Easy/Easy/Hard/Too hard/Undecided

Don’t care. I’ll craft two minipets from the Tixx workshop drops and be happy with what they have given me.

- Are you satisfied with the given options to get the minipets?
Yes/No/Undecided

Yes.

- Have you bought/Will you buy any Mystery Boxes from the gemstore this Wintersday?
Yes/No/Undecided

No. Dont have enough in game gold to afford.

- Would you have bought the minipets from the gemstore if you were able to buy them? (No random drop from chest – You simply buy the minipet you want.)
Yes/No/Undecided

No.
_______________________________________________________________

Please note this thread is not meant for discussion, there are several threads for that already. I’d just like to see the generel feel towards these minipets.

I will start the train:
Too hard/No/Undecided/Yes

Crafting two is fun. They are cute. Easy to get. A fine addition to the game. I would not grind for one, but given the amount of time I do put into the game I should get my fair share. Having said that lol, the drop rate for me, to date from beta, is zero. Truly does not bother me.

I’ve enjoyed these events a great deal more too. Nice post OP. The artwork and design is just spectacular. I enjoy being in the environments as much if not more than the games themselves I think.

For me I learned a great deal about jumping. Once I got the hang of turning to a new direction before I landed and controling the distance of my jumps, it all began to fall into place. I can’t wait to go back and give the jumping puzzles in game another try. I think I will enjoy them much more, or at least finish them anyway lol.

Treeline.3865:

…… I’m litterally sitting with my wallet , ready to dish up some bucks. But I can only get my minis through RNG. So it stays in my pocket until they remove the RNG. Unfortunately it seems that with a lot of players doing that, and being disappointed, business > players.

It’s impossible for me to imagine how Anet is making more money now than if they marketed to players like yourself. What I wouldn’t give to know how much money some players are gambling on the boxes to make that mechanic more profitable to Anet than offering the rewards at a fixed price.

I understand the argument that success in the game is not “for sale”. My understanding of the gem store from the beginning was that it would enable players with less time to play the game to catch up, as it were, by spending real money in the gem store. In the same way that one can get competitive gear by crafting , buying gear with Karma etc., there are many avenues and players are not required to do any one thing. Somehow I never saw these boxes coming as a result of that.

I’d bet, lol there’s that word, that Anet feels that giving buyers of the pets the certainty of getting one is an unfair advantage over the player who is spending hours grinding in game, and is uncertain of getting one. How that translated into players spending hundreds of dollars at Christmas and the Holdiay season with nothing to show for it blows my mind.

There have been generations where the thought Caveat emptor, translated as Let the Buyer Beware, was, and still is, an important thing to keep in mind at all times lol. Companies, courts, and politicians over the years have gone to a great deal of trouble to try to settle consumers down because, heh, that attitude was hurting commerce and, not coincidently, upsetting many voters. Concepts such as Corporate Responsibilty were born. Many think that last stated concept is akin to putting lipstick on a pig.

If reason and argument will not persuade a coporate citizen, there is only one avenue left. Do all of you want that pet so badly? Or, would you rather move a mountain?

The mechanic in game would not meet the legal definition of gambling, as defined below, because the items in the gift boxes have no value. They cannot be redemmed for real money. The fact people will spend real money, and alot of it, on the chance they will get something of personal value to themselves only is a matter of personal choice.

“A person engages in gambling if he stakes or risks something of value upon the outcome of a contest of chance or a future contingent event not under his control or influence, upon an agreement or understanding that he or someone else will receive something of value in the event of a certain outcome.” Per USLegal.com

Many laugh at the thought that people spend real money for, actually, nothing. The truth is that is exactly what many people do, spend real money, and in large amounts that have a measureable impact on the bottom line of this game. Those purchases make the game possible.

We all know however, the items that “have no value” in a legal sense have very real value in the game. That very real value is a very strong motivation to spend real money, lots, and often too much. The game is very efffective that way in marketing items we have a wish to have. Good job anet. That polish is why we enjoy the game, the quality of the art etc.

Yet, gambling need not be in the mix. To ignore the power of the game over some players is just pretending ignorance. Anet could exercise some social reponsibility here if they chose to.

The last thing people expected in this game was to be enticed to “gamble”. And, I have to agree.

Perhaps something in our society today has lessened peoples restraint when gambling is involved. Society used to have very strict controls on its use because of its negative effect on many people. Of course, the proponents of gambling think it is a great idea because the house always wins. And, in the end, the golden rule won. The people who have the gold make the rules and we now have indian casinos and state run lottery pools. It is our free right as humans to do what we want with our money right? By golly, if I want to wash hundreds of dollars of my money down the drain that is my God given right.

Enter GW2. Does the gamble of getting special items entice people to spend real money in the gem store? Lol, of course it does, and judging by the exchange rate, alot! Was there ever a doubt? Lol. No, it was a sure bet. Were some players going to be unable to control themselves? Absolutely…And so was born an in-game activity. A pure business decision to take advantage of players’ desires and/or weaknesses to pad a corporate bottom line. All protected by and cloaked in our freedom of self-determination.

