Guild Wars 2

I’m pretty sure the people who get the most kills are the ones who play in organized groups – the ones tagging dozens of kills wiping zergs, not the thieves picking lowbies off one at a time. These groups will have support players in their parties, so tagging isn’t really an issue for those specs either.

Doubt it’ll be a kill-based system anyhow.

My experience with the game is that you are supposed to create alts, not tie yourself to one character. So if you haven’t done that, I would start there, as it will open you up to totally different class mechanics which are very refreshing.

I’d also say that the developers have done a bit to introduce new ways to play by putting out new sigils and runes with each update, but this hasn’t been their focus. It’s probably good that they’re progressing cautiously and not introducing big changes to the classes and armor upgrades before they’ve addressed most of the balance and bug issues.

Thanks for the response, I don’t recall if Randall was dead when we first got to Lupicus. I also failed to clarify in my original post that, like the others, we were attempting Path 4 when this happened.

There seems to be some misconception by some people who did open world pvp in other games that individual skill will net the most kills or best ratio. What nets the most kills is mass organization, not individual skill, so that while a good 5-man group might be able to beat larger numbers some of the time, a coordinated 20-30 man group will consistently wipe a 40+ man zerg in 10 seconds flat. If you’re not convinced, just poll the people who have advanced the furthest in the Realm Avenger achievement and ask them how they play.

Of course, commanding has nothing to do with your ability to fight as an individual, it sounds like OP neither understands that nor what I have just explained.

Solid idea, no drawbacks. Please implement this.

Dee Jay.2460:

don’t have an interrupt, stun or CC

There’s your problem right there. These skills are important both for finishing and for preventing downed allies from being finished.

Dranul.2094:

@Soggyfrog – Im fairly certain hes talking about Longview in “YOUR” own BL last night. I logged by 4-5am a few nutters carried on after that.

My bad, I was fairly certain that I had passed by that tower on your BL last night and moused over it and it was called Longview, but checking the wiki I’m obviously wrong.

Strang.8170:

T´was in the dark of the night, on that reset eve. I heard a sad little sound coming from tower of longview, so sad it made my heart ache. Closer i moved, as close as i dared, for the evil had claimed it, and red banners flew over. There, i heard it again, undoubtedly it was the feline in distress, the cat had been sighted.

Quite frankly, I’m more impressed by the fact that Gandara managed to take Longview in the first place, which is on the far side of the map for us but literally 20 seconds from your home BL spawn point, than I am that you could kill its one defender and a bunch of NPCs

Great persistence nevertheless, though I heard of a guy who tried to solo one of your keeps.

4 of us just held your Faithleap camp for over an hour, losing our siege to trebs and up against a larger and steadily growing group of Piken, finally we lost it when about 20 AR decided to enter the fray. Thanks for the badges!

If those fragile phantasms are an important part of your survival and damage, and your opponents aren’t wailing on your phantasms, you ought to find some better opponents before calling something OP.

I read your post, I like shatters, and I don’t think you’ve thought this through. Obviously, these changes will never happen, but I’ll take the time to address your ideas more substantively.

Consider, first of all, that the glamour skills have the most utility in large fights; by tying class mechanics to these skills, you’ve seriously weakened the mesmer’s ability to build for small fights and therefore be functional in such settings. Nor can you make them more functional for small fights precisely because they are the primary group utilities that the mesmer has.

Next, your idea of how to use illusions in a group fight just doesn’t have any kind of equivalent in the other classes. There is no existing skill that specifically uses the party and skill functions. With the targeting idea, you are either asking for illusions to be controlled like ranger pets, or you are simply complicating rather than simplifying the function of illusions.

You could probably improve the set of suggestions you’ve made, but what it comes down to is that you are more or less designing a new class from the bottom up. You are proposing to change weapon skills, utilities, and core class mechanics, and it follows that traits will have to change. A class overhaul is something that would require extensive testing and fiddling to see if it is even viable, which goes against Anet’s approach to gradual changes.

Your justification is that shatters are too complex for other players to understand, but you’re very much wrong here. You can dodge shatters, you can block/invuln them, you can AoE the clones, you can stealth away from them. In short, you avoid damage from shatters the same way you avoid damage from anything else. They’re not readily replaceable either, as they’re the primary source for daze and confusion, the CC and condition that defines this class.

