Guild Wars 2

Yes (-es -es 15 -es)

So if you’re in a fight and there’s a low chance of taking moderate damage. Kinda rare situation, but I’ll keep it in mind.

Gate of Madness. It’s a tier 7 server, meaning we and our competition rarely have queues. It would technically be near optimal conditions for NOT having culling issues.

I play WvW on “Best performance”, enemy and neutral names turned on, so I don’t have a slideshow.

Sarahphim.1308:

Eviator.9746:

Another word for zerg is an “unstoppable force”. .

Um. No. Zerg comes from the game Star Craft where a race, called The Zerg, was capable of making large quantities of incredibly weak foot soldiers called zerglings. A massive zergling army could be built relatively quickly, but they were incredibly easy to wipe out with a few well placed siege tanks and some bunkers.

Also these foot soldiers were the mindless drones of the Zerg hive and seen as expendable fodder in efforts to promote the Zerg race.

I am aware of the origins of the term. In the context of GW2, which is what these forums are about, “unstoppable force” is apt.

Zerging is a strategy that works in GW2. When someone can conclusively demostrate that it doesn’t, then it is worthy of negative remarks because then it means you are holding your own team back: i.e. “Guys please stop zerging because we’re getting crushed.”

Haven’t played much on Ele either, but the Engineer seems to fit all of your requirements well. Engi might be better because you don’t have cooldowns on kit swapping, like you do with Ele attunement swapping. Role diversity might be a weakness for engineers.

If you leave it down you can’t get that big heal for at least 15 more seconds. What you get in return is a regen and an occassional water field. Those are nice for perhaps the initial pulse including overcharge, but not nice enough to be worth keeping the big heal on cooldown after that. That’s the way I see it now, anyway. Teach me! Cheers!

Another word for zerg is an “unstoppable force”. Now sure there are some people who can combat a zerg without being a zerg themselves. Good for them. A zerg can take out towers, camps, and keeps faster than a smaller group because they can carry more supply, they can smash the NPCs, and they can counter resistance better. It also provides relatively better individual survivability than a smaller group. The zerg running from door to door also provides a viable method for completing DE dailies, which is a very annoying and time-consuming effort on servers like mine which are ghost zones most of the time. These are all the good things.

Certainly the efficiency of zergs (captures per person) goes down. 8 unopposed 5-man teams can take a map perhaps 3 to 4 times faster than a 40-man zerg. The key word is “unopposed”. Have the other side resist half of those 5-man teams and progress comes to a screeching halt.

The fact is zergs are part of an overall larger viable strategy, which also includes a few skilled commando teams picking up small targets. Hopefully over time commanders will coordinate such hit-and-run teams. The negative tone against zergs is an outcry of frustration, because it’s easier on one’s ego to say they lost because they came up against the “unstoppable force”.

Weapon kits provide us with the different gameplay styles that other professions get with a variety of weapons. E.g. bombs are our melee kit. Elixir gun is our support kit.

Seems logical to me.

I’ve also seen people use the map chat function to ask where the action is and where help is needed. They get an answer most of the time. This is on a tier 7 server, so population is intermittent.

I also played yesterday and experienced the huge zerg coming from nowhere culling issues.

In my limited time I definitely don’t want to do an activity that isn’t fun. I don’t find farming to be that fun. For me dungeons are fun, leveling an alt is fun, WvW is fun. All of these will give you a bit more disposible gold, though not nearly as much as you get from farming. It’s more like foraging.

An alternative I’m exploring is seeing if I can spend more time in the real world, make a bit more real-world money doing something interesting, and just buy gold from gems!

How is this thread not closed yet? It’s hard to stomach the lack of sportsmanship. The winner has clearly been decided, and I’m disappointed that the scores aren’t closer, even though I’m on GoM, because that makes for more fun. I suspect many folks don’t care to play for second, which is why your populations are lower and why GoM seems to be in relative zergs.