Are there no workhouses? Somehow a sentiment I did not expect to see in GW2.

All told I’ll bet I spent about 6 hours before I was successful and I felt I real thrill when I did finish. I am now a much better jumper than I was before which I found interesting. There were alot of fine points of jumping, changing direction, landing and so forth that I thought I had a handle on and apparently did not.

SecondtoNone.7549:

Maybe because everyone switched to DD ele?

:) That has to be a big part of it. I haven’t noticed as many posts claiming attunement swapping is not necessary, for example, either. There are far fewer L2P comments about many subjects. Far more players have picked up on the fine points of the profession.

A big part of the success of the profession has to go to the players who frequent these forums and give constructive advice. There aren’t many secrets around here.

I have the sense that the attitudes of and towards elementalists have changed to a remarkable degree and are now very positive. I think this is because more players have learned to play the class well. At the very least, most players understand that if they are not getting the results they expect, that lies with their ability to play the profession and not the profession itself. A well played elementalist is welcomed in every part of the game so I guess it is no wonder.

Seems to me I remember only getting 2.2k damage from Lightning Arc if it crits, other wise it’s a lot less.

The Grasping Vine racial skill was my reason for choosing the Sylvari race. This was the one crowd control skill the elementalist class did not possess that I thought was essential for a ranged, light armor wearing, casting class. Too bad its 1/4 second activation make it useless against moving targets. Might have picked it anyway for the artwork which I think is just great.

I think you will find OP that when the mobs you encounter do more damage and take longer to defeat you will discover the uses of the rest of the skills. Currently you do not need heals, stuns, chills, invulnerability, bleeds, knockbacks, knockdowns, etc. Someday you will.

The range in Pve is a big advantage imo to have a scepter. Once the battle has started, you can still get in close. Once in close, the combo field Ring of Fire can still be used with Dragons Tooth and Phoenix for area might and the aoe from the rest of the dagger skills are still awesome.

NdranC.5107:

plasmacutter.2709:

Mirror Images + Sword 3 twice + Sword 2 + Shatter doesn’t even tickle the brain of an experienced elementalist.

Anyone who dies to this combo must be the worst noob on the planet.

it can be avoided by:

0 – noticing the chain of events and dodging the second sword 3

1 – casting any PBAOE

2 – cleansing conditions and outrunning the illusions.

3 – cleansing condition, dodging once… then running

4 – dazing the mesmer while he’s trying to set up.

5 – using any decent cooldown available to your profession.

once the two rounds you’re talking about are up.. they’re out of endurance and out of clones… ctrl+t and burst them the heck down.

The same way the churning earth + lightning flash combo can be countered by a dodge, but still works… All combos (for the most part) have a counter that requires skill and inteligence/knowledge to perform. This combo is not the last ace up a mesmer’s sleeve, the same way churning earth is not the eles last one either. PvP is about out smarting your oponent (ideally) so you need to be good enough to counter his attacks then surprise with something else.

I liked this reply, you actually raised a good thoughful point.

Yes. Alot is happening in a short amout of time. The characters are moving in all kinds of directions, camera view points are getting turned around, and players must not take their eyes off the screen for a second to find a hot key or use the mouse pointer to select a skill or they will miss a tell-tale sign of what is about to happen. Of course to know that tell-tale sign they have to have to seen if often enough to react accordingly within time measured in split seconds.

In a slow motion world or one where we get “do-overs” lol, sure this is all easy to see. In reality, many players are succeptable.

So, no, the ele is not underpowered if played at the top of the game and to do so the player must:
1. Be able to find all the hot keys for all the skills, target marking, attunement switching, etc. without looking
2. Know intimately each and every skill and what hot key it is without looking.
3. Keep a good measure of our own conditions and the oppenents condtions, as in buffs, boons, bleeds, burns, dazes, chills etc.
4. Be able to view the battleground and at the same time not lose sight of the targets. In other words keep the view screen pointed in the direction it needs to be pointed in.
5. Finally a player is best having knowledge of what the opponent is about to do next, what his move will be after that, best strats on the best counter, and react on the fly. Certainly players who are best recognize the moves as they are made on screen. Virtually every move has a counter, one just has to see it, recognize it for what is is, know what to do next, be able to execute those skills in a short time, and know where to go from there.

It’s not so easy for many of us because we don’t have the time that is needed to get this all down so that the reactions are, just that, learned reactions. That takes many many hours. This knowledge curve is the same no matter what profession is being played. What you players who are struggling a bit might keep in mind is that the players who are at the top of the food chain have spent hundreds of hours playing the Ele and all the other professions too to get there.

My coping, lol, mechanism is to roll with it. When I am doing well I think to myself that other player has a ways to go. When I am getting my kitten kicked, I think to myself how far I have to go.

As has been said, Phoenix removes all conditions and grants vigor. In addition it hits for damage everything on the way to your ground target, explodes for damage, and hits everything again on the way back. For the object at the target area that is three hits for decent damage.

Range is good and that is key. The scepter skills have great range, 900 range vs the 400 range on dagger. In PvE the range is very useful and I still get the dagger 4 and 5 skills that are very effective.