Guild Wars 2

You do realise that it’s just the HoT story, and only about a third of it, right? That you don’t need to have touched the original personal story before doing it? You can insta-level your character with tomes, gear it out, run it to the new maps and start immediately. The character doesn’t even need to be a revenant.

I’m not even sure where the fact that people might have leveled with tomes even comes into play, given that you have to be 80 before you can touch the HoT story, so it’s not like you could have made any progress on it while leveling.

Vayne.8563:

I’d raid, but I don’t want to be carried, and due to my connection in Australia, it’s going to be very hard for me to be a productive member of the team. I’m at least a half second to a second later than everyone else. I don’t always appear on the screen where I actually am. That makes staying out of circles a hardship and that’s without my color blindness.

I’d simply be a burden to all you pro players. lol

I know a few people who have had their ping spike up to ~500 since a few patches ago, not sure if that’s your case as well, but I’m able to get a stable 250-260 ping from Melbourne, and that’s completely fine to raid with. So if you can get yours to around that, don’t let the connection speed stop you from playing content you might enjoy.

Colour blindness is a completely separate issue, and I do hope anet adds some form of colourblind option, but if you play a dps revenant or something that sticks in melee most of the fight, and just leave green circles to other people, you might be able to find a way around that. But I’m not sure. Hard to tell just how badly it effects play without being colourblind myself.

Before I killed VG the first time and started seeing the eternal achievement progress, I actually thought from the wording of the achievement that it required a group to run through the entire wing in one attempt without anyone dying once. That would’ve been a fun achievement.

Agemnon.4608:

Why no guardian? They have AoE fields that give stability, a charged skill that maxes everyone’s HP, and that’s not even getting into some traps so a mix of dragonhunter and base guardian skills looks ideal.

Then you have crusader gear that looks good for guardian, you get some nice toughness, healing power, and a bit of offense between the power and ferocity. Mixing with zealot’s sounds ideal for some good staff heals and some precision.

1. There is no need for AoE stability for any of the raid bosses, and by field, I assume you mean Hallowed Ground, which has such a short duration, and such a long cooldown that it’s rarely, if ever, worth touching.

2. The elite signet has a long cast time during which you do no damage, and has a very long cooldown, and feel my wrath or even renewed focus brings more utility, making the signet essentially useless. Also, a druid has a much more reliable and consistent healing output, better to rely on it for heals.

3. Some of the traps are nice, but even with them, guardian dps is low compared to rev/tempest/condi warr, and so people run these other classes instead, because they are simply better at the job they need to do.

As for gear, there isn’t really any need to go outside of zerk/assassins for power, and viper’s for condi, unless you are the tank or healer. And even then, the healer can still be full or primarily dps stats if the raid group knows the encounters well. The tank just needs a little bit more toughness than everyone else to hold agro, which can mean just one piece of cavalier’s, and then the rest dps stats. Also staff is useless.

The problem with guardian, is that it does not have enough dps to compete with other classes, a tank guard cannot offer as much of a group dps increase as a tank mesmer, and a healing guardian is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, when there is a round peg (druid) sitting right next to it.

At the moment, there’s just nothing a guardian can do in raids better than anything else, and just about everything it can do, can be done better by something else. Which means there’s no real place for it. But that will likely change as new raid bosses are introduced.

Wolf Rayet.4073:

For those people who are concerned about the scammers, i.e. the groups that kick players at the end of a dungeon and then sell their slots, maybe Anet could block any slot that has been emptied via “kicking” from being refilled. That way only slots that were left open from the beginning, voluntarily vacated or as the result of a disconnect can be filled.

I frequently sell level 40/50 fractals with the group of friends I play with, and it’s reasonably common to see people join and try to kill off the boss without paying, despite being kindly greeted with a “hello frand, pls pay to (insert character here)”, at which point they get a quick kick, and we readvertise. You also sometimes get people who are angry that people sell runs at all, who join just to rage at you and disrupt your sale, and you need to be able to get rid of them too.

So whilst it would be great to have a way to prevent scammers, especially since anet have said they won’t regulate this area of the game, I don’t see a way of doing it without causing major problems for legit runs (selling or otherwise).

Petrol.9086:

I’ve encountered very little ranger/necro hate recently. But rangers generally have a bad rap because of Bearbows. You know the type. Uses nothing but longbow with a bear pet, stays far away from the group not benefiting from buffs and worst of all spams point blank shot off cool down driving everyone else crazy.