I’m not aware of any specific grudges against BP or AR, so I don’t think we’ll be picking a winner based upon some kind of history. Best of luck to you both!

striker.3704:

I call bullkitten unless you link a video. I’ve only seen guardians do that on select dungeons.

This stinks, I know someone claimed soloing a specific boss using a minion build in explorable Arah. But I can’t find the claim. Could have been either here or in the guru forums, since at the time I was following both. I’ll keep looking.

It’s important to note that I realize that the mechanics of the fight matters, and that the mechanics have to be just right for solo’ing to be viable.

Edit: Here is a link I found with a link to screenshots. No video – http://immune-systems.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=8159

Well you’ve convinced me that camping jumping puzzles is part of the game mode. Now, the logical inference is that jumping puzzles are a valuable resource worth doing and defending. I hope that means we’re past the “remove JPs from WvW”. And if I, on GoM, ask for help to clear out a jumping puzzle camp, I shouldn’t be laughed at, right? Both sides of the same coin.

The point was that the engineer is a valued support character in dungeons. In that way it makes up for it’s lack of DPS. Not all professions can be great at all of damage, support, and control. I don’t know whether the profession needs a buff as the OP suggestions. But if ANet decided not to buff engineers, I gave a good reason why.

Fair enough (enough enough 15 enough).

EDIT: I suggest you do NOT go to Gate of Madness. It’s a ghost town in the middle levels here.

GoM here. Putting on my Internet cowboy hat, I’d like to say that GoM already has a bad reputation thanks to orb hackers in the early weeks. We really don’t need to add JP and spawn camping to the list.

I very rarely hear or see in chat “Boy I wish this dungeon group had a thief.” The opposite is true of guardians. Apparently tanks are still very much a part of this game.

Though I don’t have a suggestion for a server, I do recommend you consider the benefits of guesting, which will hopefully be implemented soon. By guesting you can temporarily choose to use a server with players in the zone you’re in. At that point it won’t matter what server you are on.

Many issues in the profession have been around since BWE1. Engineers are among the least played professions, on par with necros. The fact that we don’t complain as much about our deficiencies is likely less about patience and more about lack of confidence that improvements are coming any time soon.

That being said, I like my Engi, which is my main. My dungeon mates are glad to have me because I bring decent support. Will I see amazingly large numbers flash on my screen? No. Will I see an amazingly large number of small numbers flash on my screen? No. But dungeons run smoother with a team-oriented Engineer.

Folks are soloing dungeon explorable-mode bosses with necros. Personally I’m not good enough to get even close to solo’ing a champion. Some people are so amazingly good that they can do unthinkable things. Yep some classes make this easier than others, but I’d be willing to bet the warrior was doing the exact right things (dodges, blocks, damage mitigation, etc.) at the exact right time because he knows the fights and knows his abilities top to bottom. I can say I’d have a better chance with my engineer than my necro because I know my engineer very well.

In before l2p elitism.

Personally I got smashed there on my Engineer. My gear was sub-par, but my skills are at least slightly above average. I started in the zone at 68 and did well enough in the north-east corner. Once I made it to the fort, things changed. There’s a particular skill point on a ship guarded by a veteran that killed me on 6 attempts before I asked for help from a guild mate. Threw everything I had, but it wasn’t enough.

Incidentally two of my guild mates played their elementalists there when leveling and came to the conclusion that the zone is not viable for soloing. Please nobody l2p me…we’re not elite.

I agree with the Frostgorge Sound suggestions.

Madrox.2306:

There’s usually a ton of people that show up for giants and other stuff on Gate of Madness in my experience. Love the server.

I experience a different Gate of Madness than does Madrox. Perhaps the difference is that peak time is family time for me. In any case low population zones means missing out on a lot of content while leveling (especially mid-levels). Group events go unplayed for hours or days. Some events don’t even initiate until there’s enough people in the local area, and there rarely is. It’s a bummer.

