Guild Wars 2

Darx.9842:

Thanks for all the good replies. I wish we could get some sort of response from the Devs.

The last game I played was FFXI, and if you wanted something, you could go out and work towards it and make progress every day, and that game is now 10 years old. I feel GW2 is not like that. GW2 was supposed to progress the genre into the future, but it seems like we’re taking a step back.

Your experience in FFXI and mine differ tremendously. My experience was that I needed to run no fewer than 3 accounts simultaneously since the community has so far surpassed the content I needed to do (quests like get a secondary class, bag space, etc) that I could not overcome the imbalance. Thi is a symptom of mudfltion and a non-responsive development team (they really didn’t care about attracting new players).

Other games that have had mudflation and similar setbacks did revamp their early content so that new players are not lost.

GW1 and GW2 do not need to do this, because the design eliminates mudflation.

You can make progress on your goals every day. I’ve made enough progress in the past week that I’ve decided to reconsider whether or not to pursue a legendary (I had been set on ‘no’ but it is more viable within a reasonable timetable—still measured in years—than I had thought). Not purchasing these items is a self-imposed restriction (what else do you do with the coin from all the drops that are not what you were looking for?). Similarly getting a legendary is a self-imposed goal. Sure, you get acheivement points for that, but I can almost guarantee you haven’t exhaused all the easier-to-obtain points.

The fact that the most sought-after weapons are as in demand as they are is staggering—you can buy one that is just as useful in combat for just a gold or two. People throw away hundreds of weapons, trying to get one with the exact same stats. It is absurd to think that this is a backwards step in game design, since this is among the few games where stats and desirability are decoupled.

It doesn’t have to kill the price. I can run around 5 newbie areas, collecting all the copper every 4 hours (is that still the typical reset time). If I want to sell a lot of copper, this is 30 “units” of copper (unit being the average amount found in such a zone). If I am not trying to dominate the copper market, I will produce much less—it is actually a stretch for me to complete an entire zone, but when I want copper, it is doable.

I’m proposing a single mine, with an up-front money sink and recurring token cost (gotta buy fertilizer for your farm, pay miners to dig new tunnels, etc.). This mine would yield the same as one of those newbie zones—1/30th what I could produce if I really wanted to.

My proposed implementation of farms would provide (subject to fine-tuned balance, but in general) one third of that amount of material (only one type of node, not all 3) in half the time, and not nearly as many enemies, and no DEs, either. From a maximal gain vs. time perspective, it is a losing proposition.

However, as a fun side-event, building a more “complete” character, and from the perspective of “I have limited time and just want to get the materials for my crafting professions” it has merit. I don’t see it as causing issues with the economy as long as it doesn’t completely topple the existing gather rates.

Bandits and centaur are the least of your worries—it is the adventurers you have to look out for. Those kittens just pop in out of nowhere, steal your crops, and run off. They are like bandits but you can’t kill them.

In all seriousness, though, I would like to have something like this… ideas that have tumbled through my mind include purchasable home instances. For example, you could buy a copper mine in the foothills outside Hoelbrak. This enables the instance which happens to be a relatively easy dungeon, loaded with copper nodes (better return on time investment than scraping a newbie zone, but similar yield). You can mine it once per day. I think this would be a far more engaging addition than, say, adding a garden to the existing home instance where you could choose what to plant.

Hot-join is random arenas.
Tournaments are team arenas.
Paid tournaments are team arenas for people that want to be ranked.

The reward for multiple wins has been removed, but arguably that was never a good component of random arenas in the frist place—luck was far more prevalent than skill. Rewards (glory) are earned for your own actions, not uniformly distributed to the team, so even a series of losses can be extremely profitable for a player. This is more fair and less of a design flaw than giving one team a bonus for being lucky several times.

If crafting is overwhelming you, then you’re either doing cooking, artifier, or you’re missing the forest through the trees.

Cooking: There are a lot of ingredients, a lot of intermediate ingredients, and hundreds of recipies to discover. It is easy to be overwhelmed.

Artificer: artificer is like a hybrid of either huntsman or weaponsmith and cooking. The potions are cooking-esque, while the weapon crafting follows the same model as the rest.

All others (including half of artificer):
There are a few discoverable recipies, most centering around sigils (weapon crafting) and runes (armor crafting).