And honestly, even as a ranger, i can’t stand them either. And i’m easy going, i say come in whatever build you want as long as it contributes to the group in someway.
Bearbows just don’t. They actually make the run unplesant at worst because of their constant knockback spam.

Pretty much. It’s not that ranger is a bad profession for pve, it’s just used badly by a lot of people, which sours the image of the profession in the eyes of other players. The people who want to finish their dungeon runs as quickly as they can would just rather not gamble on a pug ranger.

Coulter.2315:

Cameron.6450:

Coulter.2315:

The problem is resing downed people isn’t helped by Healing Power anyway :P

Frenzy mercy rune res is best res.

Mercy, Time Warp, Feedback with Resistance ^^ RESMER!!!!

Continuum split, double timewarp.

If only they made a phantasm that resses on summon…

Coulter.2315:

The problem is resing downed people isn’t helped by Healing Power anyway :P

Frenzy mercy rune res is best res.

It’s possible to complete a large chunk of PVE while your character is naked, so it should follow that any build that adds to this is also capable of completing the content. So essentially any build is viable.

The reality in GW2 is that active defenses including dodges, blocks, reflects, and general positioning are more than sufficient to avoid death in basically all PVE content, and so passive defenses are not really necessary once you are familiar with each encounter. If you don’t need the defensive stats, why not just put everything in damage? That’s how the whole zerk meta came about.

People want to finish dungeons as quickly as they can. Nothing wrong with that. I fail to see how this continues to be an issue. For easily predictable PVE content, there will always be one combination that is the fastest, which generally comes to light soon after each patch. Some people don’t want to loosely follow the generally accepted setups, also nothing wrong with that. The two different types just need to stay out of each others way.

On a side note, a lot more build options are generally explored in wvw and pvp, where encounters are unpredictable and some degree of passive defense becomes more valuable.

Pockets.3201:

Personally, I push for the AP because there are skins locked in the achievment chests I can’t get anywhere else. If they weren’t there I wouldn’t bother with them at all.

True, but I think most AP hunters are okay to play a wide variety of content to get those larger chunks of AP, regardless of whether or not they feature in the list of dailies. May not always be playing their favourite content, but that’s a pretty common feature of MMO’s in general, and is to be expected.

SkiTz.4590:

According to OP.. PvE is just open world events and gathering nodes.

It’s not just the OP, seems to be a frequently reoccurring theme, and for the life of me I cannot figure out how anyone could come to the conclusions that 1. Fractals are any different from dungeons in the way they play, and 2. Somehow they are unfit to be called PVE. I’d be really grateful if someone could explain the reasoning to me.

Also I think with the exception of the few organised dungeon speed-run tourneys, and a few highly coordinated speedrunning groups, there is absolutely no “competitive” aspect to dungeons or fractals. They’re co-operative. No groups from the LFG are looking to set record times with their speedruns, they just want to get through the content as quickly as possible, because the vast majority of the playerbase at this stage have likely already done most of the dungeons multiple times, are only interested in the payout at the end, and find the process somewhat tedious. So the sooner they are out, and have the gold/tokens they need to achieve some other goal in the game, the better. This isn’t to say ALL players are like this, but this is likely to be the mindset of most people who advertise for full zerk parties on the LFG.

On topic, OP, if running fractals actually makes you suffer, just leave the daily. Seriously, it’s what, a few AP? Most of the reward that used to come from dailies is now in the log in chests, so it’s really not a big deal if you feel like you have to miss one.

Aza.2105:

no obvious animations or cast times

Come on now, the projectiles are pretty slow and the necro turns into a glowing green giant, I’m not really sure HOW it could be made any more obvious.

Nothing says fun like a good ol’ fashioned race war.

In all seriousness though, it would make for some interesting wvw. The borderlands could actually be distinguishable from one another and there could be some backstory incorporated into the fighting. However, heaps of work to design 5 new maps, a balancing nightmare, and somehow i feel like an all out race war is a little much for the devs who decided “runes of the pirate” was too edgy and privateer was a better fit.

clint.5681:

Pray tell who that massive transfer to SF was?

And also tell us how we should plan around a lack of people on at night when we are all sleeping outside of buying guilds T1 style? You seem to know everything so I expect some answers.

I also dont recall GoM having a big enough nightcrew to make a difference a month ago, and yet now you do so please tell me what changed, transfers perhaps ?

