Guild Wars 2

I didn’t even think about the water combo field. That makes total sense for empower I feel. Causes some great synergies.

12 stacks of might and fire field = 15 might
Water field would give combo heal and empower heal
Smoke would provide us a way to give invis to groups
Poison weakness

I am pretty much listing out all the blast finishers, they are all great utility effects, which the staff is “THE” utility weapon for the guardian.

TheLaughingMan.4320:

CMF.5461:

I guess I don’t understand why people continue to play in spite or come back and post here to try to convince people that the game is bad.

Personal opinions are valid but personal. There is a lot I would like to see different in this game, but I don’t log in every day in disgust or negativity.

That might mean you need to change your outlook on things or maybe do something different.

How dare we criticize a game’s flaws

There is constructive criticism and worthless bashing.

My wife used to work as customer service. There were a certain set of rules and guidance that she would have to follow as per the training of the job.

Many times there would be grown adults who come in and throw a big fit about how they are not getting what they want, and they would demand for her to do things that she was not allowed to do.

Upon not doing these things, these grown adults would throw a bigger tantrum and demand to see the supervisor. More often than not the supervisors would try to cover up the scene and placate the individual (read: not want to have to put up with it) and just give the customer what they want.

This would make my wife look like the bad guy and the customers would walk off all smug and happy with themselves. Yet she was doing only what she was allowed to do. More so, the supervisor had the code that could override many of the commands that would allow the requested act to happen in the first place, so my wife couldn’t have done it anyway.

I think we live in a world where we think it is ok to throw a fit until we get what we want…that disgusts me.

You can say what you think is bad with the game, you can offer constructive criticism which would focus and pinpoint the suspected failure and offer alternative ideas which would help fix the situation instead of just throwing more wood on the fire and fueling the hate.

Helping to solve the problem often solves more problems more quickly than sitting around complaining about it.

If you don’t want to help, and you don’t like being here, then why are you here?

If you like the game, but are frustrated with how it is developing or not developing, then offer useful insights and encourage growth in areas that you do like. This is something called “positive reinforcement”.

Compiled the posts in this thread into Negative, Positive, Neutral, based on the language and opinions given as best as I could.

117 individual people in this thread. 41% Neutral 37% Positive, 22% Negative.

Negative – Total 26 People with 67 posts
SandruDaniel.4386 – 6
mesme.5028
Gasoline.2570 – 2
Galtrix.7369 – 5
Araziel.7201 – 4
Aeolus.3615
rchu.8945 – 2
Nuka Cola.8520 – 10
fadeaway.2807
stayBlind.7849
ilr.9675 – 3
Pravda.7641
Enundr.9305 – 2
Mustafa.7684 – 4
Deamhan.9538
Chuo.4238 – 2
Grumpdogg.6910
Elbegast.6970 – 4
TooBz.3065 – 2
Paul.4081
bravoart.5308 – 2
Halandir.3609 – 2
CobaltSixty.1542 – 2
Stormcrow.7513 – 2
EATtheDEAD.4768
LordByron.8369 – 4

Positive – Total 44 people with 126 posts
CMF.5461 – 12
Wryog.5073
Vayne.8563 – 24
ParnAshwind.4823
Randulf.7614 – 3
fellyn.5083
Siphaed.9235 – 3
Ashabhi.1365
Lethalvriend.1723
Buttercup.5871
Julie Yann.5379
Galen Grey.4709 – 12
ProxyDamage.9826
Sarie.1630
Jski.6180 – 5
AntiGw.9367 – 9
KOPPER.1458
Kit.3986
Tiger Ashante.1792
laokoko.7403
Khisanth.2948
emikochan.8504
Bearhugger.4326
Morrigan.2809 – 8
Tobias Trueflight.8350 – 7
Meglobob.8620
Arrow.3856 – 2
EdgarMTanaka.7291 – 2
Sylv.5324
lunawisp.2378
PolarisNova.3867
holotype.1643 – 2
eisberg.2379
DeathMetal.8264
Vaxor.4039
Urrid.4593
Draconus.9786
Lippuringo.1742
Conncept.7638
Zaxares.5419 – 3
FateOmega.9601
Xenon.4537 – 4
fellyn.5083
Tolmos.8395

Neutral – Total 47 people with 136 posts
mesme.5028 – 3
Chicho Gosho.6507 – 2
Teofa Tsavo.9863 – 3
Celestina.2894 – 2
ragingbear.2548
SoPP.7034
Leo G.4501
Syktek.7912
Scoobaniec.9561
Fenrir.3609
Fernling.1729 – 5
sinzer.4018 – 2
Dawdler.8521
Nike.2631
Leo G.4501
holodoc.5748
Dikeido.8436
daimasei.4091
Wolfheart.1938 – 3
Zenith.6403
Yaos.4528
Stego.3148 – 2
The Spiral King.2483
CobaltSixty.1542
Ashen.2907 – 2
aspirine.6852 – 2
Primernova.5791
Malevil.2104
maddoctor.2738 – 3
kRiza krimos.1637
Gauradan.8361
Highwinter.3190
SpyderBite.6274
Khisanth.2948 – 2
Tenlaael.4975
CeNedro.7560
Smith.1826
Substance E.4852
Yza.2437
Fernling.1729
Duke Blackrose.4981 – 3
Klawlyt.6507
Black Teagan.9215
HawkMeister.4758
wouw.5837
Khal Drogo.9631
Afya.5842

I haven’t played Morrowind unfortunately. I heard that anything before Oblivion was good.

Right now it just seems like the GTA of roleplaying games. I don’t care much for GTA either though, so never got into it. I do have and finished both Oblivion and Skyrim, but I don’t care much for going back and wandering for some reason. I’m told I play the game wrong.

I was huge into the Ultima series back in the 80’s, so to me that is more interesting than Elder Scrolls, but if you never played Ultima then what Elder Scrolls does is amazing and innovative as far as a big open world to explore and interact with things in.