Huzzah! 10 salvages of a white item later netted me an Orracalcum Ore! And now I vendor most blues and greens as folks suggest. Thanks all!

HykCraft.4610:

Careful, Eviator… all I said was “wow” and I got modded.

Good point. Edited. A lot of flaming (e.g. “you don’t know what you’re talking about so why are you even responding”) goes unchecked, so it’s hard to know the limits.

On the character selection screen hit the button on the bottom left, I think it’s “World Selection”, or something like that.

BrunoBRS.5178:

…

what will be of these events? will people just ignore them, and that fearsome boss will just stay there, looking at players passing by it as if it didn’t matter? the straits of devastation already suffers a lot from that. at least half the events there are never, ever dealt with (risen megalodon anyone), simply because they’re impossible to solo and not worth the effort to bring a group together.

Yep, already happening. Lot’s of group DEs go unanswered. My thread about an unofficial leveling server once guesting gets implemented is a failed attempt to come up with an alternate solution. Right now I’m leaning toward server hopping until I find one with people playing in it.

Nobody mentioned guesting? Not that it’s a solution to your problem now, but it is something to look forward to.

Gate of Madness is fairly deserted. Nearly all DEs must be solo’d, especially in 25-70 zones. WvW is deserted except peak hours, when there might be a 1-minute queue.

Isciira.2958:

Tarnished Coast feels good to me, and that’s probably because we are the unofficial RP server for the US. Having all the RPers here keeps our population up.

I like the sound of that. I’ve been patiently waiting for guesting so I can join my secondary RP guild. Now there’s another reason: leveling alts (assuming RP players level alts).

Peak time is family time for me. Yes I realize that is not ANet’s fault. I know many people know and see the problem, and that is why I’m hoping the community can come up with a solution. The suggestion of Rhah and Bearhugger will work best, but I’m sure that’s not high on their todo list.

I’ve been using basic salvage kits to salvage level 70+ whites, blues, and greens, based upon research I’ve done on the matter. These sources say the basic salvage kit has a 10% chance to produce tier 6 mats on level 70+ items. I’ve done at least 50 such salvages and have obtained 0 tier 6 mats. What gives?

At this point it would have been more cost effective to vendor those items.

Cerulean.5142:

First off, there really doesnt need to be any official or unofficial leveling server. If you do that why not make an unofficial crafting server or unofficial armorsmithing server (see where I am going?).

Not really. You don’t gain any benefit to crafting by having a more populated server. But DEs are hard to find when there is less population.

DirtyDeeds.6075:

After guesting there shouldn’t be a problem, so I only offered suggestions to help your low population server problem.

It appears to me you don’t want help with your problem but rather just want people to accept your idea. If that is the case I wouldn’t utilize a designated leveling server because on my server we don’t have that need.

Perhaps you’re right. I thought it would be a widely accepted idea and I’m wrong about that, I guess, because low population servers aren’t a problem for many.

So after guesting turns on, do you have a suggestion for a server that will have a higher population for alt-leveling? Because my server isn’t it.

DirtyDeeds.6075:

Despite what you think you see, no server is empty. If it was empty ANet would shut it down.

Thanks Amelia.

Until they start up guesting you have options:

…

Fair enough. Now what about after guesting? We don’t need to self-limit the usefulness of guesting. I really want to know why my idea is bad, and why nobody is interested. If you’re level 80 and you haven’t spent much time lately in middle-zones, you may not understand.

Broken Angel.4956:

No one gonna use “leveling servers”
RP servers make sense. Leveling doesnt.
What about all other servers then? Are they just gonna be empty because no one levels and no 1 RPs there?

My server is already empty. Many other threads say the same about many other servers. It does make sense for leveling, in my opinion. Empty zones don’t have many DEs, and that slows down leveling. That’s why it makes sense. Please elaborate as to why it doesn’t make sense.

