Guild Wars 2

Good stuff, has anyone done this with a thief?

Hi I want to start a FOTM team for fun, this is also open to anyone else who wants to form a pug team for the tourney. If any one is interested in joining up with me please list what you play and just give a quick summary of why one should pick you in their team.
Min requirement:
Must have 50 unlocked, must have 70 AR.

Anyways here is my bid:

NA server: I main Thief. I have been playing fotm for about 2years(probably over 1000 fractal sets completed). I can pretty much melee all the bosses in fotm. I know a lot of thief tricks, like shadow trap on cliffside arms.
Here is a video to demonstrate my skills
http://www.twitch.tv/diabiosx/c/4192454

Practice time 9:00 PM est/edt.

Current Team Comp Choice with the philosophy of low chance of wiping while maintaining good dps:
1 Hammer Guard
1 Mesmer(cause we too cheap for portal devices)
1Warrior
1Ele(mainly for old tom)
1Thief
Feel free to apply as something else if you can give a good reason why the comp should change.

Is there still a cheese spot for ooze boss for arah p1? I don’t think Arah p1 is worth soloing because of the tar boss.

Relativity.3264:

We’ll probably see lots of rerolling at mai trin

unless mai trin is worth alot of points in which case it will be best to be in a team that can finish her off consistently :-)

Life steal jade maw is a common one. There are some blinks that I know exist that can help you skip content. Personally I don’t think its wise to have a format that is looked down upon by Anet.

Any plans on changing the rules to restricted? I feel alot of people don’t like exploits and also here is another important thing: If you exploit on stream in front of thousands of viewers, Anet can ban you for it. I don’t think it is a good idea to encourage exploiting for an event that you intent to be highly publicized.

i remember when i tried to solo stealth her, she would randomly unstealth as well, kinda weird.

Ok so I made 1 person go hide and afk
So its 4 ppl and Detha for trap building part.
1: Why is it that her stealth duration is different from ours?(not running extended stealth)(Probably due to random unstealthing I assume?)
2:Why is it that she randomly unstealth.
3: Why is it that she can’t be stealthed at random times?

i wonder if we can do some gw1 inspired invincible tanking builds using weird spammable skills to kill mobs.

I play with bearbows all the time, they don’t bother me because I actually prefer bosses not melting and actually being a challenge.

The viewer count is actually surprisingly good for a community driven event. Btw how many people watched the Tournament of Legends?

Jerus.4350:

LordByron.8369:

maha.7902:

PvE is not an esport

And yet we had a tournament a few days ago.

We also had some on character appearence.

And PvE skill floor is all but balanced.

Until the content is extremely easy once you beat it just once, its hard to consider it skill.

Most of the “skilled” players just reproduce youtube videos…
While i agree that the first to discover certain tactics were indeed skilled.

And when you switch from (example)elementalist to warrior you learn the difference between playing an imitation of dark souls, and an imitation of darksouls with 3 lifes.

P.S. i don t even consider dark soul “difficult”.

No video game is that difficult, and successful.

Want a “difficult” video game, go play battletoads, but personally I don’t find that kind of difficult entertaining.

So what do you consider difficult? PVP? /shrug personally I find that dull in this game.

As one of my buddies use to say, video games are just about pressing buttons, it’s not that hard.

But at the same time, some people do it a heck of a lot better than others.

Analogy of mashing 1 button to Bruce Lee quote "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
"

[/quote]

P.S. notice that despite what wotc says magic the gathering have recently dumbed down to incredible levels.
So anyone can be a pro. (usually who is better at cheating if you just watch tournament history).

Don t listen to marketing.

Actually Garfield left wotc around 2000.

I swear I was able to avoid it with my once in a blue moon dodge

You know when I tried soloing him with my thief, I would occasionally avoid his bird attack with my dodge and other times it just won’t work what up with that?

I feel in terms of class balance in dungeons, Eles with their FGS is OP as hell. Once you know the fgs rush trick, there is no going back. It just does way too much dmg. PUGs do it, organized groups do it.

tournament balance != game balance. Comparing apples to oranges.

Tree.3916:

Stooperdale.3560:

Who is suggesting that the game should be balanced for the low end skill and not high end skill? The game should be balanced for all.

I think Lord Byron was suggesting that if the pug meta is “OMG 5 HEAVIES” that the heavy classes should be nerfed so that the pug meta changes. The issue, as we are pointing out, is that at the top end of PvE heavies comprise at most 2 per group and there is no balance issue with heavies.