Finally, there is no particular “ease of balance” issue with this class. Or if there is, it is with group utilities, the one thing you intend not to touch. Addressing burst damage and DOT is as easy as changing numbers.

AC path 1 was a dismal failure, though not for lack of trying :P

Woodsman Silencio.9361:

I don’t think that WvWvW is suited as a spectator thing. A good siege over for instance Bay for instance:

• a whole night of skirmishing to get all towers and all keeps on a borderland upgraded to tier 2 / 3.
• a whole morning of finishing the upgrading of the tier 2 and placing of Siege weapons in them.
• the hour or more of skirmishing for the breaking out.
• the 2 hour Siege over Briar Tower.
• the 4 hour Siege over Bay Keep.
  
  That’s a summary of 1 of the best Siege’s i was ever involved in. In the end we as Gandara lost the Bay Keep and Fort Ranik could claim victory on that part of the map ( however they dropped below 100 points overall ).
  Tell me, how can you get that into a video without an organiciation behind it. because you wil need to have multiple people frapping the action. And then you need a editor to make it into a video.

Great idea, it can be done! Certainly not as a live thing, but perhaps a shorter film with narrative structure, at least to demonstrate what WvW is really about. Might be a worthwhile project for a large guild with a number of people frapping to attempt.

The best thief I knew didn’t have any trouble sitting solo on top of 20 players (or the three golems in SE exp), but he now plays ele because it’s less squishy.

If you want to know what you’re getting hit by, check your combat log after the fight, as I can only speculate otherwise. I’ve never stacked that much with a single shatter myself, but from numbers I’ve seen it’s well within the realm of possibility for a burst to do that much.

There’s a good example by Osicat (who maintains a very popular thread in the mesmer forums) of just how quickly a mesmer can tear down a guard at the 4:20 mark in this video (although this guy looks a little GC): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJzO2btc1iE
He burns the guardian’s block using a daze shatter, then the counterblock (or air rune, not sure) and MW shatter with just a single clone hits for over 10k; if the guard were still standing he could have hit his sword #2 for probably another 6k at melee range for anyone foolish enough to not dodge away.

I would recommend investing some points in toughness, if you are investing in power then for optimality you should probably also put some points into crit damage so that it matches your crit chance. If conditions are an important part of your build, then put what you can towards that. The one thing I would say with some confidence is that vitality is a low priority for you, but of course this depends on your experience as well.

You can probably find the most comprehensive information for which gear offers the combination of stats you need on this page: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats

You can look at the scores for all the other match-ups here: http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#NA

What you’ll see is that where you’re currently playing is the (unfortunate) exception, and far from being the rule.

Before this smearing escalates, I’d like to point out that Piken put up a respectable defense holding the lord’s room at Bay and Hills tonight on the Gandara border, it was a fun fight for Gandara too. Just as Gandara doesn’t want to be given a bad name due to the indiscretion of the few, I think our Piken opponents deserve the same courtesy.

I get the idea of this: to make WvW a warfare with specific fronts, something like WWI trench warfare where you are constantly engaged.

But I see this as something that would make WvW really static, because it is essentially having the game assign where fights should happen. It forces zerg vs. zerg, and if your zerg is outnumbered, all this does is take away the option of striking somewhere unexpected to draw the enemy away.

I like my WvW to be dynamic, so that it’s not just tactics and firepower but strategy as well. I admit that this often results in PvD and karma-training (particularly at lower tiers), but I think it also raises the ceiling on what can be done. When it’s just a mass of players fighting over one designated objective (small groups only having the option of a limited number of camp targets is pretty static as well), there’s not much of a role for leaders, but when the game requires you to consider your weaknesses and opportunities on the map, there is so much more (potential) depth.

Just had to drop in to say how proud my guild made me tonight. In the end we never managed to get Longview, but that t3 wall went down to 2% before the Piken zerg finally showed and wiped us. There have been a couple absences and departures recently but tonight a couple people stepped up and proved their leadership ability.

We also encountered this bug of Giganticus taking a nap. Frustrating!