Though my guild mates seem to think the healing turret is best for dungeons, I believe they are mistaken. They tend to like the constant regen. The problem is, once I set down the turret, I don’t have another big heal for myself until 15 seconds after I pick the turret back up. Leaving the turret down and having that long cooldown on the heal is just not going to work, so I end up having to pick my turret back up immediately after placing it (or perhaps after overcharging it and waiting for the cleansing pulse). That’s the only viable way to use it in dungeons.

If I’m not using the turret, I’ll use the med kit. Having a few 1000 HP heals on the run has saved my bacon countless times. The easily accessible cleanse has also helped. I haven’t yet used it to help out allies, mostly because the packs are hard to see and my guild mates probably don’t even know what they are.

Prior to release Tarnished Coast was agreed to be the unofficial US RP server. It makes sense for players with similar goals to play on the same server. Now that most zones, particularly the mid-level ones, are so sparsly populated, leveling is mainly done without much in the way of DE chains.

Once guesting gets implemented we can remedy that. Let’s select a US and a EU server specifically for leveling. At any time of day we can hop on that server and we’ll find zones full of people so we get to enjoy leveling with DEs.

For US, I suggest Gate of Madness, but only because that’s the server I’m on. I’m open to any other server.

My main is 77 and my alt 45. I’ve been enjoying the scenery. I’m sure by the time my alt is 80 I’ll have seen at least 90% of the content, the remainder being some story line and those less-frequent DEs. I have a few alt-alts that I want to play in dungeons and WvW, but they are low level. I want to get them to 80. How do I do it with minimal play time?

1) Because zones are now very sparsely populated, DEs are few and far between, so DE chains don’t seem to be viable.

2) Running with guild mates is not likely because a) my primary guild is small and b) I’m on at sporadic times, c) boy I can’t wait for guesting

3) I don’t have a bunch of mats nor have I saved up a ton of gold, so leveling through crafting is not viable.

4) I’m on a tier 7 WvW server, so there’s not a great deal of attack or defense DEs going on most of the time.

Any other ideas?

I think the more damage you do to a target, the better chances you’ll get a loot bag. It’s especially tough for genuinely lower level players now, since many of your fellow competitors are wearing level 80 exotics and doing a vast majority of the damage.

There clearly seems to be a BP-AR rivalry going on. I think it’s hurting the matchup. The truth is GoM (my server) isn’t at tier 6 level right now. If we make it there next week we’ll get crushed and come back to tier 7 with our tail between our legs. You guys REALLY don’t want SF down here because they ARE a tier 6 server, and that will not be a fun week.

I like the JP and PvE elements in WvWvW. Beats an interminable 24/7 PvDoor zergfest.

Assuming it will still be 8:00 EST, which I believe is likely, it depends upon whether your locale changes for daylight savings. In the US, Arizonans, for example do not play the “spring forward, fall back” game at all, so it will be a different local time for them.

Can’t get to my computer. Someone please post a picture of the scoreboard.

For what it’s worth, GoM doesn’t usually have a night presence either. Must just be because the weekend, or perhaps a few guilds allying.

GoM here. I woke up to this, and I’m not thrilled. Winning is nice, and I certainly don’t like being in the hole by 10k+ after one day (like last week), but I don’t want a blow-out because that’s not fun. Come on BP and AR, you can do it!

Good luck (uck uck 15 uck)!

I loved the video and I’m going to try out the build. I was a bit confused about the 40k axe thing. Unfortunately you lost some credibility because the last number is the sum of the full damage stack, not the last tick in that stack.

GoM here. Good match. Congrats BP! Hopefully we won’t let you have an early lead next week. It’s hard to make up 10k in the last day.

Sharpshooter, did that one get an internal cooldown?

Fumigate won’t work on you. In your current build (without F409) you have to use a projectile finisher through Super Elixir (EG5) to cure conditions. EG1 is a 20% projectile finisher, which is better than nothing.