Every 75 points of skill, you unlock the next ‘tier’ of equipment, generally associated with a new tier of crafting material. For example, a tailor starts out using jute, and at 75, starts using wool.

To make a weapon or armor, you need 3 components. For weapons, one is an inscription, for armor it is an insignia. The other two components depend on the item you want to create (a sword requiers a hilt and a blade). The two components will be from the same tier and will have a logical association (chestplate + chestplate padding, for an armor example).

All your raw materials can be stored in the collection storage, and you can craft from there, so use the deposit all feature frequently to keep your inventory clean.

Mke the components for the items you want to craft and then craft them—you will have to discover most recipies, but there is not a lot of mystery—just match an insignia to an appropriate pair of armor components, or inscription to weapon parts.

You shouldn’t need to stockpile weapon or armor components—just make what you need, as you need it (If you really want to maximize your crafting experience, plan how much you will make in advance and make all the refined materials, then the basic components, then the insignias—this way you get exp for them all, but it requires more space).

There should be some hearts targeting the 12-13 range in any of the newbie areas. Look around for other areas that you can explore—there are probably some that are tamer than 15.

Also, everything everyone else said.

sororsrca.1239:

BlueStoat.9157:

Please realize that an increase in demand is only caused by more people demanding a service/good. It is independent of supply. What you wanted to say is that the lower supply creates a movement along the demand curve resulting in a higher equilibrium price.

’nomics nerd out.

how is it demand independent of supply? If it is truly a free economic model (which I now doubt) supply directly influences the demand. For example, in real life let’s say the diamond market. The supply is forcefully limited thus keeping demand for them high, and thus the price…My point here is that even though demand has increased for the gems and those buying are willing to pay a higher price, the price has not increased for those williing to sell, thus the gem sellers are getting shortchanged. Therefore my question remains, what is the incentive for gem sellers to sell knowing this? I majored in business, finance major actually so I know a bit about this also

The diamond market is a really bad example. The supply of diamonds is high. Very high. Demand is created through marketing designed to promote the idea of scarcity and inherent value, not any actual value.

The money offered to sellers has increased. The margin between the buy and sell price is a buffer to prevent short-term speculation from causing pricing bubbles.

I think i missed something when reading through…

The problem isn’t that one team can field 200 while the others can only field 150, the problem starts happening when one team can field 400 and the other teams choose to not fight—they have already become too demoralized to participate.

When the maps are below capacity and players want to start joining, they would need to round-robin to the maps on the most populated server. This will cause problems for groups that play together (which is most wvw guilds).

Another problem this solution would exacerbate is that of bots; when map caps are low, those 10-15 bots can be a significant percentage of your force, and they will be everywhere too.

Edit: I’m on Sanctum of Rall. We don’t give up, no matter how far down we are, so I honestly don’t encounter the outnumbered bonus or related issues that often.

Devil’s advocate:

When the patch is downloaded from a peer network, it is easy to poison the content. Obviosuly the game will run a checksum on its data to ensure it is valid, but a user, or group of users, could cause many users to have difficulty patching just by seeding invalid data.

As inconvenient as that would be, imagine it in the context of WvW. When there is a patch people try to rush back in—but you would have some users trying to keep their opponents from patching properly while they and their friends are clearing undefended towers and keeps.

I have a 35Mb up- and down-link. I realize this is more than most people have, but I patch fast. server reliability and capacity is not an issue if they can saturate my connection during peak times—it is the client side of the link that has issues; if you have an unreliable or throttled connection changing to a peer network does not change that. It can produce some gains due to how traffic is typically throttled on cable networks, but it won’t solve the problems.

A while back one of the devs was asked why 2-handed axes didn’t exist. The response was something to the effect of “We have to save something for the expansions.”

So I think you can expect to see this.

I bought my gems at a rate of about 40s/100 gems. If the price keeps going up… yeah, I’d sell.

1k hp/sec is not a lot of regeneration. That would only offset 1-2 players DPS. The number can easily be adjusted, so assumign something along those lines could be made to work, we’ll jsut mvoe on to the other problems. The creepers have nothing to do with the turrets now, and they shouldn’t—there are plenty of waves of adds for the turret defenders to handle. The creepers are there to pose a threat to lazy players near the dragon. Additionally, would the neo-creepers walk through the bone walls? If a wall is up and the creeper can’t walk through it, how would it be shot by a turret to render it vulnerable? Would it just stand there waiting on the wall to be killed, or take the long way around? How do you deal with griefers using the few turrets but not contributing. How much margin of error do you have on that enrage timer? Can just 2 people interacting with but not using a turret cause a failure? The timer becomes meaningless when you allow a large margin, but a low margin allows just a little malice or ineptitude to ruin it for everybody else.