Edit: looks like this isn’t the first time this bug has been ignored
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Arah-way-4-Giganticus-Lupicus-did-not-start

Wamgor.9347:

Sorry if my realism offends sensative people, I call it like I see it, you should know My views are mine alone and not represent TUP or my server Everything I see Gandara saying, is how it is from Piken’s Side…

Piken Is Friendly and respected by many servers… it seems from the get go Gandara have a issue with Piken… and have been trying to tarnish our reputation, accusations of hacking of well respected players and guilds didnt help. You’ve been trolling our servers image and reputation to no end… yet piken is the arrogant ones? Just because i stated some truth about Piken’s Current situation, it seems Gandara get all defensive about that lol.

No one set out to tarnish your reputation, we were just calling it as we saw it. When there were miscalls, the accusations (or rather, inquiries, as no one completely assumed you were cheating) were retracted (and if there was any doubt, we gave you the benefit of it), but you have to understand in each of these instances the suspicion was well-justified.

Wamgor.9347:

Initially was pretty surprised and shocked by Gandara’s attitude towards Piken, after weeks of mutial respect between Piken, Riverside and Kodash.

You know, we could say the very same about our experience on the way up. Yeah, we encountered some sketchy situations (e.g. [PRO] exploiting guild, [Army] portal bombing) which we weren’t used to dealing with, but we generally enjoyed our encounters with other servers, even our bitter rivals Fort Ranik. If you want to see overwhelming positivity go look at the matchup thread we had with them and Far Shiverpeaks.

Wamgor.9347:

Gandara’s momentum, and server pride as been turning into vile negativity aimed in Piken’s direction… blah blah blah Alliance <<<< over and over, when it was openly done and a backlash for xmas by a minority of both AR & PS. Alot of commanders didnt know about it until it was over so go figure. Likely will never happen again, case closed… yet days and days blah blah alliance, really?

The alliance happened, it was pathetic, and while not universal it was large enough to affect the score. Those who think there can’t be communication/coordination between servers are unfortunately naive. That’s my assessment of it, although I’m not going to complain about it because that match-up is over. Both that and the Christmas-capping complaints created a bad vibe in the last thread which seems to have carried over and I think anyone who brings it up specifically is trying to set the record straight as people are still defending it or pretending that it didn’t happen.

Wamgor.9347:

I dont know Gandara’s situation inside and out, like it seems gandara are very dismissive of piken’s current situation… I see alot of baiting from gandara and I can return the favour Im generally being pretty nice… just my realism, is classed as arrogant and dismissive?

Looking at Loco’s comments, while I’m not going to say that Gandarans have behaved perfectly, it seems that a lot of the Piken players posting here have collective blinders on with regard to their server’s part in fuelling this animosity. That is arrogance, believing that only one side can be wrong.

Snowstorm.3897:

The alliance was a fun experiment cooked up by 3 commanders on each side, it wasn’t server wide between commanders, and it only lasted around 12 hours.

Fun for…? Not Gandara, I bet.

Snowstorm.3897:

And it really isn’t arrogance. Its just incredibly irritating when Gandara seemingly believe that this is all Piken Square has to offer, and that they’re surprised we’re this weak. Its just server pride. I’m sure you guys have it as well. If you guys were getting publicly called **** on the forums, I’m sure you’d defend your server as well.

You want to prove it? Do like Infi said. We’ll be facing each other next week, hopefully you’ll have things in order by then. Don’t validate the opinions of those who think little of PS by resorting to alliances.

This idea occurred to me, but so did Draygo’s point. I couldn’t think of a way to address that issue.

The problem is not that you, the player, need supply. The problem is that often the tower or keep needs supply, and giving an incentive for the purchase of an upgrade regardless of whether pursuing that upgrade is feasible can make life difficult for invested WvWers.

Your response is that a fortification sitting with max supply but no upgrades is often the case, that definitely has not been my experience. This may depend on the server tier you’re playing at, though. It would be nice to have some way of alleviating the upgrade costs, unfortunately I think this “easy” solution could end up producing more problems.

Tortun.5946:

You took my Nekkid Rascal… I’ll kill you all!!!!!!!

Conditions apply; applies conditions.