Ultima is dated though, and couldn’t compare with the physics and graphics with the first Elder Scrolls game.

Skyrim dragon fights for me consisted of run in, wack it a few times, run out/circle strafe forever when I see it about to attack…or just shoot it from ranged and kite when it is on the ground.

I have never been impressed with Elder Scrolls game combat, very rudimentary.

meh, the blasts are ok. I don’t think blast on empower would be too bad, maybe shield is a bit much since it creates a light combo field on its own.

I really do feel mace should be controlable.

It does only create one whirl bolt, which is due to the mechanic based on spinning time and internal game “ticks”. Sometimes it could make NO bolts if it is timed wrong. At least I noticed that just now when testing with fire fields.

The only way to make it a reliable combo activation with current mechanics is to make it a blast finisher, but I don’t think that is the right thing to do.

It would be nice if whirl finishers created a circle wave that ticked in pulses to up to 5 targets? Makes it more controled.

Not a huge quarrel, but I stopped and thought about it, and I am pretty sure that Protector’s Strike is the profession ability that you can not trigger it’s secondary effect early.

Would be kind of nice to have on demand protection with the mace, instead of waiting and hoping no one hits you. Creates more decisions for the player too. Do I trigger it early and take 33% less damage for the next few seconds, or do I let it channel and full block the next attack.

Also if it was able to be triggered early, it would create a whirl finisher on mace that could be used with combo fields. Right now it will do a whirl finisher, but the chances of it triggering in a timely manner are slim to none and it puts you out of meaningful combat for a few seconds.

Again, not a huge quality of life improvement, but I don’t think it is unreasonable.

If that isn’t asking for too much, Empower on the staff and Shield of Absorption on Shield 5 secondary should also count as a blast finishers

Honestly, I have never been a huge Elder Scrolls fan. I first heard of it with Oblivion when my coworker was overhyping it and talking about how amazing the AI was going to be. then it gets released and it is painfully scripted and easy to outsmart and read the AI.

I hear back in the day the original Elder Scrolls games were more innovative but I didn’t play them.

I’ll go out on a limb here and call ESO the Halo of MMOs. Really popular but given too much credit.

Combat in Oblivion and Skyrim were, in my opinion, aweful. Move in, move out, swing sword a few times. Or go ranged/stealth and try to 1 shot things or kite in a awkward way.

ESO looked like it had some more advancements in combat but I’m not sold on it yet.

Also it is supposed to be on consoles as well, which maybe I’m biased, turns me off a bit. Are they all one server or do console gamers have their own servers?

To top it off, I didn’t care much for the lore or the races in the Elder Scrolls series. It just seems like a Ultima wanna be to me, but I know tons of people love it. It is just not for me I don’t think.

I’m sure I’ll try it though. Since the only way I can tell if I like something is to try it for myself.

AntiGw.9367:

ilr.9675:

CMF.5461:

I guess I don’t understand why people continue to play in spite or come back and post here to try to convince people that the game is bad.

Because you’re not listening…. It didn’t start off bad.

Are you suggesting that it somehow ended up bad?

Because the game we have right now is a thousand times better than what we had at launch.

I am using the words of the Dissatisfied in order to communicate back to them. Good and bad are subjective, so it is pointless to argue that something is either good or bad.

For me it is good, for them it is bad.

edit: oh I didn’t read clearly, that was directed at ilr. Oh well I leave my post cause I’m too lazy to change it.

I think the only giant that counts are these:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Giant

I know that the Giant in Diessa Plateau at the Town of Nageling counts.

Ahh yes, the hope she has a hot sister or friend approach. Well that is your prerogative, but I hear all of her sisters and friends are just like her, so maybe you should date outside of this circle.

ilr.9675:

Because you’re not listening…. It didn’t start off bad.

So you are dating this girl, she looked great and you got along “ok” at the start. The longer you are with her the only thing she has is looks and everything she does and says annoys you.

Do you:

a) Stay with her, because you are waiting for your expectations to be met
b) Leave her, because you realize that it isn’t so great anymore and it is time to go
c) Find a DeLorean and go back in time to stop yourself from asking her out
d) Eat chocolate ice cream
e) All of the above, but careful to not spill the ice cream on the flux capacitor, or you will never reach 1.21 “jiggawatts”.

Oh and they offered refunds for a while for people that felt like they bought the game under false pretenses and were highly unsatisfied with it. If you are really that put off by it and the only thing that is holding you here is the money you spent, that may be an option.

There is a difference between “criticism” and “hate talk” by the way. I come on here and criticize the game a lot. I think it would be more interesting for faster paced more action oriented combat with less stats and more skill play.

I don’t think my chosen profession is “fine” as everyone says it is so I constantly evaluate mechanics and try to post areas that I think should be looked at and re-evaluated.

I don’t care much for the gear grind and prospects of more vertical progression.

I also don’t care much for the large amount of grinding in general in many areas of the game.

Some of the temporary content makes me feel punished if I don’t log in.

The difference is, instead of lambasting the game for the above concerns, I try to post something constructive and motivating enough that maybe has valid points and plausible corrective actions.

I actually thoroughly enjoy the game even with the above concerns. I don’t grind when I don’t want to and I periodically take breaks here and there when I feel burnt out by the game.

What I do enjoy is how different this game is from the traditional sense, but I see how it is still in a state of flux trying to satisfy many crowds. I will continue to play as long as I have fun. I will post my concerns as I have them. But as soon as I stop having fun, I know it is time to walk away, content with the money I spent providing me a good time.

I’m not saying “if you don’t like it get out”. I am saying, “why do you continue to make yourself suffer with something you obviously don’t like anymore”?

“Help me…help you….”

Setting yourself up with over hype on ESO or any other game that may be coming out is only setting yourself up for failure again when the luster of that game wears off and you become jaded all over again.

Then again, hopefully people will find their promised land of video games and lavish in it for eternity. At least this way there will be less of these conversations and more happy gamers

lol, Ashabhi, that is pretty spot on.