Maybe you should have thought about it for a minute instead of jut 30 seconds before touting your solution as a ‘fix’ to a fight that isn’t broken, just easy.

On my server we have people clear the walls, we have people fend off the adds on the turrets and keep them up. The fight is over in a couple minutes.

As it stands now, it is a pretty easy fight, I do agree. The mechanics are sound but there is no urgency with racting to the different components. The problem with adding complexity is striking a balance between peak and offpeak times. My server will throw well over a hundred people into that fight regularly, but in off-peak times, we’re lucky to have a dozen. How many roles are required, can they handle it during low-pop times? At peak times, we have adds hitting the turrets that 1-shot most players. People die and run back into the fray and we need to keep that avenue clear so we can keep presure on the dragon. We have so many people that asking them to compress into a smaller area during peak times will cause the culling issues that plague events in Orr and WvW.

If you really want to make these big events engaging, you have to add sub-events. The basic flow remains unchanged, but the parts that aren’t ‘make hte big red bar go down’ become more important. Simply bribing player with event rewards to do them is enough to shake things up. For example: after tequatl destroys the laser (which he would be able to do every so often), we have to reassemble it (the damage bonus it gives makes this worthwhile). Add DE markers for the waves that attack the turrets—this increases the appeak of protecting the backfield. Add destructible fortifications that protect the turrets and use the turrets/fortifications to protect the waypoint. When that waypoint is lost, reinforcing that location is a lot harder and dragon DPS becomes less important. I believe the waves of adds already scale up over time, so it is already only a matter of time before it becomes unwinnable.

tl;dr: The mechanics are generally sound, in my opinion, and the proposed changes do more to break it than make it more engaging.

I agree; this is consistent with how I tend to spend my money and what I look for.

When it comes to things like dyes, I would be much more tempted buy a single random rare dye than a pack of dyes I probably already have, since I have so many common colors already.

I don’t use minipets enough to have more than a passing interest in collecting them. Give me a minipet slot and we’ll talk. Give me a minipet slot and automatically summon while I’m wearing town clothes and I would probably start buying some minis. Add in automatic transition to town clothes in town (as an option, not compulsory) and TAKE MY MONEY NOW.

I’m ok with the results of opening chests (especially after being given the ability to convert 2 black lion chests to the holiday chest, that was a nice addition, and one that I hope will be standard for future events), but I do have one chest-related suggestion. There is a huge glut of chests on the market. Simply making keys cheaper or drop more frequently is not a good solution for that. Mystic forge recipies that use them only offer so much of a solution. I propose adding additional keys that give alternate reward sets. Open a black lion chest with an Orrian key, for example, and you get loot that you could get in Orr—t5,6 crafting materials, etc. Double duty for helping to curb inflation, make the keys purchasable with karma (I have ~150k karma and nothing on which to spend it).

I don’t want to derail the initial thread with this, but as gem discussions often turn to black lion chests, I felt it was a natural addition.

This didn’t affect me, but I’ve seen a lot of rants on the topic but not in the suggetion forum.

A lot of guilds invested a lot of time and effort taking and upgrading towers and keeps. This is standard fare for WvW. However, the massive outflux of players from WvW immediately after the holiday patch left a lot of massive imbalance on the maps, and a lot of the investmetn was squandered (there is an expectation of recouping upgrade costs through additional defense DEs).

Between what this does to server ratings, frustration due to a sudden, massive change in support, and just general planning, I’d like to see future holiday events synced to the WvW restarts. I think that would do a lot to minimize the sudden shift in support and reduce the frustrations that many WvWers feel.

Thank you.

There is no single right answer, as so much depends on how you play each character. A warrior with a hammer does not benefit greatly from +condition damage. A warrior with a sword, however, does.

That same sword-wielding warrior, however, can choose to ignore condition damage and still focus on power/precision/critical damage and will probably be just as effective, but in a different way—condition damage is the mark of a steady dps build, while a crit-focused build is more about spike damage.

As a general rule of thumb, as long as the stats you have are used (condition damage on a build that completely lacks damaging conditions) anything is viable, it is just a question of how you want to play the class.