Tortun.5946:

Last night in Gandara Borderlands was wow, 7 players defending Valley from a large number of Riverside successfully and then people started to come to EB so we tried pushing out which proved to be a mistake as those 6 Golems were just too much to take. When you see in team chat “Wow six golems” there’s a part of you that clicks and thinks, I better go check out the only real estate we have.. poor Eno was like “WHAT?!?!” at that point I knew it was time for bed

Torty fainted when he saw the golems so I had to revive him instead of building siege.

Every invader is a badge with legs. Some have longer legs than others, but I have a duty to make them drop all the same! Anyways, I’ll be gone the rest of the match, have fun all.

I just realized that speed buffs and swiftness don’t stack! There had been posts in other threads indicating otherwise, but they were wrong, so I guess I can drop this topic.

Thieves were always at 25%, they’re acknowledged to be the most mobile/escapable class and while that has controversies of its own, my concern is the impact of making this a universal thing. That includes the impact of giving a similar buff to mesmers at some point.

I think Snowpea has tapped into what my worry is (I was writing my first reply): instead of having to work at your escape/chasing options, this is a switch you can just flick on.

Fourth.5603:

I think what you are forgetting is that by equipping this signet, you are essentially giving up a skill slot for increased speed…

That’s kind of my point, actually. It’s also why I’m waiting to hear from people who play these classes.

The scenario I’m worried about is this: If I can equip a signet which puts me ahead of the rest in the race to catch enemies or make a run for it after a lost battle, then why shouldn’t I? If I give it up for the sake of effectiveness in a fight, someone on my side will still equip it, and there will be enemies who have it equipped.

If, a while after this buff, it turns out that you need a signet to keep pace in WvW, and if you don’t you’re too slow, that’s simply marginalizing all of the builds for a class that exclude the signet, as well as hurting those classes that don’t have it at all.

The problem with signets is that you get them independently of all your swiftness and gap closer options. Instead of managing swiftness as a team, it’s haves and have-nots.

This last build we saw buffs applied to the passive speed signets of the Ranger, Necromancer, and Elementalist classes, matching them with the thief. I presume the rationale was that these signets weren’t equal in effect, so increasing them to match the thief signet was the most obvious thing to do.

I’m worried about the impact that this buff will have, especially in the WvW setting. Mobility is hugely important in WvW, both out of combat (getting across the map to defend an objective) and in combat (chasing down enemies, or getting away from a larger force). This gives me the impression that the developers have marked one utility skill as being essential in a WvW setting, potentially pigeonholing each of the classes that has a passive speed signet. The other consequence is that they’ve given a disadvantage to classes (Mesmer, Guardian) that lack reliable options for speed.

Full disclosure, I do play a Mesmer so my view of this is biased. The buffs are discouraging for me, because as a counter to all of the utilities, runes and weapons that I’ve equipped to give me speed, these classes can now just equip a passive signet, and all the effort in the world can’t make me run faster than they do. It seems to me that the presence/absence of a signet is a pretty good indicator of who you should and shouldn’t bother chasing after a fight.

I’m trying to avoid a knee-jerk response, so I’d like to hear the honest opinions of those who play Rangers, Necromancers, and Elementalists about the recent buffs; I wouldn’t be happy if Mesmers were given their own passive speed signet, because that’d be a wasted slot for me.

If you play one of these classes, do you think these signets are now more important in WvW, and do you equip them more often than you did before? How did you feel about your previous mobility options?

Raine.1394:

Wise.8025:

[snip] Unless you accept that fact that if you cast focus 4 at your feet you will often run over it and not get buffed.

You are not alone there. The Guardians staff 3 sometimes fails to trigger when you run through it. So at least they’re practicing modular programming so all the bugs are shared. I, too, think the Mesmer needs a movement speed buff, preferably a good one.

The staff symbol is an area pulse, so if you miss the pulse, then you don’t get swiftness. Working as intended, though.

The problem, of course, is not Guardians. It’s every other class, and I imagine Guardians are equally upset about the changes to the signets. I’m not impressed by the decision to give a 25% speed boost signet to so many of the classes, increasing the power of these signets creates a gap between those with and without. But if your answer is to introduce this signet for all classes, then you’re basically making it mandatory in any open WvW setting which simply homogenizes all the classes.