For example, PU mesmers are really really strong in hotjoins, but they are basically useless in tpvp. If anet nerfed PU mesmers hard in order to satisfy the hotjoin cryhards, they have a good chance of inadvertently nerfing mesmers out of existence in tpvp.

I mentioned before that whenever there are “balance issues” at the skill floor that don’t exist at the skill cap those issues can almost always be resolved through L2P.

http://gamasutra.com/view/news/181326/Magic_The_Gatherings_Richard_Garfields_strategies_for_game_balancing.php

Excerpt from Richard Garfield, the designer of Magic the Gathering

“Often designers will design the game to be balanced for the expert,” Garfield says. “This is certainly the way we thought about it in the early days of Magic, and it took me a while to outgrow this mode of thought.”

A game balanced to favor experts risks other types of gamers having an unbalanced experience — and the game may lose most of its players before they ever develop the skill level to attain the well-balanced experience. Meanwhile the experts run out of people to play with.

Also, balancing for experts often fails to consider that there might be levels of proficiency even above what the game is desgned to contain. Designers aren’t necessarily the best players — most of the time, they’re not, actually.

Basically if PU mesmers are strong in the low end and mesmers are weak in the high end. Nerf PU mesmers and give them something else that is both balanced in the low end and high end.

Zaxares.5419:

There’s also a Method 3 if you have two Thieves who can maintain perma-stealth on the party. In this method, one guy is the bait; he just runs in tight circles on one side of the arena, while everybody else goes to the other side and just hides in Shadow Refuge with the Thieves rotating. It’s important that one guy remains unstealthed, otherwise Mai will simply regen her health during the cannon phase. Of course, it goes without saying that the bait must be extremely experienced and capable of surviving; if he goes down and dies, it screws up the entire method.

You can use 1 thief for perma stealth actually.

i bought 6 when they were 70silver so not so bad for me to replace them :-)

My Charrdian is totally going to be rocking that stat and just facetank teq for double numbers. Hopefully its a viable tanking gear set lol. Although I probably wont ever use it in dungeons.

I actually think 50 is more interesting to watch because when you get hit by random agony, u have to decide whether u must heal or wait for agony to end. Clutch heal is interesting. Of course 50 is gonna gear gate so many people out of this tournament.

Btw I just watched our Arah p2 [FGS] vs [vS] we cleared the techs to Brie because we wanted to be extra safe. Keep in mind if we wipe we are done, didn’t want to take ANY chances. We also did not practice arah p2 so I didn’t wanna risk a stealth miscommunication with every1 and ending in a wipe running past the elite risens with techs on our kitten .

Wethospu.6437:

Jerus.4350:

Wethospu.6437:

How teleporting to the closest WP favor teams wiping on the first boss?

Just because SC didn’t mess up doesn’t they couldn’t mess up, even if they practiced million times. Everyone does mistakes.

In my opinion allowing people to recover actually makes it more competing (think of any sport).

I think that’s where the 2/3 paths comes in. Make a mistake on one, and you still have another to catch up on forcing a third path. Make a mistake or lose 2 paths and well… you’re done.

Thinking of any sport, lets talk MMA/Boxing, punchers chance, one bad move and you can find yourself on your back. Same thing happens in Wrestling, mess up your footwork and get tossed and pinned, game over. These sports don’t give you a second chance either other than rematches months later.

Many other sports are more forgiving but say football, deciding to blitz could work out great, but it could also leave a hole in your defense that gets exploited for a TD. I’ve always though SEC college football is the most entertaining football to me because one big mistake can be the difference in a low scoring defensive battle.

Soccer/Futball we’re seeing a mistake turn into a goal and being a difference maker.

There has to be punishment for mistakes. I think this extreme punishment makes the idea of slowing down and playing it safe a little more valuable. I do wonder, the teams that wiped, what could you have done to prevent the wipes other than “don’t make mistakes”? As someone mentioned earlier, would ele Glyph of Renewal have made a difference? Warriors saving War Banners? Is there anything that could have saved teams from some of the wipes they had other than don’t make mistakes?

There seemed to be quite big home path advantage (you will very likely win your path even against a better team) so if you mess up on your path it’s pretty much over.

Yes, in sport one bad move can cost you the game. But the game doesn’t usually end there. Team who made the mistake are given a chance for comeback.

You seriously think having to run back and kill the boss again (without FGS) isn’t a punishment? That easily costs you the match unless you can do the path much better than the opponent (or they mess up). But at least they would have a chance.

People talk about diversity. What I’m afraid is that all we are going to see is everyone taking those res skills just in case because of the absurdly high punishment. And everyone running one Guardian. And everyone avoiding any risks.