GW1 was pretty costumy and party favor filled…

Oh and AntiGW, lol.

GW2 is like a bad relationship.

People come in with big expectations and they are not happy with the reality when the honeymoon phase wears off. Problem is, if you came into this relationship without self imposed expectations and just took things as they come, it is more enjoyable an experience.

But if you start a game thinking it is “the best game ever”, and then you realize thakittens just a game and it can be fun if you are into the things it provides, then you won’t have set yourself up for failure.

I got over video game hype when I was 12. Flash forward 21 years later my friends don’t understand why I don’t get excited over the latest greatest game and I just say "All those features and new innovative things I saw years ago in “x” game…its just the same thing with better graphics".

I understand general game mechanics and what is generally able to be accomplished within various areas of gaming. Some things impress me but others are just recycled.

That said, GW2 offers things that I enjoy for now. I am sure I won’t play it forever, but I am enjoying it while it is here. That animosity some feel may be self imposed.

“Chocolate ice cream is a disgrace to all ice cream and people should stop eating it because it is bad”

or

“I don’t like the flavor of chocolate ice cream.”

Insert guild wars 2 for ice cream and you can see how opinions may differ and are perfectly valid, but you can’t be short sighted enough to confuse “it is bad” with “i don’t like it”. Two different statements.

….also, don’t eat guild wars 2….

and then they remove magic find

I guess I don’t understand why people continue to play in spite or come back and post here to try to convince people that the game is bad.

Personal opinions are valid but personal. There is a lot I would like to see different in this game, but I don’t log in every day in disgust or negativity.

That might mean you need to change your outlook on things or maybe do something different.

Thanks, didn’t realize they were looking for likes. Threw mine in for the hell of it :p

I haven’t logged into facebook in years.

Edit: After thought…why do you still post here?

http://gw2ita.wordpress.com/review/interview-with-colin-johanson-by-mmorpgitalia-and-gw2-italian-blog/

Q: How the AI of enemies will work? Specifically, how enemies will chose their target? Will they be capable of complex behaviour and combat strategies?

A: That’s a great question, because it’s something we don’t necessarely get asked details a lot. There are very few creatures in the game right now that have kind of their final skills and abilities that we intended them to have. For example, in the demo that we’re getting here at Gamescom… the undead army in the high level map is probably the closest thing to what I would consider to be in an army that has a lot work done on it at this point. Our creatures are going to be getting a lot of work between now and release. We have really been focused mostly on the players side of things at this point and on getting all the contet put together on. So creature balance will be kind one of the next things that we tackle, and we’ll be moving army by army in trying to give them themes and skills and AI details to each army specifically. In regards to AI and aggro… simple creatures will use an AI system to determine who attack, and one of the most important criteria will be who is the closest target to them, but there are also criteria like who’s doing damage, how much damage they’ve done… and other things like that. These are basic things that most creatures would use. Then there will be unique AI for a number of different creatures that will use specific skills or the entire creatures will do different things than that. There may be creatures, for example, who attack the furthest away player in the party. There may be creatures who try to focus on people wearing medium armor or light armor, and try to chase them around. There may be creatures that run away, there may be creatures who get out of the way of attacks, there may be creatures who specifically only use skills on people at specifc times. So, all of these are aspect on which we’re going to work as we get closer to the release of the game.

http://www.gamespot.com/guild-wars-2/videos/guild-wars-2-panel-at-comic-con-2011-6325039/

The two sources of where the mechanics have been divulged to the public. As far as the video, I tried to skip around in it but didn’t hear anything about agro per say. It may be in there, but I dont have time to watch it atm.

As I said, the book does not require you to make a decision to try to impact the story. The bad guys do what bad guys do and the good guys do what the good guys do, you just watch and observe.

I did not say that villains have no place in a book or a game, I was directing the attention to why are we motivated to like or dislike certain characters within those stories and games.

Many people are voting for evon because they think he is more interesting the keil, even if “evil”, fair enough.

Some people are voting for evon because they like what he offers (cheaper prices on the BLTC and a fractal that they are interested in).

Others may be voting for evon because they don’t see anything wrong with what he does and agree with the fictional characters decision making.

Choices made in a video game with NPCs do not typically effect anyone at all. BUT, an online game has many different interactions that continue on with real people that invoke real emotions and thought.

By proxy, some people may be upset of a certain candidate wins over another. Now they will not have as strong of a reaction as they might have if this were a real election with real people, but you put stake into one of these candidates and effort towards helping them win because you choose “that” side. If your side loses, in some way people may view that as “they” lost as well.

I am fairly sure the bulk majority of people don’t “REALLY” care, and it is just a game.

But taking a deeper look into societal interactions can be interesting.

There actually have been quite a few studies on MMO video games and human interactions. As well as the media interest in online bullying and various social media networks.

Just go search up sociological interactions in online video games
or something to that effect and you can find all sorts of abstracts and dissertations. Now which ones are valid or not, is up to you.

This game is, in essence just a chat room. It is a social gathering in a digital world. They just gave us things to do in this world so we can do more than just chat with each other.

Bad comparison with the reading a book and villains.

When you are reading the book, you are passively following along with the story. Typically you have the bad guys who put up a fight and the good guys struggle to survive and overcome the challenges.

Your decision making didn’t come into play there.

Now if you were rooting for the bad guys in the book, then that would more closely represent this events scenario.

We are watching as good and evil face off, some people are rooting for evil and some are rooting for good. We will have to follow the story to see what happens.

To make it clear, I don’t think evon gnashblade is “evil” but he is simply selfish. Although he does personify the opposition to the scripted “hero” which is kiel.

Also, I have played RP characters in other games who personify evil, and while I find it difficult sometimes to play into the role, I do so. Everquest I had a necro, SWTOR I had a sith, and WoW I had a few undead. When I play my evil characters I select evil choices in chat and I won’t restrain from PKing someone.

When I play my good characters I will never strike first and only defend myself or others.