I have centaur runes and the gap closers available to this class, and it’s a real slap to the face that all these other classes can now just throw on a signet and instantly make up that difference.

Assassinin.4963:

Kerithlan.1659:

Assassinin.4963:

Romek.4201:

when you DC tooo much you should fix it with your provider not arenanet with you

Your viewpoint is too naive imo. Each death and repair bill cost 1 silver 64 bronze. A single DC server wide will probably affect let say 10,000 players active in combat (assuming each server supporting 25,000 players of which only 10,000 players are in active combat) and chalk up a total repair bill of 164 golds. Taken across a server farm of 30 servers, a data center wide DC will reap Anet a total of 4920 golds. Not a bad commercial initiatives I must say.

Furthermore, if you have played WoW, you would have known that there is an exploit out there that can mass DC player in battleground. I hope that exploit don’t work in GW2, but I am not too sure.

If you think DC is not an issue with Anet or anybody other than your internet service provider, think twice. Don’t be too kitten sure.

You don’t seem to understand, it has already been stated that this change only affects players in World vs World that disconnect while in combat. It doesn’t effect people randomly walking across Gendarran Fields or whatever.

I hate to use this word on people, but alas I had to use it on you again. You are naive to think that it only affect WvW. It may be true for NOW.

If there are a lot of people out there who alt-f4 in PVE and in the process suffers Anet repair bill revenue, you think Anet will not extend this implementation to cover every aspects of the game?

Remember that Anet officially classify WvW as PVE. So now we have double standard in the implementation of PVE zone disconnect and repair bill. Do WvW player deserve less than other GW2 PVE player?

This was the same guy who posted a thread about how someone found a counter to his Alt-F4ing and said everyone who showed a modicum of sportsmanship by not Alt-F4-ing when downed was dumb.

Ignore the troll.

I discovered the choir bells last night, and immediately put them to use in WvW, charging down an enemy and wildly swinging the bells while my teammates downed him. The thrill of this hunt put some wild ideas into my head about having choir bell groups in WvW to taunt the enemies.

Today I was distraught to find that the choir bells were immediately disabled if you were attacked by an enemy.

I have two questions and a request:
Are enemies able to hear your choir bells?
Was this disabling of choir bells in combat intended to avoid such obnoxious behaviour on my part? If not, would it be possible to make it so that choir bells stay active in combat?

Setting aside a whole slot exclusively for swiftness seems weak, while it still doesn’t solve the problem of our lacking a passive speed boost.

What might be more useful is adding a trait that gives a passive speed increase based off of charged mantras (the illusion one doesn’t make sense). That way you can decide between utilities that give more of a mobility burst or mantras that make you faster… in the long run.

Not happy. Everyone has swiftness. Everyone else has passive speed buffs. I already run centaur runes, and all this patch means is that now I can’t chase anyone or get away from anyone in WvW because everyone else is that much faster.

Why not bring the thief’s signet of shadows down to be in line with everyone else, instead of the opposite?

They fixed some exploits. Hopefully the kind that had led to our server losing several fully upgraded keeps and towers this week.

Genewen, I think you can appreciate that a lot of people are trying to get information to others in this thread; we’re not just whining about a one time exploit, we’re indicating at what kind of frequency it’s happening and under what kind of scenario so that everyone understand entirely what it’s happening. If this were happening on Gandara, I’d want asmuch information as possible. Granted, some like Tortun need to vent their frustration and it’s important to give some space. No one is accusing your whole server.

That said, there are some issues cropping up, the spying accusation is a completely different thing, there’s also the fact that some of your players are apparently defending exploited keeps or towers. This may be due to ignorance or complacency, but as a server it’s one thing you can deal with.

Anyways, there is all a lot of chatting about the actual match up, which I think everyone agrees had been otherwise great.

On top of that, I didn’t ask if you were protecting [PRO] the guild and its members, I asked if you were protecting the fortifications it stole. That’s not the same thing.

If your server is taking advantage of the fact that exploiters have given you towers/keeps, I assume that’s because most aren’t aware (although some may be), but then that means that people who know there are hackers need to be more pro-active.