It was not one bad move for [rT]. It was one bad move that cascaded into a series of bad moves. All of which was recoverable until the point where you guys decided to aggro the boss with the mobs.

Jerus.4350:

EcoRI.9273:

Tree.3916:

If you are of the camp that “little mistakes can lead to wipes” well… yeah? Thats why Snow Crows won. They didn’t make those kinds of mistakes. They practiced. They had strats nailed down for the paths the other teams selected so they weren’t surprised. They didn’t have stupid wipes because they were prepared and played consistently. Instead of tailoring the rules to suit players who won’t or can’t prepare adequately, those players should re-evaluate their level of effort. But like I said, I am all for tweaking the rules to be more entertaining for spectators and more competitive for the teams, but I would probably oppose anything that made the rules less competitive.

I 100% agree with this, if you are good little mistakes should be kept at a minimum. rT actually made a HUGE mistake in arah p3. First they knew they messed up on the initial stealth. Second the person who got revealed should never have went with the group but instead should’ve went to opposite way to pull the gate mobs away from hunter/crusher. The guy choked, did not know how to reacted to a revealed situation got punished and got his own team killed. This was a mistake that was recoverable. I had times where I got revealed at gate and I ran back to the first waypoint and just waited for my team to 4man hunter/crusher.

Also if the thief managed his traits correctly by speccing into extended stealth, and then respeccing after the stealth, the whole she-bang could’ve been recovered.

If you are good, adapt to bad situations, recorded speed runs you basically follow a spreadsheet routine and hope rng is in your favor. Live speed run is different you need different skillsets.

I like it, though we saw this in the first match. What if both teams wipe and fail to complete the path?

Personally I think we should just do as you said, call it after a team progresses further than the other. But, in that situation we had both teams wipe, one earlier on and one on the final boss. Which led to a draw, and the next path was the decider instead of having it move to a third path.

I actually really wanted to see the third path, but it just wasn’t how the rules were set up, progress only mattered in the third path.

I personally think progess wipes should be implemented in the first 2 matches as well just so we can speed up the tournament. in the case of that ac story wipe. As soon as the team that stayed alive passed the wiped team’s location, the match should have been over.

Wethospu.6437:

Even without “no res” rule there is a risk and a reward. If you wipe and have to go back to the waypoint, you lose a lot of time.

And as far as I know, this isn’t a race car tournament (and even in those if you lose one race there are usually 10+ more races left to catch up).

[rT] had a ton of options to recover from the gate at arah p3, they just choked and couldn’t think on the spot. They also had 2/3 chances from the very beginning to win vs [FGS].

Tree.3916:

FWIW, the idea in my head that makes the most sense is full wipe = done, as before, but allowing anyone to be hard ressed. That way if a boss is killed with 3 defeateds the two remaining guys can hard ress the 3 downs and they can push on. The time loss will be pretty punishing and it will allow for more come backs. But a full wipe has to be final because it means you failed horribly on some execution and its laughable to even consider a team full wiping and then coming back to win.

I don’t like this. Because it can make certain parts of the dungeon less interesting. For Example CoF p1, where our guardian wiped at acolyte. That guardian wipe was definitely an interesting “oh kitten” moment, the rule made it super important that no one messes up, and keeps people on their toes for any potential deaths that will ruin any1’s chances. If this rule was implemented it wouldve been lame. We would’ve ressed our guardian and probably win vs [ren], no body would’ve cared that our guardian wiped.

Purple Miku.7032:

EcoRI.9273:

I personally think when a team is fullwiped, you just move on to the next match when it is confirmed that the other team is ahead of the wiped team. I think people are complaining that you are streaming something where the outcome is already set, there is not point. It is like watching a movie where the ending already happened, and gives the viewers of “now what?”

I like the fullwipe rule. [rT] decided to do a sloppy stealth and got punished for it. [FGS] decided to risk 1 second extra time to get a clean stealth. There is risk and reward. The fullwipe rule also makes the weakest link of your team very apparent, and forces consistency in skill. When the hunter/crusher was killed for [FGS], and [rT] fullwiped the match should’ve been over and we should’ve moved on. If you recked your car in a race tournament it’s over you are out. It also makes the tournament go faster, more matches = more fun overall. The tourney was 8hours long with 12teams, had we stopped streaming the decided outcomes and moved on, i think we could’ve shrunk it down to 6-7hours of more intense action

Choking is part of the tourney hype, the best and most exciting tourneys are ones where the best can lose, that is why people root for the underdogs.