GoM didn’t really get any transfers during the discounted period. Most of RISE came back well over a month ago, and while we used to run a decent oceanic group (around the middle of last year), we don’t really run any groups during off hours anymore, and usually only have 5-6 people online during oceanic prime, and not all of those will be in WvW. As an aussie, I can say that GoM does not have a big nightcrew. What you’ve seen in the past few days has been primarily the regular NA players staying up late or getting up early. GoM also has an extremely large PvE player base, so the combination of achievements and xp trains at night have greatly inflated our WvW population.

That being said, I don’t believe SF had many transfers either. The most common tags I’ve seen have been Cosa, MvM, and i think LORD, all of which have been there for a while. I recall someone saying that Cosa had a bit of a relaxed week last week, so it’s possible the full strength Cosa groups are being mistaken for transfers.

As for a +695 tick, it’s great for those who play the game for points (not my cup of tea, but to each their own), but a ppt discrepancy like that is really only capable when fielding a kittenload more people than anyone else. At that point, strategy tends to go out the window, as it really isn’t needed. And that applies to all servers.

teg.1340:

Engineer is a great 1vs1 profession, but he’s not that great in disengaging and preventing your opponent from running away. The proposed bomb/toolkit/rocket boots build is ok at both, but it has no access to stun breaks and stability and condition removal is not that great.

Perhaps not that build, but a p/s nade/toolkit/elixir s engi is extremely strong, perhaps not at chasing people down, but imo if someone runs from a fight you officially won.

The blocks/reflect/invuln gives you a great deal of survivability, and the 5s of stealth from the thrown elixir s is usually more than enough to get you away from a zerg if you move cleverly in stealth.

And speedy kits. Never forget speedy kits.

Glenn.3417:

Once again wvw get’s shafted cause of pve scrubs crybabies.

It’s not their fault, they will probably hate it as much as the rest of us, given that their speed runs or w/e will be slower now.

Still, it’s stupid to give an entire type of pvp build a nerf because they want to change the pve meta. The wvw meta is tank gear+kitten loads of people, or tanky condi/thief for roaming. Did not need a crit damage nerf at all.

Neaera.1973:

Codisa.1892:

so this is where bags went…

“Respect other guild members.” this must be a new rule….

Just because we made fun of you a lot doesn’t mean we didn’t respect/love you….

Wait… You guys loved/respected lulu? I feel bad now.

Mesmer is nice, but the poor swiftness uptime and lack of speed signet will drive you crazy unless you want to fork out for traveler runes. So I don’t run solo on my mes anymore.

I’ll throw my hat into the ring for engineer. The nade kit is extremely strong, provided you get good enough at landing the nades. And perma swiftness for 10 trait points is amazing.

Prosecutor.1457:

Atrophied.8725:

Hey SE, One. Can we fight you guys one at a time? You outnumber us on your own anyway. Love, FUN.

Hey, it’s better than being triple teamed by TEDRBEAST right?

I would be very impressed if TEDRBEAST triple teamed someone, seeing as TE and DR have folded and no longer exist.

meklin.4530:

Well we are missing our All Star Commander this week. And a good number of our Guilds are still on holiday. Doesn’t help the fact this is the first we’ve been Green in months, and were all still trying to get used to that. Hopefully by tomorrow well be back in fighting shape

Yeah, I’ve been guilty of that as well. My personal highlight was dying to guards outside SBI garrison while wondering why I couldn’t walk through the green portal…

Yup, engis should be fine against most thieves. I mean, you’re unlikely to kill them, but once you lay some damage down they will usually run off, and that counts as a win in my book.

If it’s a d/d thief, try and time all your blinds (of which engi has a few) just before he’s about to enter stealth. The thief’s cloak and dagger will miss, and you’ll deny him his passive healing, and his main source of condi removal.

In addition to the tag icon, some commanders use a potion of ascalonian mages to stand out more. If you see the blue shiny guy, it’s usually the commander.

abiyde.5064:

Yep. I’d love to fight you again. The last fight was the best and I still made some big mistakes.

And leave our yaks alone, thanks.

Yeah, well I’m usually pretty happy to take party invites for duels/chats, although I do enjoy the unpredictability of the 1vX situations that come up when solo roaming, so it depends pretty heavily on my mood.

And no. The northern parts of the map get mighty chilly, and Bengi needs all the yak hides he can get to fix up the holes in his armor.

abiyde.5064:

That might have been me you fought. I lost a 1v1 to a much more skilled engie that night.

We get backup because we don’t want roamers to find our BL entertaining. It’s a lot healthier for our yaks and camps that way.

I actually suggested we just party invite you (if you are the one roamer I am thinking of) and set up some duels since you were clearly looking for fights. But I had to log.

