Guild Wars 2

This has felt like a grind for very little rewards compared to previous LS events.

I’m glad it’s over (still got a couple to get on the gauntlet for the meta) – felt too much like a chore with little to show for it.

I enjoyed the sky crystal hunt, some of the aspect arena and sanctum sprint.

The crown pavillion stuff is just incredibly dull though – but then I hate pve combat because it’s so slow and repetitive, what with stupidly large health bars, even on the small mobs…

The queen’s gauntlet is a little better, because you can actually kill them in a reasonable timeframe, although it’s still bashing your head against contrived mechanics.

A shame, because zephyr sanctum is great to explore – but I will be glad to get back to some pvp fighting after this.

Neither?

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t like all these minis and tonics – just a waste of inventory space to me.

Prefer to buy equipment bags, and I did spend on the gas mask because I didn’t have that.

Gyler.8150:

It’s all skill based, learn the tricks!

There is skill to a certain extent.

However the aspect powers can be buggy, and the powerups complete luck – can get a handful of blinds in a row compared to getting aspect master, lightning or grounded, or even the time in which you get a certain powerup.

Also one mistake can cost you a podium position – unless you fall so far behind as to get the light travel and overtake the middle pack.

Generally when you get out in first place, it’s hard to lose unless you make a stupid mistake like falling off – considering grounded and fake power ups drop like candy at that point.

Therefore there is a certain amount of luck involved, which I don’t particularly like.

Top 3 from what I’ve seen, which is painful given the luck involved.

…is so demoralising.

Like weeding The Grove using nothing but your teeth.

Sorry, I just had to vent!

Hmm I see your point – not sure what to think about this now!

maha.7902:

“I don’t pay attention to retal so clearly this skill should be buffed so retal doesn’t affect me”.

Yep, this is definitely the gw2 forums.

To be fair, thinking about it I take back that part of my reply – I rarely put myself in a situation as to faceplant directly into retal without doing something about it first.

However I would like to see the skill encourage people to go into melee, hence changing evade to invuln on hit – at range you could still get hit by a static field or whatever, if you try to use BF defensively, but if you go in to hit your opponent you get rewarded by full invuln for the remaining duration of the channel.

Crossplay.2067:

Curunen.8729:

I’d prefer change evade to invuln on hitting an enemy with one hit of blurred frenzy – that should negate retaliation completely.

And that would just cause retaliation to become worthless.

BF is one skill – plenty of other skills that can cause you to eat retal damage.

I’m glad this has been fixed, although agree that pyro should be unbanned. However hostile any remarks may have been, they were all for the benefit of the mesmer class and the game in general.

I’d prefer change evade to invuln on hitting an enemy with one hit of blurred frenzy – that should negate retaliation completely.

redslion.9675:

Curunen.8729:

redslion.9675:

The problem with pvp is that has no in-game purpose. You are not fighting for your faction or your guild. You are fighting just because.

And IMHO some situations where there is open world pvp might actually be nice: it’s hard for me to feel engaged in a world where all enemies I find are weaklings or big punchbags bound to get zerged to death.

No offense, but sometimes I feel like this game should be called Carebear Wars 2 instead of Guild Wars 2.XD

Also because there are no fights among guilds. Which is SAD.

True, you could say there is no purpose if copying a zone like Metrica Province into the mists, and adapting the events etc for pvp. But it can be given a purpose similar to how wvw has a purpose. The only difference is you’re on another map (like EotM), which gives you a variety in the landscape.

For players who find open world pve combat insanely boring at end game, there is no reason to revisit 90% of the world space created for this game (not taking into account dungeon and fractal maps…), which is a huge loss for these playeres in that they can’t enjoy what I consider to be one of the best aspects of GW2 – the art and design of pve maps.

When I talk about purpose, I mean something that makes sense in the game world.

Like for example joining with the flame legion as a mercenary and kill Vigil. Or become a cultist of Zhaitan and hunt down Pact scouts. Stuff like that.

WvsWvsW feels too much “strapped on”

I get you. I think there’s two different approaches to the situation going on here:
- enabling open world pvp in Tyria
- copying maps of Tyria into the mists, either as casual pvp areas like eotm, or adapting them with wvw objectives (this is the difficult part, which could prevent it from being possible).

