Guild Wars 2

Just testing the grenade LOS change. You get to see the green circle if you don’t have LoS on the target, but they will still impact walls so you have to pay attention to arc. Practically speaking it means you don’t have to stand up on a ledge to throw grenades while defending a keep, but you still have to be rather close to the edge to clear the lip.

I’m looking forward to using the Name Change Contract, which is in the patch notes. Unfortunately it’s not in the BLTC, in case ANet wasn’t aware.

Be mindful of the Engineer changes. 1/3 of it was bug fixes, not buffs. 1/3 was big buffs to turrets, which were considered completely useless in ALL aspects of the game, kind of how minions were before the February patch, but even worse. The remaining 1/3rd was actually nerfs to known powerful build combinations (e.g. 100 nades) replacing those builds with some new possibilities for versatility.

So while the Engineer patch list may look long and great for those who don’t play engineers, it’s really long overdue fixes/buffs/nerfs. Hopefully our necros are next up for the April patch.

Hexin.5603:

^^ map join squad does not work, hoping it was broke in last wvw update. However … you select there avatar character running around, right click there name plate/image, join squad works every time.

Just have to be by him to join.

Hmmm, I thought that’s what I was doing… have to try again.

Every time I right click a commander and select “Join Squad”, nothing happens. Am I doing it wrong?

I’m not knowledgeable about the whole TSYM thing, but I’d like to make a request that they move up to T1 or T2. T3 with DB, YB, and Mag will be pretty good, fairly evenly matched. If you move down you might disrupt several teirs.

Yaks, thanks for a fun night in DB BL this evening. You had us running around chasing your golems, but we were just barely coordinated enough to fend you off. Oh and thanks for the bags and badges.

Go to Orr. Try to go to a temple and “uncontest” it. Better yet go to the “Dynamic Events” forum and see all the bugged events. Bugs everywhere. I wouldn’t mind a reset on Dragonbrand.

Amadeus.5687:

He got perma Regen and often large duration of Protection running, that’s help a lot on the defence!

I also think a combination of retaliation and confusion makes players hesitant to go all-out burst when they start seeing the red numbers popping up. So while both of those are offensive, I think there is a bit of a defense side to them as well that helps keep mask alive.

Maskaganda.2043:

Then he went pro and 22222222222222222’d himself to death. And yea, I dueled that engie before and his insanely tanky guardian too.

I LOL’d

Did you leave the engie downed out of respect? That’s pretty cool.

penatbater.4710:

While I was levelling, I use pistol/shield for extra survivability. I start with some pot shots to lure the mobs (maybe even grenade barrage), once they come closer, I use static shot, switch to bomb -> big ol’ bomb then immediately fire bomb. The timing is incredible, you’ll get an aoe knockback and aoe might, then once they’re scattered, grenade switch to frozen nade first and a few other nades while they run back to you, once they’re near, bomb kit ->smoke bomb and deal 1-2 hits with normal bombs before returning to flash grenade and then whatever suits your fancy. :p

As you can see, that’s a lot of button presses. Be prepared for that. This is essentially all I did for leveling too, though back then the smoke bomb was better.

You are awesome, thanks!

EChen.6245:

Are all the Dawnya event chain bugged?

I am whispering you back right away but I keep getting the message “The player you are trying to whisper is not online.” To answer your question, I don’t know for sure whether or not SoS is bugged. I don’t see how to start the appropriate quest.

NeryK.5301:

The cleansing effect only applies to yourself if you are really close to your target.

Huzzah! You seem to have solved the mystery. So to make the combo work you need to use the projectile finisher, most of which are ranged attacks, through the light field in close range. Great…

EChen.6245:

Are all the Dawnya event chain bugged?

I saw your whisper online but when I replied the system said you were offline. No I have not yet found an open one yet. Sea of Sorrows is the only one I can confirm is NOT bugged as of yesterday, though there wasn’t enough people around to do the meta event.

EDIT: Well I just went to the SoS one and now I’m not sure … it could be bugged too.

Still looking. You can whisper me in game. Thanks!

I have a video that shows it does work, but it’s not 100%. Tested for an hour on spiders that apply a longish poison. Sometimes I thought I had ideal combo conditions, but it would not remove the poison. I would even get the little heart popping up, without the cleanse effect. It’s reported and verified in the stickied bugs thread above. I suspect either a) ANet doesn’t know about it (they aren’t too big on bug fixes, for some reason), or b) ANet thinks it’s working just fine. Either way, don’t expect a bug fix any time soon, and don’t rely on it for condition removal, like I once did.