As far as I can tell, it doesn’t matter what browser you use, whether you clear your cache, or anything else. The bug happens when a post has been voted on and it tries to check to see if you are allowed to vote (since you can’t vote twice). _fg_votes is undefined, crashing the script and preventing the other post functions from being enabled as permissions allow, so, as a user, theres very little you can do about it.

5 minutes of digging is all I’m willing to put into obfuscated code.

You pay nothing for being downed, you only have to pay when you die.

The armor repair cost is the price for death.

The waypoint cost is the price for either epic failure or traveling alone. If you had somebody with you, either they died too (epic fail), or they can resurrect you.

I also cannot count how many times I see somebody enter the downed state on my map and I run to help them. Before I can get there, they die. I start to get them back on their feet and they waypoint away (I have been guilty of this from time to time, I have to admit). The waypoint cost on death is easily avoided, but so many people choose to pay it.

Sword + Shield, in all content types (except underwater, where I go for spear).

I have a good build that works well with this. While there are nuances to the build, I can use carrion armor in PvE (it is cheap) or berserker armor in PvP (it is free there, but expensive in PvE).

The sword gives me a teleport to combat, a quick chain that will proc burning, and short-range+projectile blocker. This is a good setup for on-crit procs and helps deal with positioning issues. The teleport’s utility extends to confusing players and triggering chase instincts that get them away from objectives.

The shield doesn’t seem to get a lot of love from the guardian community, people tend to favor the focus, so I’ll describe the why relative to the focus. Area protection is area protection—far more useful against champions that are 90% immune to blind and more useful when damage is coming from many attacks instead of single large hits. The knockback is an interrupt, knockback, heal, and projectile blocker in one—all very useful and, since I have enough blocks to save myself, a few more is not what I need.

I like the options we have now, as they make us distinct. What I dislike is their viability.

Focusing on the scepter, specifically for WvW:

Range is a last resort for us, generally. I see the scepter as more of a suppressing fire weapon than a true ranged weapon.

Instead of a slow-moving orb that I can detonate for heals, let me ground-target it. It pulses for damage and healing, and can be destroyed by opponents. It now bypasses projectile blockers and, as it can be summoned to the top of a WvW wall, allows me to force some casters back behind the ramparts, or an arrow cart user to top firing long enough to take it out.

The scepter #1 is too easy to dodge. We could increase the speed or make it not a projectile at all. I’m thinking something along the lines of a weak, channeled Ray of Judgement (GW1 RoJ, that is).

I don’t mind being restricted to mid-range because I am the one that is supposed to lead the charge—I should be leading from the front.

For the greatsword, there is a line between strategic use of terrain and bug. I have a feeling this is a matter of refining where that line lies.

I’d rather the staff keep the shorter range but allow more targets. Again, we’re leading from the front, putting ourselves in danger. While 5 is a typical AE target count, I could do better, more focused damage against 3 targets being just a little closer.

The only change to my sPvP behavior is that I will now seek assistance before taking on 3 opponents, and I will approach two opponents with a little trepidation.

I think I’m in the same boat as you, Animus.

It is one of the best thread titles I’ve seen in a long time.

Also, ignoring the actual nerf, but just looking at the situation of a skill that was imbalanced in the specific environment of sPvP, I think the decision to split the skill is the best possible outcome.

Quite simply, there are two different environments in which the skill is used, and the effects are disproportionately favorable in one of the two environments. I’ve seen some other proposed changes that might work better (duration of buffs depends on number of conditions taken on, etc), but I see those as a rework of the skill, which is also on the big list of “bad things you can do with skills”.

What scares me is not the immediate effect, but what this means for policy and balance decisions. However, looking at the decisions that went into this change:

• KISS still prevails. The magnitude of difference between the two skills is minimal, the key functionality is identical, and you can learn everything there is to know about the skill at a glance.
• ANet does understand the situational differences between sPvP and PvE, and will act with that in mind. This means that the GS nerf was actually targeted at both environments, not just one with collateral damage.
• The first time a skill was split, it was in a patch where a lot of skills were tweaked, and it was the only split. I don’t expect it to be common.

It looks like it wasn’t necessarily a bad decision.