I’m cool with this.

Ultimately what it comes down to is that the excitement with a match was completely absent once it was confirmed what the outcome was (especially when it was at the start lol).

Yea there was no one to tell us to stop when a match was decided, so we were afraid that we might get DQed for leaving the dungeon. So I suggest 2referees and 1head referee to decide when a match should be over.

Tree.3916:

If you are of the camp that “little mistakes can lead to wipes” well… yeah? Thats why Snow Crows won. They didn’t make those kinds of mistakes. They practiced. They had strats nailed down for the paths the other teams selected so they weren’t surprised. They didn’t have stupid wipes because they were prepared and played consistently. Instead of tailoring the rules to suit players who won’t or can’t prepare adequately, those players should re-evaluate their level of effort. But like I said, I am all for tweaking the rules to be more entertaining for spectators and more competitive for the teams, but I would probably oppose anything that made the rules less competitive.

I 100% agree with this, if you are good little mistakes should be kept at a minimum. rT actually made a HUGE mistake in arah p3. First they knew they messed up on the initial stealth. Second the person who got revealed should never have went with the group but instead should’ve went to opposite way to pull the gate mobs away from hunter/crusher. The guy choked, did not know how to reacted to a revealed situation got punished and got his own team killed. This was a mistake that was recoverable. I had times where I got revealed at gate and I ran back to the first waypoint and just waited for my team to 4man hunter/crusher.

Also if the thief managed his traits correctly by speccing into extended stealth, and then respeccing after the stealth, the whole she-bang could’ve been recovered.

If you are good, adapt to bad situations, recorded speed runs you basically follow a spreadsheet routine and hope rng is in your favor. Live speed run is different you need different skillsets.

I personally think when a team is fullwiped, you just move on to the next match when it is confirmed that the other team is ahead of the wiped team. I think people are complaining that you are streaming something where the outcome is already set, there is not point. It is like watching a movie where the ending already happened, and gives the viewers of “now what?”

I like the fullwipe rule. [rT] decided to do a sloppy stealth and got punished for it. [FGS] decided to risk 1 second extra time to get a clean stealth. There is risk and reward. The fullwipe rule also makes the weakest link of your team very apparent, and forces consistency in skill. When the hunter/crusher was killed for [FGS], and [rT] fullwiped the match should’ve been over and we should’ve moved on. If you recked your car in a race tournament it’s over you are out. It also makes the tournament go faster, more matches = more fun overall. The tourney was 8hours long with 12teams, had we stopped streaming the decided outcomes and moved on, i think we could’ve shrunk it down to 6-7hours of more intense action

Choking is part of the tourney hype, the best and most exciting tourneys are ones where the best can lose, that is why people root for the underdogs.

Don’t argue with idiots. They’ll drag you down to their level then beat you with experience.

Fror.2163:

maxinion.8396:

Very few people do CM2 […], as they’re annoying and slow.

I disagree. CM2 is kind of being rediscovered by lots of people at the moment, and pugs are becoming better and better at this path. What was the nail on its coffin in the past is not a nuisance anymore, people can take barrels and drop them simultaneously now and the hallway of boredom with the cannons is skippable. The path in itself is rather long, yes, but slow? I don’t think so as there are energic fights and mechanics (but not both together). The only “boring” part is the boss that now people want to afk by bugging in the tree, but whatever, this boss is still meleeable with good condition removals timings.

The path is not long , I usually finish it under 10mins doing casual runs.

Ok, this is a petpeeve for me but when people talk about who does the highest dps without context it annoys the kitten out of me. In a PUG warrior is most likely going to deal higher dps because he can self buff himself with might. In an organized group where you get 25might then warrior does less.

I am going to say yes it was your fault. You knew that wall would help but you didn’t bother using it. Here is a quote from you “I understand the temptation to pin the blame on one person to spare everyone else the anxiety of having their own performance looked at, as well as the trouble of analyzing what precisely went wrong,” micromanaging your traits and weaponset and utilities is part of performance. Now I wouldn’t kick you from my group because my mentality is “X dungeon is soloable, therefore I should be able to solo carry.” I won’t kick bearbows or thiefbows or staff guardians, but most people kick phyw.

I have soloed Lupi on wall as a warrior with green gear and without energy sigil. Not sure how that will pan out in terms of one trying to get record kill since I have to use my wwa to run out of the aoe life drain ring.

ICEing.9237:

EcoRI.9273:

You stayed too close to lupi when you were trying to push him to the wall during phase2. The best way to do it is back up a little bit and walk around him where he only turns and not walk. Keep doing that until his back is facing the wall and then you go back into melee range.