Lastly, it’s not clear whether this is an Engineer-specific issue, or whether it’s an issue with the combo system in general. I haven’t tried with my other professions. Perhaps I will.

Thanks for the tip Dark Skittles. Unfortunately I didn’t make it in time so it’s still contested on SoS. Still looking for Dawnya, please!

I found Nemsis’s rotation pretty darn close to optimal, so I follow it as close as I can. Obviously it’s situational because I can/do get aggro and sometimes need to do support things like chill and cripple. And sometimes I save my DS when I anticipate upcoming trouble. Also, I have a couple trait differences. I take Reaper’s Might and Close to Death in the Spite line instead of Nemesis’s choices. So I sometimes fire off a few life blasts to get a bit of might, and since I don’t have reduced axe cooldowns, I couldn’t follow Nemesis’s Ghastly Claws → Life Transfer → Ghastly Claws rotation exactly without reduced axe cooldowns.

+1 looking for open NA temple. Not Dragonbrand.

I run Nemesis’s hybrid build in dungeons, with good success. Survivability is good…other than DS I can think of two cripples and two chills in the build off the top of my head, and that doesn’t include utilities. The build only has one interrupt though: the fear in DS, so use it sparingly.

In many fights you switch between S/D and A/F liberally between cooldowns. But there are some groups that have too much condition players, so having a power side allows me to back off the conditions and still dish out decent damage.

Ah ha! Thanks for that. I just now ran around with a cheap version (rares and masterworks with cheap runes/sigils) and man is it fun! Having to learn to juggle a whole different set of skills, but even mediocre play seems to be getting results. I think every time I managed to land the prybar, the bad guy fell shortly after.

I’m not seeing Rune of the Monk anymore. Is it discontinued? What about Runes of Altruism x4 + Water x2?

I’m not going to bother reading all these replies, but here are a couple things I think commanders need to keep in mind.

1) They are leaders. Leaders inspire. It is not inspiring for a leader to say “I did/said X but nobody listened.”
2) Commanders have at least a rudimentary understanding of chess strategy and tactics. Too many commanders will attack a well-defended tower for hours on end hoping to take it by brute force, when there are other weaknesses on the map.
3) They use diversion and deception for every encounter to give them the local stronger force no matter what the global numbers.

Only 16 more posts and this one will pass up the “official” matchup thread. Not bad for a few hours of effort. That is actually pretty good trolling, I’d say.

SausageStorm.4293:

Eviator.9746:

I just saw YB, DB, and SoS all working together to take or retain SM. This alliance is a bit much. The Quaggans are not happy.

Time and date and upload it or it didn’t happen

I, a quaggan, can’t even spawn to take a screenshot! We’re getting owned, so I’m here to complain about this completely unfair alliance, which is cheating, by the way. ooooo ooooooo

I just saw YB, DB, and SoS all working together to take or retain SM. This alliance is a bit much. The Quaggans are not happy.

I suppose there’s nothing here. That is to say, someone has created some unfounded preconceptions and is unable to move past them. That is a sad way to live, IMHO. It disturbs me the number of irrational people I come across while gaming. The future (or perhaps current) voters and decision makers in society. “Others can provide evidence”, yet they do not. How interesting.

BTW, your OP suggests a world-wide alliance between DB and YB. Not “some”. You can’t change your story now.

Limulus.4380:

Eviator, your interpretation of the intent is lacking.

Illuminate me. From my end it looks like you were trying to see how many replies you can get for an original post that totalled 10 words or less.

Not only are we supposedly making cross-world alliances, which would be perfectly within the rules if that’s what we were doing, but we’re also cheating, which is against the terms of service? This is someone’s idea of a funny prank.

I just saw SoS and YB working side-by-side in EB trying to oust DB from one of our towers. I have the screenshots to prove it.

You’ll find a couple decent solo/small group roaming builds by Maskaganda that are condition/elixir P/P based. There’s also tankcat and its variants which are all bunker builds. What exactly is a bunker build in WvW, it’s not clear. Mostly it means you are a distraction that doesn’t die while others around you do the killing. Grenades are pretty good at keep/tower offense and defense due to their range, but you’re not going to be killing anyone with a nade-centric build. I suppose I should mention that there are glass cannon builds out there (100 nades or static discharge) if downing noobs and then running away is your game.

I think small groups is the sweet spot for the engineer. Because my small guild doesn’t do much WvW, and when they do its as roaming culling glass cannon backstab thieves, I find myself mostly running around solo doing pot shots and recon, or in zergs. That is to say, I haven’t really found my preferred niche in WvW yet. As usual you have to pick your fights, because there are professions with good counters out there.