In GW1 this type of activity was fairly common, but there are some key differences:

• GW1 PvP was not intended to be played as competitively as it was. My understanding from interviews and old-school players was that it was intiailly a diversion and only later a major component. This means that fundamental mechanics and balance decisions were made for PvE, not PvP.
• Secondary professions made for a lot of difficult-to-foresee situations. Certainly if some of the perma and related builds had been known in advance, they never would have seen the light of day. 200 skills each on a primary and secondary profession make for a lot of possible skill bars.

So, in short, I think wielding the splitaxe (we already have a banhammer, we need to diversify our dev-arsenal vocabulary) in this case was warranted and we would be paranoid to worry about over-use. While you can make the case that other design options would have been able to avoid the split, simply showing the community that they can react to a limited imbalance in this fasion justifies the use this one time.

I would prefer they follow the same rules as food buffs, but I’m ok with it being decided they have a different ruleset—I just wish it was made apparent on the item what that ruleset is.

If my sharpening stone will disappear if I log out, I want to know that. If the timer continues while offline, I want to know that too.

I crafted mine. 400 Armorsmith + karma-purchased exotic recipies.
A friend bought a set on the TP. Strangely, he was already a 400 armorsmith, too, he could have crafted it for the same or lower cost.
I know some people buy a set from the karma vendors at the temples in Orr (252k karma).

In addition to what Ten said:

Greens sometimes have value to players; it is worth checking the TP value for those as well, but expect to make more sellign to a vendor in most cases.

Always use the free portals unless you are really strapped for time. Free portal to LA is generalyl useful for end-of-day activities. If you aren’t strapped for time, consider walking to your destination—explroation and such on the way has its rewards, too.

Learn how to convert crafting materials in the mystic forge and buy/sell as appropriate. Effectively, this is converting skill points to coin.

When using the TP, remember that supply tends to be highest at the end of the weekend, while supply tends to be its least just before the weekend starts.

Over time it feels as if my income has increased, but what really happened is my expenses dwindled—I have more resources on-hand so I buy fewer, plus I don’t actually need upgrades any more.

I stacked condition damage on my guardian. At 80, I still do. Burning has a nice rate of return on the investment, although multiple bleed stacks tend to out-perform burning in the long run. My ranger, thief, elementalist, and warrior all have a fair amount of condition damage on them.

Healing certainly has uses, as everybody has a heal, most people try to rez allies, and several classes have additional healing capabilities.

It is certianly posible to create a build that is so diversified it offers no real strength, but I would posit that such a build would remain viable.

A pure-healing build is not possible as you must diversify, especially while leveling. Also, +healing will be matched with another stat, so attempting to maximize +healing will maximize other values as well.

Karma-purchased cooking ingredients are all, to my knowledge, account bound. You could make finished items with them and sell those, however non-karma ingredients will likely be a limiting factor.

My understanding is that the banhammer has hit people not for spending karma on things and using those things to acquire coin or other wealth, but for the specific techniques used—exploit bugged vendors, etc.

Perhaps the conflicting reports are evidence that the premise of your testing—that choice is merely an illusion—is flawed.

Everything is viable, because every stat helps you in some way. This is why you should ignore the stats and focus on traits you like—the stats always help, but the traits help make the gameplay match your preferred style.

I haven’t put it to the test yet, but according to the guardian forums, PvP is just sPvP; WvWvW is considered PvE for the purposes of skill balance.

There is nothing special about the upgrade—you purchase it, it goes into the queue, and it will be done, eventually.

I have had problems where the queue was not properly updated before. In these cases, logging out (all the way to closing the game) and back in fixed the display issues. It is possible that standing down, then re-representing the guild might have the same effect.

I’ve never had an entry show up in the log and not be worked, although I have had many issues looking in the queue.

@George: I’m not specced for full protection duration anymore, but I used to be. And no, I didn’t use a hammer. It can be done. When the average enemy has a swing time close to 3 seconds, you can afford to have gaps. Coupled with blocks, blinds, dodges, and other evasive capabilities, the uptime is effectively 100%.

Consider how imbalanced would it be to have superior innate defensive capabilities that make you inherently a tank even when you’re specced full damage. The abilities are available as a choice. If you want to be a tank, you have to take the traits and skills that make you one.

When you have 33% damage reduction more or less permanently, you don’t really need the health pool that a warrior has.

I don’t know about 5v30, but in a 2v30 defense, the solution started with suppressing fire from a cannon coupled with a ballista targeting the most aggressive attackers, evolved to coordinated dual-ballista strikes to finish off opponents, and finally an arrow cart/ballista-covered sortie by a guardian to finish the rout (the other defender swapped between the cart and ballista as appropriate).