Aveneo.2068:

Brendar.3548:

Nah, they’ll just charge 500 badges for one piece. They won’t add it to JPs

Correction: they’d probably charge 500 badges for a chest/bag that might contain a random ascended ring.

/sarcasm

:P

Don’t you mean the infusions will be 500 badges each, while the pieces themselves will drop from the grub and the puzzle?

Is AM now protecting fortifications acquired by [PRO]? Even if you’ve never really seen them (which now sounds hard to believe), your server should be able to recognize when a tower is legitimately and illegitimately capped. Especially one that is T3.

Gamblit.5041:

Lyan.6804:

I dont know how is it really to be in any of those servers cause i was born in Gandara and stayed and fight like a good girl, but while transfers are free i would prolly try each server out and see.
Maybe u find 1 that feels like home.
And like Soggyfrog posted, Gandara would also welcome u

What is the situation like during 08:00 to 18:00 CET time on Gandara? How many Commanders do you have covering that time slot? How many reguler players you have at that time slot?

I’m usually on until about 10:00 CET (I’m a Canadian player), it’s usually still pretty quiet at the time I leave, although it starts to pick up by about 11. We have a few capable regulars who are around at that time as well, but only enough people to defend and maintain upgrades.

Someone else will have to fill you in on the details about 11:00-18:00. My impression (based off of scores, and knowing that my guild members are online) is that we’re stronger then.

Anyone with information on this, please PM it to me (account names from report window, if any others were involved apart from [PRO], how many there were) so that I can send in a support ticket.

To be more substantive, I recognize this isn’t merely about winning a game, it’s about your commitment to other people. I’m going to say, as others probably have, that you need to set more limits on how much you play this game. The problem is not what others expect of you; no one will be disappointed if you make it clear that you need more timeaway from your guild. The issue is what you believe you owe to others and your own expectations of yourself. If your guild is shrinking, it may well be for reasons far beyond your control. This game will change, you need to accept that.

Sleep deprivation… Lots in my guild know exactly what you’re talking about, and we’re in tier 5! On an EU server! 16 hour shifts, so that the red server can beat the green server. But it was done.

Time for me to go to bed. At least I’m in North America, so it’s early.

My how the thieves die.

I got jumped by a pair the other night, before I started dodging I popped mirror images, blurred frenzy, MW, and CoF, and 1 second later two downed thieves appear out of stealth at my feet O.o

Predator.7321:

Besides why you would you want your enemies getting free seige to kill you.
It take like 15 mins to run the entire puzzle

15 minutes? O.o

I stealth the whole route as my mesmer in 6, it takes longer to get people from my guild to come and take my port than to run the puzzle itself.

No one saw any mesmers (it’s a pretty easy class to pick out of a crowd) and they hit several targets in a row, so that would have required them having a different mesmer hidden in each of those targets for many hours. We’ve been really solid about maintaining and monitoring the fortifications on our own borderlands, which is the reason why these hackers haven’t done more damage.

I assume they roll out new builds at the same time for NA and EU servers. Read the sticky; this isn’t going to happen anymore after Friday.

I’ve read on the forums that another option for reporting is to use a support ticket (https://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/ask/). I don’t know if you can still get the account name when you hit report, if you can then it’d be good to have that information handy.

Have you considered Gandara? We’re in the same bracket range; lower than Piken, but higher than AG and UW. We’re got a mix of small-medium guilds, and would welcome more… You can usually find a slot in WvW, the only time I ever wait is if I’m queuing for a specific map. Although we still rely on a large non-guild zerg at primetime, my experience lately has been that the commanders are well-coordinated and we also have guild groups running operations.

Now is a great time to join too, as we’re just starting to get organized as a server – we have our community forums up at last (message me for details), so if you get involved now you can make an impact right away on how we run things and move forward. Someone has also set up a community TS server, so we’re figuring out how to get the guilds who already have their own voice comms involved with that as well!

Gandara came off a win against Fort Ranik last week, which was huge for us as we’d faced them several times before. The difference wasn’t an increase in numbers on our part, just organization and a lot of all-nighters pulled. We’re holding our own against Augury Rock, which just dropped out of T4. Unfortunately the French are on holiday now, so things are getting tougher…