Rimu.7105:

Eviator, what he is doing is in the EB jumping puzzle there is a massive flame trap that covers 80% of the area in jet fire he is purposelly useing those agenst his team-mates, thusly killing them, the flame there does quite abit of damage for a trap, and theres not enough room to dodge out the way without rolling into another.

I didn’t need to know the details, I understood the gist immediately. It is a fallacy to assume ANet intended team kills to be part of the player experience. It goes against everything else they have done.

Griefing and trolling. All I can say is WINNER! Though it may be allowed by game mechanics you can bet that ANet did not consider this the kind of gameplay they had in mind when they designed it because it’s a negative non-competitive experience for players. They don’t allow trolling in the forums, why would they allow it in game?

Many FPS games implement a punishment system for repeated team kills. Not sure how it could be done in this game, though.

Actually I think the necro is an appropriate choice for kiting gravelings and keeping them off Hodgins. You just have to be very aware of the knockdown and never miss the dodge. My guild group had trouble with that fight until one of them jumped on their ele and put down an Ice bow. That group had a necro (me), a warrior, a guardian, and two mesmers, until one of the mesmers switched. I still don’t think we could have done it without the Ice Bow.

The hybrid build does rely heavily on crit. You can’t crit a burrow (right?). And compared to other professions our damage is more sustained, without much burst. It’s why we’re not ideal candidates for the totem in CoF path 1.

One must also be concerned about group composition in dungeons. You want your burns to tick? In many cases you better make sure you have the highest condition damage in the group, which these days means going glass cannon.

timidobserver.7925:

Probably the best thing about the build is that it uses the same trait point setup as my pve hgh might stacking flamethrower build, so I get to avoid any cost when swapping into pve mode. I just have to swap a few traits and gear around.

I don’t want to hijack the thread, but please do share! Weapons, utilities, gear stats, runes, sigils and major traits please! Just a link or a PM will do.

It bugs me to no end that you don’t pick up loot bags in battle. That said, it’s great to see your amazing work using another build which looks like a lot of fun. I think the key to your success here is your skill in survival. My guess is the averge person would probably have survivability issues with this build.

In your preview post a week or two ago you mentioned moving around traits to get Formula 409. Your build calculator doesn’t have it. Did you decide to just go without a condition cleanser for now, or is the build link out-of-date?

What these people are not saying is that you probably should start off with gear that has some defensive stats until you learn all of the mechanics of your profession and the fights in the content you want to do. Gradually replace that with gear that provides higher damage as you get better. If you’re running the content you want to run and are rarely getting into health trouble, it’s time to start considering doing more damage.

Sounds like a bug. ANet will remove condition damage scaling soon.

The armor is rampagers, but Nemesis has a mix of knights and rampagers weapons, and for trinkets he’s using chrysocola stuff. Knights provides some toughness, and chrysocola some vitality.

I’m not sure what runes he’s using, but I’m using the condition damage/toughness runes for a little extra. I’m usually the last one alive in a guild run where we wipe.

You are right about the loot bags and the PvDoor. There is no motivation for doing the things required to make your team win against superior numbers. But you are missing one important point: no matter what is going on on a map, nearly everyone will seek out and follow a blue icon. They are essentially pawns and pieces ready and willing to do your bidding, if you know your stuff. In other words, we may make excuses, but it’s the commanders who have the responsibility for making things happen….or not.

Nikked.7365:

A second command tag on the map would help. A lot of times if I PUG into WvW, I don’t fly my tag since someone else is already “primary” commander. If something needs to be done, I’ll announce it in chat, pop the tag, take care of it, and then reunite with the first commander. Hell, sometimes I pop the tag just for supply runs since I can portal people which makes getting back faster.

I think you’re right. I could see an optimal scenario where there is a primary commander and a secondary commander. The primary commander manages the map strategy and macro tactics, organizes and simultaneously deploys various groups to complete a variety of objectives, perhaps leading one of these smaller groups. The secondary commander leads a larger force, a “primary zerg” for example, which acts mainly to distract the opposing team, take the more difficult objectives, and to bolster a smaller group having trouble with a particular objective. The commanders are in VOIP, and the secondary commander coordinates smaller-scale tactics, relaying the situation to the primary.

One thing I think is a potential benefit to this setup is that the secondary “zerg” commander doesn’t get laser focused on one objective.

I don’t know, I’m not a commander nor a great strategist, nor do I have experience with the logistics of leading a large team of individuals who think for themselves. But I am a decent chess player. Most of the time we’re playing 1-move chess: make a move and force the opponent to respond, repeat ad nauseum. That will only get us so far. There are many sound chess principles that apply to the overall strategy on a WvW map. “Attack the opponent where they are strongest” is not one of them.