The latter wouldn’t require any purpose in the way you describe, other than what we usually get with wvw/eotm. Would have to remove/change npcs in the maps, event chains, certain building structures…. this is where I think it could prove impossible to do unfortunately.

redslion.9675:

The problem with pvp is that has no in-game purpose. You are not fighting for your faction or your guild. You are fighting just because.

And IMHO some situations where there is open world pvp might actually be nice: it’s hard for me to feel engaged in a world where all enemies I find are weaklings or big punchbags bound to get zerged to death.

No offense, but sometimes I feel like this game should be called Carebear Wars 2 instead of Guild Wars 2.XD

Also because there are no fights among guilds. Which is SAD.

True, you could say there is no purpose if copying a zone like Metrica Province into the mists, and adapting the events etc for pvp. But it can be given a purpose similar to how wvw has a purpose. The only difference is you’re on another map (like EotM), which gives you a variety in the landscape.

For players who find open world pve combat insanely boring at end game, there is no reason to revisit 90% of the world space created for this game (not taking into account dungeon and fractal maps…), which is a huge loss for these playeres in that they can’t enjoy what I consider to be one of the best aspects of GW2 – the art and design of pve maps.

Trickeri.9871:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Trickeri.9871:

IndigoSundown.5419, if this interferes with the lore too much for you, explain WvW and Edge of The Mists lol.

The developers have “explained” WvW. WvW takes place in the Mists, not in the World. Invaders and Defenders are from different versions of Tyria — the old parallel worlds thing. Edge of the Mists is, similarly, in the Mists. Buy it or not, that is the “lore” reason for WvW PvP combat. If you want to lol about lore arguments, understand the lore first.

Besides, I said nothing about my reactions to lore. My objections to PvP in the PvE environment do not stem from lore reasons.

Why not call it mists versions of the maps? Ex. “The Mists of Frostgorge” and they became available from some alternate-universe-interdimensional portal that the Asura created.

As for technical implications, there are likely very few because all the work has been done by putting the megaserver in place. I’ve said this two other times in the thread but I’m sure that the only thing preventing us from bashing players of opposing color in any given PvE map right now is a simple boolean variable stored on our accounts called WvW Mode Enabled: True/False that just flips between the two states when we change from a PvE map and a WvW. None of the abilities change function or anything bizarre like that when we go to a WvW map. People saying that a complete overhaul of the events and questing system baffle me it should all just remain the same.

Nice idea!

So a “mist” version of every pve map (added one by one, like EotM, because I doubt it would be possible all at once), with altered/removed events and made pvp viable?

Would save some work instead of creating maps from scratch (like EotM), and could easily be explained through lore similar to the wvw maps (memories, parallel worlds, etc).

Anyway, I don’t understand why people keep complaining about ganking – I don’t think anyone in support of pvp on pve maps is wanting to force it on pveers, so that counter argument is completely pointless. Is it so hard to imagine two separate instances, so every player has the option of how they want to play?

The only counter argument with any substance is – how much workload will this realistically require, and will it cause other areas of development to be neglected – and this can only be answered by the devs. Anything else is just limiting your imagination.

Carpboy.7145:

So basically you want WvW?

With better scenery – like the Brand for example.

For me it’s nothing to do with the possibility of ganking – in fact if there was the option to flag yourself for pvp or remain in a pve instance, it would not be an issue anyway.

Instead the main reason is simple – variety in scenery – getting to pvp in the amazing pve landscapes.

EotM did that right – gave us some new scenery and environment to pvp in. The normal wvw maps are very plain and people can eventually become a little tired of them. I won’t even get into the spvp maps which are incredibly repetitive for the time you can spend playing.

But imagine if you could pvp in places like Caledon Forest or Iron Marches – would really make things interesting and more enjoyable.

In cities you could have duelling instead – again with the option of either remaining in an instance where you could be invited to duel, or in an instance where it is completely disabled.

With megaservers and instancing, this could be easier to do (separate pve and pvp players in pve maps, so everyone is free to do what they like), but that’s just me guessing – of course I have no idea in practice how easy or difficult any of this is to do.

It should definitely be an option to think about though, not dismissed without thought. Would be better than most of the fluff that gets added to the game.