I do align myself with the “goody goodies” more than my evil characters though, because it feels more natural for me to act in character.

Sounds pretty spot on honestly Soryuju.

Good insight on the spirit rangers, because without those 2 pets (sun and storm) he wont be stacking as much burning and getting extra damage, can they be AOEed easy enough like our spirit weapons? Or are they fairly durable.

I would argue that torch is wasted, as you mentioned VoJ provides more than enough burning.

Sword also is too narrow of a field, and a wider area AE would provide more procs to trigger more permeating wrath.

Symbols work well because of the 5 target AOE that is in proximity of you, so greatsword, mace, staff, even hammer would work well with this.

Greatsword is probably going to be the primary weapon with this due to whirling wrath stacking burns on quickly.

Hammer works well to provide protection and prolong longevity.

I’m almost thinking a 10/0/0/30/30 to make use of regeneration and symbol heals, use apothecary if you want to increase heals per second to live long enough to see the burns tick. Dodge rolls provide more healing, and then cycle between greatsword and hammer when whirling wrath is ready.

Hammer is to sustain, greatsword is to stack on burning quickly

Put sigil of smoldering on greatsword to give some fraction of an extra 1/4 second burn, so that it adds up with the quick strikes of whirling wrath to add a few more seconds ontop of the full second ticks.

(Infact you could use givers greatsword and rare veggie pizza to gain 1 3/4 burning duration, to stack some quick burning then swap to hammer. This would result in extra ticks but not more damage per a tick.)

Hammer could have sigil of corruption, or maybe even sigil of battle for more might (condition damage and power). Although the focus is on condition damage.

Take Permeating Wrath and Supreme Justice to stack the AE burns.

Use apothecary or settlers gear for toughness/healing power/condition damage
Also use rampager gear here and there to gain some precision to keep vigor on crit active (more dodges and heals).

If burning has 100% uptime, then sacrifice condition duration gear for more condition damage or fill in where you think it is missing stats (healing power, precision, vitality, or even power).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARSlUgyCXFSJEf4ES2jV6AVwqCxD2DM6jyIA-jQyAodIsGAtAiEAk3LiGb1sIasaGMtJRUtDpIa1CBsYNA-e

Quickly threw together the above on a build editor, I’m sure it isn’t min/maxed. I’m not really sold on signets yet, but put it on there for the hell of it.

Could use might on crit also instead of 2h mastery for more burning damage.

Unless you are making your decisions on a coin flip or some sort of random third party decision making, your own personal experiences will influence your outlook on what is an acceptable decision.

So since these are decision that we are making as individuals and we all have a different outlook on the scenarios, then yes this is a social experiment.

It is just a game, but you are a person driving those decisions within the game.

There won’t be any real consequences for any of our decisions, so we can take this as a pass to do what we want. Now the question comes up, is doing what you want really what you would do deep down, but social norms stop you?

There is a motivator behind every decision, which leads us to expect a positive outcome. Unless you are a masochist, but then the positive outcome is the bad :p

So now that you realize that you are making decisions, are you happy with your choice? or does something bother you? If something bothers you, then you are doing the opposite of what you would do in the real world, and this is a safe place to do that without suffering backlash.

If it doesn’t bother you, then that is acceptable, either for kiel or gnashblade, that is what you align yourself with naturally, so they are compatible with your own ideals.

Right now the condition burst is pretty powerful, and difficult to stem off.

Just for the hell of is i went full healing power, staff/mace/shield with energy for rolls 0/0/20/30/20 maximizing healing power, and sure I stay alive against one condi burst mesmer or necro, even engineers, but I don’t do any damage to threaten them.

I think your best bet is to think offensively in as much of an aspect as you can without stepping outside of the defensive zone and being a glass cannon, because you typically wont GC them down faster than they will you.

Stability at the moment is a fairly strong must against necros

Absolute resolution as you well know is very strong because of the 3 condition wipe + regen and small burst heal.

As far as mesmer, the conditions come from the ground effects and clones, either by clone death or by auto attack. The clones die fairly fast, but phantasms are stronger.

I think necro is the bigger threat honestly since they have a direct chance to stack conditions on demand, versus mesmer random chance of 2 or 3 different boons on a fairly slow tick.

I have honestly not seen “too” many spirit rangers, so I haven’t noticed them.

You could try runes of lyssa to combine with renewed focus to drop all conditions and gain all boons, as well as contemplation of purity, then after that work in a build you are comfortable with.

There was another guy on here earlier who was doing gs/staff with a anti meta build, which had a few posts. He seemed to do good and beat well known mesmer, supcutie. I’m not too into the serious crowd to know what build it was he was on though. Video was on that post so you could analyse the fight if need be.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Top-50-SOAC-Stunningstyles-Tpvp-Build-Video/first

There is the post if you wanted to evaluate the build and video to see if you could adapt it into your own gameplay/style maybe.

reread your post and noticed you already feel comfortable with the conditions, but its the time constraints that pressure you…

I won’t deny that there are groups out there that will kick you. I have not been kicked from a group yet crosses fingers, but I know what kind of group it is before I go into it. A normal group would have no problems with what ever build you ran, but they would get finicky if you don’t do the dungeon “right”.

A lot of shortcucts, stacking, and little tricks that everyone does. I don’t really agree with all of them since some seem pointless and easier to just clear stuff, but some do make fights more manageable.

Normally if you just make it clear that you haven’t done it before they are more forgiving.

Regardless on who gets elected, my original intent was the choices behind who we want to back, in the face of the presented character material in game.

Not what ifs and self imposed ideas about how people think the characters are, but what we have been exposed to thus far.

Now if it is some big conspiracy and it doesn’t matter who we vote for, then oh well? I am not personally revolted by these actions, as we really don’t have any stake in the matter in the first place. The game and story evolve regardless and it is fun to interact to some degree.

GW1 players will say that ANet has done voting before with holiday events to push them out longer or to change the seasons, so this is not out of scope for them.