Nalviir.2698:

Given your scenario, what’s to keep the defending force from also splitting up it’s forces, once the majority of the attacking force has dispersed?

Or, once the attacking force loses numbers, the larger defending force goes out, quickly kills the remaining attacking force, then goes out to the rest of the map, while they repair the damaged keep. Pretty much leaving you with no gains, whatsoever.

As i’m sure it’s been stated many times, W3 is a game of coverage/numbers. Skill, and tactics, are also important. But, all the skill, or planning, falls short if you don’t have the numbers.

The answer: time. They may be able to do all those things, but hopefully by then it’s too late for the rest of the map. Continually pounding away against the superior force for hours on end…that has to be the worst strategy ever.

The last few weeks I’ve observed my server (DB) on several occassions spending over an hour trying to take a well-defended tower. The opposition has 50+ people inside focused on defense of the tower whose walls are down with no local supply. We push in, and they portal bomb as a glob, and then the process repeats.

Time is a resource that must be spent wisely. While the enemy is focused on tower defense, the rest of the map is less well-defended. Quick strikes on those other locations do many things. It gives your team a few more points, it keeps the enemy on its toes, and eventually diverts resources away from the tower in question.

Holding a tower with its walls down and no supply constitutes a local semi-permenant disadvantage. As long as the tower is harrassed enough, the walls will remain down. If the team defending the tower starts losing the other camps and towers it holds on the map, eventually the defending team will have to split its force leaving the tower less well defended. That’s when you strike!

Commanders please, if a tower has a ridiculous number of defenders, even if the walls are down, don’t bog our forces down trying to take the tower back. It’s a waste of time, a waste of points, and it reinforces an ineffective strategy. Instead, have a dozen or two continually harrass the tower while the rest of the group goes after the rest of the map’s positions. Within 20 minutes, the majority of the tower defenders will leave, and the tower will be easily retaken.

In this game battles are usually won by superior force. You must manipulate the scenario so that you only fight when you have the local superior force.

They come out of stealth when they attack and cannot restealth for 3 seconds. But if you are in WvW culling often prevents them from appearing on your screen so you can target them.

Most people will likely say you need to immobilize them, for example with the net turret so that even if they stealth you have a better idea where they are. Having played a thief, they are more slippery than that. If a thief wants to get away, he will unless there are 5+ other people applying CC.

Another option is to make them kill themselves with retaliation and confusion. That’s certainly a deterrant against them bursting you down, but many thieves, once they see the boon or condition in question, will just go away until the situation is safer for them.

A third way of fighting them is to make use of blocks (shields), invulnerability (Elixir S), and well-timed dodges. The idea is to make him waste his initiative so he is rather powerless for a short amount of time. That takes more skill and still suffers from culling issues.

However in all this it is important to know that if a thief wants to end the fight, he may do so at his discretion. If things aren’t going his way, he will leave and try again later. You cannot kill him unless he decides to stick around, or he is of less than average skill (those two statements are equivalent). That’s the profession’s design, and it’s unlikely to change.

I’ve run it on my necro twice since the patch, one was path 1, one path 2. Didn’t complete it either time. Both times we got the troll, so we made the troll and Kohler fight. We struggled because many of the people had trouble timing the troll’s ground pound, and trying to rez while being feared into the water or being sucked in by Kholer’s attack…suffice it to say it was a long fight.

On path 1 we wiped 3 times trying to defend Hodgins in the burrow fight. Three of us guildies picked up two PUGs and I volunteered to kite the gravelings near Hodgins. It was the first wipe that taught me of the new need to dodge the graveling’s charged attack. The second try I held on much longer, but inevitably made the one mistake (a missed dodge) that turned out to be fatal. On the third try, our team finally realized why the fight was taking so long: the PUGs didn’t know to attack the burrows, they were focusing on the gravelings! It was late so we had to call it a night.

On path 2 we were doing just fine until we got to the part where Detha Stupid is supposed to fix the mortars. She bugged out preventing progress. We got her killed a few times trying to reset her, but it never worked. In the end we left the dungeon after submitting bug reports.

I’m confident my group will get it together soon enough.

What is the “queue” you speak of. I haven’t had a queue on DB anything since reset when Kaineng was in our tier.

Green should win the majority of times. What is wrong is that the same servers have been the green servers nearly every week since free transfers ended. Not enough volatility.

I’ve been watching it since free transfers ended. This week is the first where more than 2 servers are set to switch tiers. Obviously this is because of the rating system. However until next week, almost all the servers that are green this week have won 5 weeks in a row, while almost all the servers that are red or blue this week have lost 5 weeks in a row. Not cool.