Dueling would have been better for all of us. They are more fun than babysitting yaks. We get practice. The yaks flow unmolested. And you get a steady stream of even fights.

Merry Christmas everyone. Thanks for all of the good fun this past week.

Were you an asuran engi running toolkit, elixir gun, and (I think, can’t remember) nades? I ran into one a few times while i was soloing on ybbl. I was on my human male engi (named bengi), ganking yaks to keep stuff paper. Ring any bells?

Le Rooster.8715:

Wow SBI seriously? hide under open field siege with twice our numbers? should be renamed kittenbluff isle

can’t wait to fight Mag, TC and FA/ again servers which actually have the cahonas to fight.

Wow SoS seriously? Hide behind tower walls and mountains of siege with 10 times my number? Should be renamed kitten of kittens

can’t wait to fight NSP again, a server which actually fights with small groups.

Welcome to wvw, where the numbers are made up and the context doesn’t matter.

The context here is that i was running solo and ~10 sos were sitting in a tower waiting for the yb map zerg but none would come and duel me. But don’t let that get in the way of me trying to up my servers pvf ppt.

Stillerdakiller.4816:

Should I wait until I am lvl 80 to buy armor? or does that not really matter?

Bear in mind that if you are not lvl 80, you will be at a massive disadvantage compared to other players, doubly so if you are new to the game mode.

Also, small group roamers and solo roamers are (often) very familiar with how their class/build plays, and how other classes/builds play against it, and will (often) tear apart non-80s or players new to the game, let alone both. So try not to be disheartened if you die a lot.

WamSolf.5021:

Oozo.7856:

Nothing beats Against All Odds We [DIE] strategeries.

Oozo, I think you messed up. It should be Opposing All Odds We [DIE]. Yea when we did go roaming it was at most 8, but usually it was 5 or 3, and your group tends to roll deeper than that. We enjoy the challenging fights your group puts up so we threw ourselves at you anyways.

I also think running dire necro is easy mode but that’s just my opinion.

I thought it was Opposing All Odds We [XFER]?

Had a fun tpvp match with PYRO earlier. Didn’t know you guys ever stepped out of wvw

Caroline.4987:

It’s Terrorise. The amount of Aussies and Canucks in the guild require that we use the proper English spelling. =P We kept the Z in the tag to mollify the Yanks and…uh…because Zs are awesome.

Wait, are we not Austrian anymore?

Dieallknow.1387:

i don’t remember where i seen this but it holds true to all wvwer’s “all servers
Blob except the one i’m on at the moment”

I remember saying something like that in EB map chat a few days ago, might have been that

Cachu.9067:

Well it sort of already happens now doesnt it? Gold league Silver League and Bronze.

Nope. Having fought servers from every tier on my former server and my current one, this is not true. The proportion of “Pros” is about the same on any server, the higher tiers just have more because they have more people in general. Some of the best players i’ve fought are on the lower tier servers. The higher tiers tend to be better at zerging, as they are able to pull more people together more often, and thus get more practice with zerg tactics, but in terms of player skill, there is no difference between the leagues.

null field, well of corruption, mesmer sword chain, shatters if traited, corrupt boon, spinal shivers, arcane thievery, etc.

Plenty of boonstrips already in the game, a trap that does the same thing at the expense of supply is a bit redundant.

The other traps exist because (when they were introduced) nothing else could achieve what they could. Sic ’em exists now, but is still only used rarely (in my experience), and no class abilities can remove supply.

I’m not opposed to a stability trap being introduced, but I think there are lots and lots of things that need to be higher priorities.

Andy.9137:

Codisa.1892:

Andy.9137:

It’s like barely into reset. I have a feeling some of these comments will come back to bite them. Or not, who knows

KITTY DOING YOGA AINT IT CUTE? <3

Can….can I have your number

Lulu is 12, the police will be at your house shortly

Mortalitas.9710:

Dear RISE guild from SBI please contain your troll Escorpionking from hurting our server and being a troll Thanks! No reason for our own server to kill our golems its pure B.S.
I no longer have any respect for RISE also OLAF hes in your guild.

If you have some screenshots of scorp actually killing them, please post them on the SBI server forums and we will address the issue, if you do not, I would thank you to stop trash talking our guild here, or in map chat. I’d like for you to take a look at the siege in FA hills, look at the name on it, then come back here and say that we’re hurting the server. I believe most of the superiors were ours as well.