It helps that the tower was reasonably upgraded.

Of course, they brought a half dozen catapults to round 2 of the fight, and dropped them on our weak flank. We lost that one, but still held for 3 hours.

If you hover over your attack stat (I think that is what it is called…. Power+Weapon) it should show you your condition damage as well.

Krait runes can be crafted, and I believe that Afflicted runes cannot. This, coupled with people not knowing about the alternative, likely leads to the price disparity.

Having more than 2 of a minor rune gains you nothing. It is a set bonus, not a per-rune bonus.

Updating name and color information for each enemy player increases the amount of data that must be sent to the client. Currently, there is not enough bandwidth to send all the data efficiently enough for many players to see enemy zergs before getting killed. While this might be on the nice-to-have list, there are good reasons why it is not being done right now.

I’m not suggeting I don’t have a problem with the high concentration of players at certain chains, I find it quite irritating, especially since most are probably bots.

I do feel compelled to play devil’s advocate for a moment, though.

With DR being what it is on loot, these people are pretty clearly in it for the karma. Maybe the coin, too, but mostly karma. Why? Legendary hunting. Once they all get legendaries (making them all unique snowflakes that are identical to each other and no better than anyone else, possibly worse because of the lack of actual practice) they will do what? Farm more karma? Hang out in town to show out how awesome they are? Start actually playing the game?

I don’t know the answers, but the problem might just solve itself when these players are ready to move on.

@Lucavern: The wiki is hosted by ArenaNet, but the content is almost exclusively community-contributed. They do not act as content stewards at all, aside from what they choose to do as individuals and fans. So, yes, the wiki is wrong, although I seem to recall that the “at least one block skill” is traced back to an interview in early development before the guardian had Virtues, and was more of a “this is how we look at weapons” than “this is what you will have.”

A long while back I posted a suggestion that the “wave after wave” approach to encounter design only works against killbots with a set maximum kill count. We need armies to appear on the horizon—enough at once that attacking them is either really fun or absolutely futile. They need to have siege weaponry to cover their advancing troops. Only after the first wave fails does a second, stronger wave advance… if the players can hold out long enough, the last wave requires the players (and relevant NPCs) to sally forth and strike down the commander and the siege weaponry.

Bots won’t be able to hold out against it, simple AE fests are less useful as those siege attacks can decimate stationary/clusters of players. Additionally, an advance over a broad avenue reduces the clustering of enemies.

I hear the centaur recently bolstered their bridge-repairing efforts with catapults. It takes time to get it right.

It is also worth noting that incidents like this are isolated to a few top farming spots. In the rest of the world, we have a wonderful harmony.

Taika.1347:

Why i have to kill same guy 2 times? Get rid of that “fight for your life” mode, if u die u stay down until somebody ress or u go to WP. Cant understood what is point of this I dont want to die today! And what about all those stupid warps/knocbacks/etc when u are down are just …. ! Its ok for pve but not for pvp.

Where is my reward when i build to fully upgraded keep alone and pay to all from my personal pocket? What is point to upgrade anything? Comon Anet wake up until its too late!

But… you didn’t kill them, that is why they are still fighting for their life. If you honestly believe that a downed player is anywehre near as effective as one that is standing, you really need to find better opponents. The downed skills are generally weaker versions of skills available to the class while standing.

Your reward for upgrading a WvW keep is that the keep is now easier to defend and that makes it easier for you to kill attackers. I don’t see where there is any confusion. If you feel this is a waste of your money, do not do it. There are guilds devoted to WvW that are more than happy to foot the bill, when it serves their purposes. These are the guilds that lead armies—not zergs, armies.

WvW is not world PvP, pretending it is will only make you unhappy. It is a wholly different beast. If you really want world PvP, you will ahve to find a better game, because one of the key design principles was community building. World PvP destroys that ideal.

ryan.5106:

I use a Sword/Shield in one set and Mace/focus in the other set, by switching back and forth and using my abilities at the right time, I can spend an entire fight healing, blocking damage, blinding the target, and reducing damage received for myself as well as the party. Now that would be possible with my set-up, even with the /5 skills switched, but i don’t use the shield to block my own damage, that’s what the focus is for. I use the shield to apply that -33 % damage buff to the party and also to interrupt, push back, and knock down the enemy. Then i hit the /5 button again to give nearby party members a significant heal. If you want blocks, blinds, and regeneration- go focus. If you want damage reduction, interrupts, knockdown, pushback, and burst healing- go shield. Seems to me that being stuck on the “image” as opposed to function is simply a fantastic way to kitten yourself.