@Lord Trejgon

Almost certain I never used the words “bad party member” in my analysis of toughness and the use of it in the current game. So if that is what you took out of what I wrote, that is your own personal spin on those words.

I have found you are constantly trying to contradict me in random posts, and it is quite annoying but oh well, it is a public forum.

I also am running as a support based build which focuses on stacking might to make up for the lack of my offensive stats, but it also stacks might for my group. I don’t speed run, and don’t want to be in groups that are tailored to do so. I enjoy playing “normal”.

So while I understand “why” berserker is dominant in dungeon pve, I don’t agree that it “should” be.

I explained the real world versus game world earlier. To some degree that is true, but the motivators behind decisions are interesting things to examine.

Form ate my response back to you Astralporing, so I’ll try to make it shorter this time.

Upholding law and defending the weak that she oppressed earlier.

This makes a positive mark on her character as she was supposed to uphold the law, and the contracts were legally binding documents that she could not override. When she found the opportunity to casually ignore the bombs placed there by Canache earlier, she found a loophole that would allow the people to be freed. She was “lawful good” up to where she found a way to be slightly “lawful chaotic…maybe lawful neutral”.

I didn’t realize that some of the holiday/living story boxes were written as hosted by people other than Gnashblade, the original intent that he makes money off of the people via the BLTK and capitalizes on things where he can still holds though, minus the dragon chests.

The promise to give us things and make us rich are simply bribes which are thinly veiled. My issue is how willing a large majority is to accept said bribes.

For the record I did not have nearly as much issue with Treherne as the majority seems to have, and I don’t have as much issue the same way with Kiel. I think it somehow became popular to be on the “hate the white knights” bandwagon.

@Grimwolf
Yes it is insulting, but I was trying to point out how willing we are as a people to feed into greed. Maybe you didn’t realize how plain and simply these guys were written, or maybe you feel it is just a game and it is ok to have fun.

From an analytically perspective it is interesting to see the support for a “bad guy” party over a “good guy” party, when the end result is pretty much the same thing, with a couple of twists (new dungeon, save us a little of money for 4 weeks. Real money or game money).

Going back to, how does this translate to real world politics question.

How many people do you know vote for a party because it would directly benefit them?

I am in the military, and the consensus is that it is dumb to vote for a party that will not up military spending…i.e my own paycheck.

That statement irritates me and I would think we should vote for the person who will do the most good and help the most people, not just fill my own pocket.

@Kain Francois
very true that in the real world the two parties are pretty much the same, which explains why I have a hard time voting for any of them since they are all pretty corrupt.

I have some differing opinions, since I am in the military, and the spying and what not has saved many lives, but that really shouldn’t be discussed here, so I wont respond any further to stem further arguments and bad feelings.

Random fact, I hated and never got into GTA and Rockstar Games irriate me because they like to be the bad boys of gaming. Killing and wrecklessness for the sake of ratings is shallow and a turn off to me.

Yet I really enjoyed Red Dead Redemption and LA Noir, which is by the same company. That is because I felt the story and the time period were depicted wonderfully and it gave a proper setting for said violent acts.

I don’t believe in the “its just a game” argument for a majority of things. Just because it is a game, I still use my moral compass. I will step out side of bounds to play what if, but my serious save games or online characters I maintain my status quo.

Still, very good point on it being a Pirate council, Kiel makes a pretty poor pirate in the traditional sense.

Oh and to the rest of the post, I didn’t mean “I” was the one doing the case study. I meant that it would be interesting if someone else who was educated in political sciences and sociology were to study our microcosm of a society and make comparisons to the real world.

Grimwolf and Dan, you make the best counter argument why it is ok to vote for a “bad guy” because it is more interesting for gameplay reasons.

As far as Kiel being boring and people hate white knights and Mary Sues, well I don’t mind them and I don’t know why there is such a thorn in so many people to automatically hate the sterotypical good guys.

It is just a game, and we are allowed to step out of our societal norms and play what if. Yet I do agree to a degree the Kiel is boring and predictable.

As far as the rest the counter arguments:

• Bias in case study
• It is not Evon extorting money out of the players
• Ellen doesn’t help the innocent
• Anet is in control and it doesn’t matter???!!……

Yes and no there is bias in my analysis. I did what I could to take everything at face value and take the examples of in game interactions. My wording probably could have been better though.

Gnashblade sneaks around in the stairwell, lies about Ellen being his assistant, interjects himself into competition for the council seat, claims the lost treasures from the Aetherblade wreck for his own causes, runs the black lion trading company which puts takes it’s cut from every transaction done, sends out little vote for evon bribes in world loot… I’m sure there are more but that is all I could think of at the moment.

Evon does extort players for money, in an RP sense. Yes there is a person/team behind this making real financial decision to try to make real money off this video game. But they are personified and made acceptable in this world via the Black Lion Trading Company lore. As said above the tax for the trading post transactions, but also the holiday event and living story skins and lottery items, not to mention the original black lion trading company chest and keys. Evon is written to make money off the characters/players in an RP sense.

Ellen helps the innocent with every action. Fine, they are NPCs that are stranded on an island due to Consortium contracts, or being assaulted by Karka, or are assassinated by Aetherblade separatists. Do you want Ellen Kiel protecting the players? We are supposed to be the extraordinary and heroic figures that go on these adventures WITH NPCs like Kiel.

She has headed up the defense of lions arch, southsun, freed displaced people from tricky legal documents, and in the most resent act, saved lost treasure to try to give back to the people.

As far as, how is she supposed to know who gets what out of a giant pile of loot, well I don’t know and maybe it isn’t realistic, but it could be used to put back into the city indirectly instead of directly into the hands of random people who claim it is theirs. Maybe that is bad writing or maybe that is your own cynical view in a means to defend your decision to vote for Gnashblade.

I’m not even touching the Anet is going to do what they want conspiracy theory….

Remove all the lore and the banter and sum it down to this:

Gnashblade is written and intended to inspire our greed to vote for him

Kiel is written and intended to claim our votes due to our view of morality.