Edit: It would also encourage end game players (max level, no reason to do open world pve) to roam around the open world pve maps. At the moment I’d say most pve players either congregate around dungeons/fractals, or farming trains – I’d say most people who freely roam around open world would be roleplayers.

That is a waste of every single pve map, each of which has been so well crafted – instead at the end game we all gravitate around a few dull maps, leaving all the beautiful stuff behind…

Fritz.3967:

Only one thing…..looks like Skeletor

First thing I thought of too.

Would be better to fix/improve current traits, not just adding more to the mix, seeing how many there are at the moment.

I’d rather take branching skill evolutions, or alternate weapon skills instead.

Main, but then I only have one character now.

I have been tempted to play a power ranger, just for something different, but haven’t got around to creating a character for that yet.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Oh wow, I’d never seen or heard of Bloom’s Taxonomy before. I see it here though:

- Creating
- Evaluating
- Analyzing
- Applying
- Understanding
- Remembering

Lots of interesting stuff here for me to dig into and research too. Ty!

Yeah, the general idea is to incorporate the lower level skills into learning outcomes for all pupils, and then build up to higher level skills in the outcomes for most/some/few pupils.

The theory is sound, but in practice it’kitten and miss unfortunately.

Might be more popular there than in NA/EU, going by cultural styles/themes.

Would be interesting to see class distributions a few months down the line, and compare to our regions.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Technically.. since Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod, wouldn’t that make him an engineer? =P

Also, this article reminds me as to why I feel like one of the most underestimated human resources is our imagination. Imagination guides our focus, our ambition, and even our ability to learn and remember. People often underestimate “imagination” as being only for games and children, but our ability to imagine things has helped us overcome massive obstacles, invent amazing technology, and apparently even cure diseases through sheer willpower.

The one thing I think most schools fail to teach is how to properly utilize this.

If I remember correctly, the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy ranks Creativity as the highest order cognitive skill, above that of Evaluation and Analysis.

I don’t know what the situation is in most schools in other countries, but I certainly attempted to tailor learning objectives/outcomes around this. I say attempted because time restrictions often push you to take shortcuts, to the detriment of the learning…

XGhoul.7426:

Jae.5138:

Darko.5873:

Heh, I’m the one that knocked you off the edge there.
And I’m pretty sure Wunzy only play engie on skyham. That’s called adapting.

Yeah. It’s up to the players to all learn to play engi because one class dominates on a map, not the devs’ jobs to balance the map so that people can play all classes, right?

Mesmer is actually the best class for skyhammer, but barely anyone plays it.

Would be funny to see 5 mesmers, each with GS + x/F on there.

Seriously? As others have said, use other weapon skills, shatter skills, or weapon swap (or simply turn your character to face the enemy momentarily). GS #1 is already pretty powerful at range given it cannot be reflected – having the ability to fire in any direction would be far too strong.

I admit I am looking at this mostly from a pvp viewpoint, but even so I can’t see how this is at all needed in pve either.

Well, Sw/Sw does have incredibly low cooldown and good illusion generation, if double traited (blade training + IC).

But yeah, as you said – pistol and torch offer better utility.

Good to see this bumped back.

I think there was an episode of QI (tv quiz/general knowledge show in the UK) which talked about Franz Mesmer, although I can’t find it.

Joonks.7501:

I’m a huge fan of the ascended scepter model, specifically the healing stat color scheme:

Nice outfit! Should I call you Captain? ;D

Updates – sorry about the boring background, I just decided to take these quickly and didn’t really plan what location to use as a background.

Now gone completely for the plain and simple look – none of this flashy stuff. Who said Synergetics scholars couldn’t be practical…

Question – hair or no hair? I’ve been toying with the idea of adding some hair to her, but only have one makeover kit in the bank – part of me kind of likes the bald style, but some of the hairstyles also look good…

1200 blink for sure.

Zenith Cesta.

(same goes for torch and staff, possibly even pistol and focus).

Pwent.2639:

Joe, I find that shatter is really strong underwater. I am able to kill lots of builds i would normally have issues with. If you ever shatter underwater what rotations do you like to use.

Oh and how does it feel to be a Bamf.

Since Raid on Capricorn was removed, I don’t bother with underwater fights anymore – which is a shame because trident and spear are the two best mesmer weapons in my opinion.