Zinrae.3769:

Oh kitten, an end of the week <3<3<3 push!
Coverage OP.

Our fairweather forum love zergers have left us, but we’re a hardcore roaming love group, and we’re picking off the haters in the backlines.

Asami.3572:

YAY! LOVE IN THE THREAD!!! <3

Tenzin! We love you! Have ducklings!

TrainMuncher.7938:

Having some fun fights this week! THANKS GUYS! <3

OMG it moves! I LOVE IT!

Yourwrank.4605:

OMG RISE! YOU’RE SEXY CHICKS!

We’re RISEjacking this hateful thread with love! And baby animals!

Yourwrank.4605:

I LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH!!!

OMG SO DO I! HAVE DUCKLINGS!

Art.9820:

Don’t confuse better with more, if by being better you mean having more guilds who do WvW is different, I spent most of the time in YBBL where we faced RISE, Abys & BEAST a lot, they usually ran together or split and they fought against pug zergs, no offense but how you compare open field battles is way too poor.

When you see your biggest guilds facing FA ones you should take notes, not when facing pug zergs.

Wait, are we a big guild now? When did that happen? I missed that memo…

WamSolf.5021:

EFWinters.5421:

Are there any good roamers I don’t know about this this match up? I know BV and DAOC pose as roamers but they are terrible. Í fought some RISE people on reset night which was an okay fight but when you run a ranger it’s like asking to lose. There’s of course Bags but I have a hard time hating on my old DR buddies and we fought them enough already.

Anyway if you are a roaming guild who would like to have some fun PM me here or in-game and perhaps we can set some GvG’s up or maybe just talk about roaming in general.

Cheers!

I was running my glass set for ranger that time we fought, it didn’t have any condi removal for your perplexity elementalist. Hopefully we’ll meet again when I’m on one of my other builds.

Ranger abuse. RISE says no.

Haven’t seen the EV tag around this matchup, must play the opposite hours to me. Either that, or it’s been drowned in the sea of Yaks that haunt our every turn.

Geddit? Haunt? Because we killed them? Yeah, I’ll show myself out…

Neaera.1973:

Wish I could have been there for that hills takeover! Good job SBI! And yes, good job with all that defense YB!

Beth praise is a rare gift indeed

Thanks to the GH three man party (ele, mes, thief iirc) for some fun fights this morning, shame we kept getting interrupted by our zerg, the yak’s zerg, and then a larger group of eb (not quite a zerg), which then had its interruption interrupted by another yak’s zerg.

Tried to join your party to say thanks, but was denied. We were the RISE mes, eng, guard trio.

Tootsie.5217:

michael.6294:

well you guys are alright in my books.. you could have easily run over me with my little catapult and taken the tower to boot but you didn’t. ill gladly knock down walls for you fellows in the future. it was good times.

Awww <3 can we adopt him?! <3

Nah, rip will never feed him, she hates asuras.

Also michael, if you could knock down the walls on hills in SBI bl, that’d be much appreciated

Amurond.4590:

Runehand.9368:

Oh, so SBI is banking on 4-man gank squads this week? You do realize that your roamers are trash?

Someone died.

He expects to fight even numbers? Must be new to roaming…

I don’t think Agg is actually on yak’s. iirc last time we fought them i saw a tag "My other guild is aggression [Agg], so it was likely that person again.

Pentzski.4620:

Cameron.6450:

Aitadis.8269:

Not that impressive, all SBI has are numbers. FA put up much better fights against us a few weeks ago and they didnt outnumber us at every corner.

Yeah, but 90% of sbi’s numbers are necro minions and ranger spirits

Fact. Poor Pent found that out the hard way.

“Hey, one of our guildies knows those cd guys!”

“NECROZERG THEM”

Aitadis.8269:

Not that impressive, all SBI has are numbers. FA put up much better fights against us a few weeks ago and they didnt outnumber us at every corner.

Yeah, but 90% of sbi’s numbers are necro minions and ranger spirits

MM warrior in BP bl, Y u no duel me in the middle of a bay siege?

;_;

Seveleniumus.5973:

Warrior, just don’t use longbow/hammer set for roaming, you won’t have a very fun time with it.

ranger only good as roamer

Maybe I just didn’t encounter a lot of good rangers, but I don’t think they are that good at roaming either, they are usually the easiest target to take down.

There are a lot of very poor players who run a zerker bearbow ranger build in wvw, the kind of guys who stand perfectly still while using rapid fire, and use barrage when being charged by my shatter mesmer. But the class can be very strong for roaming if played well.