In an online world, many people are ready to scrap morality to act in the guise of anonymity, which has in itself created a very large population of trolls and hatefulness.

The thing is that we are real people on the other end of real social interactions. I do not use anonymity to give me leeway to do what I want. That is a copout excuse used to do things that you may really want to do and act as in the real world, but it is socially unacceptable.

Putting on a mask does not change who you are, but it hides you from possible consequences.

Going further into it you could study where it is now acceptable in this newest generations society to act like this online, which reinforces the same behaviors offline as well.

This whole event would be interesting to study from a sociological or political analyst point of view.

We have two parties, which are painted to be polar opposite of each other.

Ellen Kiel

• Political color is blue
• Offers us new and different things we are not familiar with
• Protects and defends the weak
• Upholds the law
• Believes in sacrificing personal gain to help others

Evon Gnashblade

• Political color is red
• Traditional and offers to give us things we are familar with and already know
• Controls a large majority of the economy
• Opportunist with a keen eye on profit seen through the various events since launch
• Makes money off of us
• Promises to make you rich and give you things

Evon Gnashblade is purposefully written to be depicted as deceitful, manipulative, and greedy. Yet there is a fairly large vocal majority which seems to support Evon Gnashblade, even in the face of a lot of negative exposure.

People are willing to forgo all of that seemingly negative history in the promise to get “cool stuff” and “make money”. Evon makes it direct and personal in saying “I will save you money on the Black Lion Trading Company, and give you things you have always wanted!”

(yet we will still be spending money on the black lion trading company and he will still make money off of us, just it is now spun in such a way that we feel good for spending less!…..)

With the BLTC price reduction, those are items that people don’t use on a daily basis, but they are status items and fun!

Ellen Kiel is written to be a war hero, a champion of the people, and a generally good person. Yet she has a fairly weak campaign. She will reduces waypoint costs and give us something new that we haven’t seen before (Thaumanova Reactor).

From a moral standpoint, it would seem like Ellen Kiel should win, because we all like good things to happen right? Well, as mentioned earlier, Gnashblade seems to have a larger population talking about him than Kiel.

She offers us a better quality of life (cheaper waypoints, and a larger majority use waypoints everyday than people who spend money on the BLTC).

Gnashblade says he will give you things you want. Yet continues to extort money from you when he can. At the ease dropping of an opportunity of an open seat on the council, he rushes forward to claim the prize and is willing to lie cheat and steal to get there.

Kiel offers you things you are not familiar with and that is about it. She came out of nowhere, saved lions arch a few times, and now is being herded forward into competition for a seat on the pirates council. Not even her own idea.

I wonder how much this translates to politics in real life?

The inherent problem with toughness is that it is a variable which is pitted against attack, and not a flat reduction in damage.

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

With the above formula, you will see that damage done is the culmination of weapon damage, power, and the skill used.

Your armor then is used to divide that damage into the actual damage done.

In PvP players have a finite amount of power stats available to them, which allows for toughness to have a fairly stable return on reduction of damage.

In PvE the mobs can be given higher or lower power and coefficient values that are beyond what players can achieve, thus making some encounters pointless to have toughness on because it will never divide the damage down low enough to help.

The majority of the fights you get into in PvE are also predicable enough that you can time dodges to avoid the serious stuff, and the rest is balanced enough to allow anyone no matter what gear they are wearing to survive.

The “play how you like” mentality allowed more flimsy builds that do more damage to survive more range of encounters to allow a wider range of play.

In turn, the tankier builds now have “too” much toughness in comparison to the encounters.

Well now that toughness is theoretically out of the window, player damage has to be accounted for. So mobs are given enough damage mitigation and health to survive full dps builds without it being “too trivial”. But now tanky low damage builds inherently do less damage…resulting in long drawn out fights because of low damage and higher survival that is not needed.

So due to the “play how you like” philosophy, they have in some ways doomed us to play as Glass Cannon (GC) in pve, because in the end the only thing that matters is damage.

Mobs hit soft enough for GC builds to survive, and they are hearty enough for GC builds to not be allowed to solo with ease and trivialize encounters…so all the encounters are balanced, seemingly, on GC.

The remaining mechanics revolve around dodge rolling and active gameplay, which is slow enough to allow a wider range of players to react to it and predictable enough to allow everyone to regen enough energy to dodge when need be.

I hate to say it, but we are killing ourselves with the nice and all inclusive nature of letting more people play

PvP has a little bit less of this issue, but it is still there to some degree, the roles are more defined for each profession because of the meta, which allows some people to be wanted as tanky bunkers.

After that whole spiel, I would like to say that I WANT more variety and I play as a utility, semi tanky guardian, instead of full zerker GC. I have a full set of zerker, and I use it from time to time, but it doesn’t match my play style which is solo and sometimes WvW.

Was getting the following error message upon trying to login to the forums:

“Login Error: Portal returned error: invalid_request — l_c.rb 94 (fangamer:-1).”

I was able to log into the game and into the main page, but the forum would time out and result in this error. After repeated tries I finally got in.

Noticed very few others are having this issue, but there are some of us out there so wanted to post for them if they were unable to do so on their own.

I soloed both evon and keil with a support setup 0/15/0/30/25 GS/Staff

I just hung back by the morters in the water and got out to kill the pillagers as they ran back. Letting them run out and get treasure then stopping them with a line of warding before the drop off point eats up a lot of time.

Sometimes I get extra pillagers, and either I have to reset the fight or I can pull it off by ganking them real quick and jumping back in the water or behind some rocks to drop agro.

Fighting smarter, not harder worked for me, and it wasn’t a matter of dps.

As far as screenshots, I finished it..I could screenshot my achievement tab and my build if you REALLY want to see it? But if you are in that much disbelief that someone other than glass cannon can do it then I duno how to help you.

Did this solo and as a small group (2man with someone who needed help)

What I did is stay out of combat and stay near the spawn points.