But even so, there’s nothing set in stone – similar to using a GS or staff on land – 90% about positioning relative to the opponent(s).

Just knowing a few key combos – ie, vortex->feigned surge to proc chaos armour->feign back if necessary to confuse with position.
Or illusion of drowning->summon iwhaler->dodge (towards)->ineptitude-> dodge again->shatter->swap->vortex combo…
Using slipstream to trap opponents and corner them into shatters for example.

The only skill I find a bit of a loose end is spinning revenge – easier to dodge tbh, unless you don’t have deceptive evasion.

Anyway, there’s no clear cut formula for underwater – dodging in 4 directions and swim up/down are probably more important than any of the skills for dealing shatter damage.

I will say, I would nearly always open with trident #5 or #2 (preferably #5) into summoning iwhaler.

Don’t stay at long range all the time – especially kittenter. Come in quick, burst hard, and back off again. You need to close to melee range to deal some nice damage – the key is knowing when to fade back and when to come in.

If I didn’t need condition cleanse (mantra, AT…) on the utility bar, I would use mimic a lot – probably switch between mimic, portal and veil.

My only problem with it is the activation delay – if a lot of lag it seems sluggish in activating the bubble.

Vs necros and engis – dodging, kiting and avoiding attacks. Knowing when to back off and when to come back in for a burst. Sitting in range trying to chip away at their health without fading in and out will usually result in you being melted.

Vs those peksy condition thieves – grab them by the scruff of the neck with one hand and falcon punch them with the other. :P
Seriously, seizing them while they’re not hiding their annoying little faces and bursting as hard as possible – failing that, running is always an option!

Of course there needs to be options, to let the player decide how they want to play – like a bursty thief with butterflies or a guardian with lots of mirrors.

However I do agree that the major missing component at the moment is in the control/disruption area – more things like Power Block.

1. Alternate weapon skills (#1 to #5) or new weapon sets.

2. Branching skill evolutions/upgrades.

Possibly – I am looking into a new mouse as this one is a bit worn.

Just wasn’t sure if it was only my mouse causing the problem, or whether other players experienced any problem with weapon swap.

Thanks for the reply.

Crossplay.2067:

Above all else, I just love the way mesmers use greatswords. If telekinetically holding a oversized, melee-centric object between your hands wasn’t epic enough, having it delicately spin while firing a deathray that hits harder the further away your target is just screams kitten! AND IT NEVER GETS OLD!!!

Bookahs and their spinning swords…

Asura wield the greatsword with might and glory – thrusting it at our foes with the force of a thousand charging dolyaks.

Jackums.3496:

It’s one of our better weapons for PvP (particularly WvW roaming) in a power build, simply because of its range and the chasing ability it offers.

If you’re running double one-handed weapons or a staff over a greatsword, your chasing ability and ranged damage will be essentially non-existent. You’re not going to be standing on your target 90% of the time and auto-attacking in PvP, so having that ranged capability is valuable. Though it ultimately depends on your opponent.

Like you said, it’s going to be less effective against something like a Thief, which is going to be all up in your face, bursting, and then stealthing. But against, say, an Engi with nades? You’ll be glad you brought it and aren’t getting melted at close range due to all the condi AoE. It’s also one of the better weapons against Rangers and other Mesmers.

Personally, I will switch out my greatsword for a staff in WvW (for roaming) depending on the profession(s) I’m facing. Just in terms of common builds I encounter;

Greatsword:
vs. Engineer
vs. Ranger
vs. Mesmer
vs. Necro

Staff:
vs. Guardian
vs. Warrior
vs. Thief
vs. Ele

The former professions are easier to kite and generally have some pretty powerful close-range AoE damage (grenades, shatters, marks, wells, weapon AoE skills, etc).

The latter tend to have higher mobility and can get in melee range very easily, and require you play more defensively in order to stay out of their path of damage.

This is, again, just a general categorization based on popular specs I find myself facing.

I find with thieves in particular, I prefer to be aggressive/offensive and try to burst them down as quickly as possible, or at least to very low health to put them on the back foot.

I find staff (with elasticity) easier against engis, necros, guardians and rangers for the most part, strange as that is.
And I prefer GS against warriors, thieves, mesmers and eles – simply because I want to apply high damage pressure and focus them as much as possible.