Yeah i was getting a little frantic with pushing him back to the wall.
What do you recommend for faster times? Is fighting him off the wall faster?
I know I was missing bloodlust stacks too

You want to wall him because he attacks a whole lot less in phase 3 and swarms get stuck inside walls, and u have a wall to WWA on. Also walling him makes the fight 10 times easier, as well as reckless dodge not moving him to weird places when u dodge into him.

You stayed too close to lupi when you were trying to push him to the wall during phase2. The best way to do it is back up a little bit and walk around him where he only turns and not walk. Keep doing that until his back is facing the wall and then you go back into melee range.

http://www.twitch.tv/eco_r_i/c/4516811

if you go to phase 3, i use every trick in the book to evade all his different attacks

Veckna.9621:

It’s sad to see dungeon solo’ing being looked at as just another way to turn a quick profit.
What happened to the pure enjoyment of challenging and pushing your skills to entirely different levels I wonder sigh

I only get the enjoyment once, after that its really nothing special, I’ve figured out the AI and aggro pattern, no more challenge.

Lupi’s phase 2 aoe attack is RNG for thief, if you time it perfectly there is a slim chance a random one will hit you, if it happens twice you are dead or if u get hit by 2.

just go warrior. Thief is a pain and will make you want to rip your hair out.

So I did HoTW story solo and hotw p1 solo. I have to say that end boss at story, kodan’s bane is impossible to solo as a Thief.
Ginva the Butcher took 22mins, basically a snoozefest.

Vs. Wahlen air gun 1million dps http://www.twitch.tv/eco_r_i/c/4517068
literally

For PvE, the one instance where I can think of where death blossom is actually useful is for the volcanic fractal vs the last legendary imbued grawl shaman. When he goes into bubble phase and you don’t have projectile absorption to cover you, death blossom is very good at removing bubble stacks while evading the lava elemental attacks.

Hey Sanderinoa, on average how many hours do you think you put into each dungeon path before you have a clean solo? If DnT Tourney is successful and there would be future tourneys, I want to solo other dungeons to improve my skill as a player rather than soloing Arah just to make money.

Here’s my speculation on the tourney: Given that there are 32 possible dungeon paths to choose from, it is near impossible to do record strats on most of them. Most of them will probably be standard safe tactics. Every team is probably gonna do record strats for the 3 paths that they have chosen and practice the kitten out of it. I am going to predict that its very likely the opposing teams will not do well to the teams’ picked dungeon paths. It’s all gonna boil down to the surprise 3rd map pick.

I used to be in a guild where some of the members would kick people when the run is almost over(3rd or last one). Their reasoning is because either
1: the guy sucks
2: is acting like a “kitten” because he is “telling”(or suggesting depending on how you look at it) people to do certain things. Everyone is fraustrated after wiping many times and I feel they tend to exert their fraustration out on the pug.

I personally think its a kitten move to kick any1 who has stuck with the team for 2+hours. If you are 3/5 or 4/5 guildies and you are stuck on a fractal, chances are you suck too.

I find warrior to be most fun to solo with. For thief I just find myself either pistol whipping or CnD backstab or Heartseeker spam all day. Just my 2cents.

You know I have the exact problem, I don’t know what to stream lol. Btw what software do you use to stream and what are your stream settings?

Ok question number 3: In the restricted ruleset it states that all members must be visible in the video, or the record is void, I think this is important for teams that can’t have multiple streams. If any team decides to do split strategies, it will be unfair to the team with only 1 streamer and teams that do decide to split with 1 streamer can cheat with harpy feather consumables. How is this gonna get resolved?

Two questions about the restricted ruleset.

1: Is consecrated grounds double wall/sanc/hollow grounds allowed?
2: CM p2 last boss, is getting him on a terrain where he can’t move with his plague form allowed? He is still functional and can use all his skills.

I want to be in your wildcard team!!!!

Some background on me:

I’m in NA EST I can practice at 9pm est to midnight and all day weekends.
I main thief.
I can play warrior guardian and thief very well. I have soloed Lupi with all 3 classes(Off the wall)
I have completed thousands of dungeons in my time playing the game

I have two- and three-manned Arah p1, p2, and p3 on numerous occasions
I am closely familiar with every single dungeon path in the game(except ta aetherblades. hotw p2/3)
I have done more fractals than you can shake a boomstick at as well
I used to be in DnT and was a vet but left.

AND heres my big seller, I CAN STREAM!