Only kill the pillagers

drop agro by swimming out into the water and waiting for the pillagers to spawn

You can buy yourself a lot of time if you let the pillager spawn and loot something then kill it on the way back.

They seem to have a gated spawn rate and wont spawn if one is already triggered, so you can toy with them and CC them a bit with knockbacks and knock downs till you are ready to kill.

I did this with a GS/Staff guardian.

Understood McClueless, I didn’t mean wanton random dodging all the time. Big important skill dodges at the correct times.

Some fights have those attacks happen a few seconds earlier, so those without vigor find themselves not ready for the third or forth attack.

Your build has the sufficient level of crit to maintain vigor (I think it was about 30-40 crit needed last time I checked?), so it is really a non-issue.

I was just playing devils advocate on why one would want to scrap toughness for other stats. Factor in all the little small hits that happen in trash fights or in general, and toughness helps keep you steady and not having to randomly dodge small easy attacks and you can then save them for the big important ones.

With 30 points down valor and protection boon on, I think that gives you somewhere around 57% damage reduction? Anything above 50% is good enough, and if you hit 80% damage reduction then jeesus…but your vitality and damage output will suffer doing that…so it balances itself out?

This almost makes me want to go full toughness and see what happens…combined with Lemongrass Poultry for vit from toughness, and a x/x/30/30/x shout setup you should have decent condition control and healing input……again pointless damage with that and your group might hate you for just standing there :p

His reason for 15 in zeal is to give more vulnerability on targets to help group do damage.

If there are already better forms of capping vulnerability without it, then sure more crit more chances to proc vigorous precision for more rolls, but he doesn’t really need the extra crit rate as it is.

Doing so may free up more stat slots for something other than precision though.

I don’t think the build is all that bad honestly, for what he is doing.

You could also argue that better dodging negates the need for toughness, but that’s another discussion.

At first glance I wanted to agree with Hunter about the condition removal, but after you explained your logic and I evaluated it, I guess I understand and it makes sense.

So you have 2 passive condition removals on yourself, and one group condition wipe via Save Yourselves!

Save Yourselves! is almost stronger than the Pure of Voice and Soldiers runes because it can wipe more than 1 or 2 conditions from allies…but the down side is the guardian needs to be able to handle having ALL the conditions on their self.

With Light Fields all around you, anyone shooting projectiles your direction will cause a cleansing projectile which should wipe all those conditions on you, so that creates a pretty strong synergy with ranged players and melee.

You keep the boons off them, and they cleanse if off you.

The only downside is the long cooldown and big gaps between where you can’t help your allies, where Pure of Voice or soldiers runes could maintain 1 or 2 conditions frequently.

Other than that, you pretty much run an AH hammer setup, and there are many different variations on how you want your gear to support that. Yours looks like it should be decent damage.

Hence, immobile while channeling it.

I guess the best way to look at the shield is this:

You gain armor for equipping it in the first place (damage reduction)
You can trait to gain toughness while it is equipped (damage reduction)
Shield 4 provides a short duration protection boon (damage reduction)
Shield 5 provides a pushback,projectile block, and a small burst heal (utility, damage stop, heal)

So the shield is a defensive weapon, it is providing “partial blocks” by reducing damage via protection boons.

So lets compare shield abilities

Warrior – Shield Stance

• 30 second cool down, blocks for 3 seconds

Guardian – Shield of Judgement

• 30 second cool down, reduces damage by 33% for 5 seconds, 3 seconds in pvp

Engineer – Magnetic Shield

• 30 second cool down, reflects projectiles for 3 seconds, can be exploded for a 300 radius push back. Immobile while channeling this. Counts as a Blast Finisher

All of those abilities focus on a 30 second rotation of block, reducing, or reflecting damage

Warrior – Shield Bash

• 25 second cool down, interrupt/stuns enemies up to 300 range. Counts as a leap finisher.

Guardian – Shield of Absorption

• 40 second cool down, push back and knocks down enemies up to 320 range, absorbs projectiles, and can be exploded for an AE heal. Acts as a Light Combo field. Immobile while channeling this.

Engineer – Static Shield

• 40 second cool down, blocks for 2 seconds and if struck stuns the enemy and ends the block. Will continue to block ALL projectile attacks for full duration. Can throw shield to stun all targets in it’s path and will return back to the player stunning all targets in the path again, up to 900 range. Counts as a Projectile Finisher.

Based off that analysis, all the shields pretty much act in similar ways emphasizing projectiles or physical attacks, and stunning.

The only one that stands out is the warrior stun, which is on a 25 second cooldown. Maybe that is “too strong” compared to others. Or maybe it is balanced enough since it is a single target stun versus AE?

Warriors excel with melee protection, Engineers excel in projectile protection, and Guardians are 50/50 with melee and projectiles.

Shield for guardians, fulfills all the roles it does for other shield users, so it is working as intended. Just not working how we the players thought to understand it.

Slightly sobering situation as far as damage and the build I have been using in PvE.

Currently I have been running an endless might boonway style build 0/15/0/30/25

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARWlUgyCXFyvDf4ESOjVCBtPEQYPwoMqjA-jwCB4LBiEJQpRFRjtsNsVXBp8Ka6aYKXBR7Sq2gbI12cRTEAzCA-e

I maintain 20+ stacks of might throughout the duration of combat, and 12 stacks for the group.

In wvw, I have good survivability can outlast most folks, boon corruption and stripping can be a pain though.

With that said, I took it upon myself to solo the CoE event chain just to open up the dungeon for the hell of it.

Every point I did with east except for one of them. This even required you to kill the technician before they finished reprograming the console.

I was running out of time and failing the event consistently. I had to switch to might on crit and put out spirit weapons with hounds of balthazar to get out enough DPS to kill the npc.

Was quite fun challenging myself, but I can see where my build was lacking damage when it needed it.

I like how much survival I have currently, and I like how smooth my groups have been going with the extra might, but I am now thinking of ways to push even more damage out.