That may be biased by me using sword/torch in the other set most of the time, which has enough defensive options.

Because it deals reliable, consistent damage for any power build, as well as having range and chase capability.

Scepter is awful now for me in a power build
- auto attack is kitten, no matter which way you look at it
- since they added torment to the block and reduced its direct damage, and then recently the ferocity change, I don’t feel it hits hard enough in a power build – the single block doesn’t make up for that
- #3 is way to predictable and hard to land the entire channel against any skilled opponent. Again with ferocity change, the beam doesn’t hit as hard for power build anymore.

Staff is a great tool, but again lacks damage pressure in a power build
- auto is poor without elasticity and requires mid/close range for bounce
- #3 is just as easily missed as any other phantasm burst. At least izerker has aoe potential.
- #4 is mediocre
- #2 and #5 are two of the best skills we have access to, however again neither are putting in that dps pressure on an opponent.

Therefore assuming you take either staff or sword in one set, the only other suitable weapon available in the second set is the GS.
You could take staff and sword, with a decent damaging offhand – pistol, sword or focus (when they fix it), but as I prefer sword/torch, if I take staff I lose out on a lot of damage pressure and end up with longer fights.

GS also has iwave to counter shadow refuge – safe bet that most thieves you run into will pop this skill at some point in a fight.
Again you could take focus, but the 1s ICD on into the void is a shame. I think they should half that to 0.5s, then fix the warden and you’d be good to go.

When a second power MH is released (ie, MH pistol), I would likely run sw/t, p/f, but that’s not an option at the moment.

Vigil light chest and gloves make you look like one tough sob. Make sure to hide shoulders to show off those asura muscles.

I don’t particularly like the vigil trousers – too much side skirt clipping with weapons. The basic student pants are pretty good – plain and simple.

I like the temple karma butterfly mask better than any other headgear.

sendmark.4731:

That’s the saddest thing I’ve seen in GW2

Love the grunt of effort from it as well. Jeez.

Poor thing – it’s really putting in a lot of effort!

Heh, that is silly and needs something done.

While they’re at it, they could tweak scepter auto as well.

Something I’ve been experiencing more than usual lately – weapon will sometimes not swap and have to hit the button again, sometimes a few times.

Unfortunately this results in many stupid skill uses, when you expect the corresponding skill for the swapped weapon to initiate, only to find the wrong skill does instead.

I do have swap bound to mouse scroll, so perhaps it sometimes doesn’t activate cleanly, or is this a more general issue?

Pretty annoying in pvp. Edit: More than annoying – can be key difference between winning or losing.

Yeah I’d go with an asura d/d ele or something – have a play around with it and see if it suits you.

You keep saying it’s not a shatter build – which is fair enough.

But that’s not the issue – for example taking empowered illusions, but the only decent phantasm you have is the iwarlock. I also don’t see the point of debilitating dissipation in this build – blink cooldown would likely be of more use.

Ross Biddle.2367:

I’ve seen a lot of QQ on these forums, but never tears quite as stupid as this. Mesmers at their finest.

More like a simple statement of fact. Full glass = zero defensive stats added. Chaos tree provides defensive stats => build isn’t full glass.

Sandrox.9524:

PU=non glass so your statement is false.
There is no such a thing “Glass PU” cause PU requires to invest in toughness tree.
Glass mesmers are supposely to use full shatter build.

This, although doesn’t have to be shatter – can be phantasm, mantra etc… for example, 6/6/x/x/x.

Agreed with channel or something interesting – maybe increase the root duration and have a reflect or some sort of defensive effect up while channeling?

I’ve got 2 rings and a valk chestpiece – never got any ascended items through boxes before that.

I’ll take anything other than this kitten conquest mode.

I agree that annihilation can easily snowball against the team with the weakest link, once they are killed off. Giving a set of lives and buffs or something could help – perhaps similar to the wintersday pvp thing (can’t remember what it’s called).

I like that they’ve made courtyard, although sadly it seems to attract nothing but farming inn large groups…

The only thing keeping me playing spvp is to unlock all the finishers – otherwise I’d happily kitten off to wvw and never touch spvp again.

Haha, nicely done!