I used to do this build with berserker gear until I was able to farm up the magi gear, I just felt like the extra hp would help against conditions a bit, so I switched over.

Short “cool story bro” from me, to help people when considering builds and what they want to do.

Buff bar.

Without your weapon’s drawn, Aegis doesn’t draw. When you draw your weapons, inside or outside of combat, Aegis will draw on your character.

So, unless you are drawing your weapons and panning the camera around to the front of your character to check if Aegis is on or not before every combat, then seeing it prior to combat on your character is a moot point.

Thus, you can take a quick glance at your buff/boon bar and see if there is a little orange shield on the list at any time.

in pvp, the spike damage that a single player can bring out can be surprising sometimes, the whole point for me going full clerics was mostly to see how good regen really is, and to work on my avoidance/block timing.

Good practice, honestly. Put yourself in a highly contested area on the map and kitten off the other team if you can stay alive with the whole team on you :p

Biggest problem I have is when I get immobilized or stunned, then I can’t dodge and get the evade and huge heal.

As far as damage, yes it does horrible damage and quit pointless to even attack anyone save from getting some healing procs off mace, but that wasn’t the reason for a full clerics build in the first place.

Here is the build if anyone wanted to try to old school bunker it in pvp to practice dodges and blocks

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApeWlUgyCXFyvDm4ESmiVCBxegRfUHdpwheIA-TsAgzCmIuR1lrLzNSvseNaY9x8DA

Two things I kept juggling to see what I liked better was Save yourselves versus using maybe a signet of mercy or judgment.

Also you can swap out a knights jewel in the amulet if you wanted a little bit more health. Don’t honestly need it with the high rate of regeneration and virtue of resolve, but gives you more breathing room.

In dungeons I agree, full clerics is going to be a huge waste if the group isn’t getting hit anyway.

Just now, for laughs, I went full cleric 2 water/2dwayna/2monk, mace/shield staff with a 0/0/20/30/20 setup maximizing healing power, symbols, regeneration upkeep, and VoR.

Survived amazingly well even this late into the meta. If you don’t block and dodge the right stuff you die really quick and it might feel weak. But if you buy enough time our 500 hp a sec keeps you alive.

Pretty much that is why the Healway build works. Mobile, dodges and blinds a lot, and heals while you are avoiding all that damage. It takes more player participation than letting AH tick for you, so it has a slight learning curve.

Healway is a good example of a build that doesn’t need AH/EM.

I will say, that I have regressed back to AH/EM recently in spvp hot joins because of how offensive you can put your stats while keeping some margin of survivability.

It is not top damage, but you can outlast and maintain decent pressure. No 10-30k hits of course, so you have to be satisfied with 5ks here and there.

cool, thanks for the response nice video. Good editing and great use of retal!

I think the community is so torn between what is good and what is bad, based off of personal experiences.

That said we have three major game types which will skew personal experiences: PvP, WvW, PvE.

Beyond that you have some subsets within each of those

PvP – sPvP and tPvP
WvW – Zerg, Solo Roamer
Pve – Open World, Dungeons

Each of those areas may emphasize different strengths and weaknesses in various builds.

The reason why “AH/EM is everything” is because it is very versatile and requires little to no switching around, no matter where you are. It even allows you to change over to MF if you want without any cost.

Other builds can accomplish the same effect in different areas, or even outshine AH/EM, but the fact that AH/EM works anywhere helps make it more popular.

Solo, you will not get as many boon applications, which result in less personal healing. You still will get a steady flow of boons and as long as your HP in stays above the HP out, you will survive.

MF has better burst healing, and can survive taking heavy damage suddenly. Better when soloing as far as Heals per second versus AH/EM, but it has gaps in the heals where you are prone to a much lower HP in rate, which creates openings to die easier.

Regeneration is another major sustain mechanic for guardians (and the game in general) This requires more gearing into Healing Power than AH/EM and MF take, since it scales better and you see more return out of it. The other downside is it prone to counter play by boon removal/conversions.

Our weaker forms of combat sustain are Writ of the Merciful (symbols heal), Zealous Blade (greatsword heals), Pure of Heart (aegis heals), and if you really want to dig deep Bow of Truth (activation heals).

Those weaker forms of sustain, along with our built in profession mechanic (Virtue of Resolve) can be useful if combined with our primary sustain mechanics listed above.

You could argue that they should be able to keep survivability up on their own, and that would create more build diversity than AH and MF, but they don’t at the moment.

With that said, now that you have chosen your favored combat survivability, you can build for either damage or support.

Many favor AH and MF for damage based builds because they do not require a lot of healing power to make them work better.

Regeneration can work perfectly well in a DPS build, but you may have to make some sacrifices here and there to find a good balance.

Of course you can always have access to AH/MF and Regen, making it a win-win scenario.

In the end, some areas of gameplay allow player not not get hit very often, requiring much less “survivability”, allowing them to forgo specing into AH or MF. This area of gameplay is typically dungeons and PvE, since NPC combat is very predictable and scripted.

I guess this is my long way of saying: Play what works for you.

Just understand the influences in your decisions and opinions, and try to understand other points of view and how they too can be valid due to differing areas of gameplay.

Slightly off topic, but what are the specs of your computer?

I run max settings and the frame rate isn’t a problem, but your video caps have a real smoothness to them. When you camera turn everything stays so smooth and even, it just looks real nice.

I guess it is worth it to point out that:

The visual could be an option which can be turned on and off CLIENT SIDE ONLY.

Which means, if I wanted to, I could disable the visual effect for pictures and what not, or just cause I think it is ugly, but this would have no impact or bearing on other players capability to see my Aegis effect, regardless of my client side settings.

Much the same how you can run a lower resolution, or turn off various shaders or particle effects.

Not everything someone does impacts you :p Sometimes people can do things and you can do different things and its ok!

In the end though, I don’t mind it, but I see the buff bar much easier than I see the visuals in the face paced combat of this game.