Thank you for saving me the time required to more or less say the exact same thing. Group protection is a non-trivial effect, especially when you consider how low our HP pools are (this is why our hp pool is so small).

Welcome.

I play on Sanctum of Rall. I like it here, but a lot of people like their servers just fine too.

There are two forms of PvP. WvW (World versus World) and sPvP (structured PvP). WvW actually falls under the PvE umbrella, although it features armies of players taking over towers and keeps from each other—this is in lieu of world PvP. sPvP is small-team arena fights. CC is not a problem, as it doesn’t last more than a few seconds in either PvE or PvP.

If you pick a ‘bad’ server, transfers are free right now, although you are limited to once ever 24 hours.

I can’t think of much advice to give… the in-game tooltips seem helpful, and worst case, just ask for help—a lot of helpful plaeyrs are out there and on here.

Enjoy.

P.S. feel free to friend me in-game. Either with a character name of Fildydarie or my acount name, as posted to the left. I’m more than happy to answer friendly questions while I’m online (I play most nights and a bit on weekends EST, but I have a life and family).

Selfish play is rewarded in the short term, but will lose you a match over a team game. Rewards for defending would be nice but I tend to run near the glory cap anyway, so I fail to see what the gain would be.

If you want to play 5v5, you have tournaments with a token entry fee.

If you want to play what random arenas used to be, well… yeah, that is a different beast than organized PvP. You will never have the same strategies work when you remove the team component.

Unles there is information I haven’t seen yet… the fees for custom arenas are all speculation from the line “You rent a custom arena.” by Jonathan Sharp. Rent says nothing about the form of currency used. It could be gems, it could be gold, it could be glory, it could be influence or unidentified dyes or 4-slot account-bound bags. Nobody has said anything about this yet and I expect that influence or glory will be the currency of choice, not gems.

Instead of a suicide button, how about just allowing waypointing while downed, subject to the same timing as while dead?

I oppose a lot of the proposed changes, as I think the system generally works, but I’m not entirely opposed to some modifications. Ignoring stats from gear might help smooth out the effectiveness of downed players (You’re meant to be hindered, not out of the fight, so you still need to contribute to a meaningful degree).

Maybe I just don’t see the problem because I bring a stability skill to aid when stomping.

I completed this the other night…

The first door bugged for me. My initial reaction was “look for a secret passage” so I ended up finding how to get on top of it. Before dropping on the far side I decided to try opening it from above, which triggered the next part. When it came time to actually open the door, I could do that just standing on the ground in front of it like you would expect.

The second door, I thought was about to do the same but it opened after a short delay. Might have been lag.

The boss decimated the NPCs, who did rez throughout the fight, although not frequently enough to be helpful. As a guardian, I just reflected his projectiles back at him—this got him to phase 2 in no time. While the tooltip says he regenerates, I never noticed any… reflect, kill couriers while waiting on reflect to be back up, repeat.

Guardians are far from useless in WvW. If that is the one thing holding you back, I would recommend you try it (full disclosure: my main is a guardian, obviously I’m biased as I love the class).

Success in WvW comes from realizing that you can’t just run up to the enemy and smack it—you need to pick your fights and have an exit strategy. A thief might have a better exit strategy than a guardian, but they still need it (and you can take damage while stealthed). Supporting your allies may have few direct rewards, but winning battles (read: WvW DEs) is reward enough for me… The small pile of badges I walk away with doesn’t hurt either.

Shield #4 gives the protection boon to you and allies in the area of effect.

I run sword and shield all the time—PvE, WvW, PvP. I enjoy it, and it fits my playstyle.

I don’t run focus because protection and avoidance are more improtant than blind to me—I have plenty of avoid-1-hit skills, what I need are skills to avoid many hits in rapid succession or hits from champions. Since you can’t avoid everything, the protection from the shield is nice, as is the knockback/projectile absorption.

You might want to re-post this in the support forums.

An assertion is a this-should-always-be-true assumption that developers put into code. This includes things like “I will assume you have a monitor.”

In your case, an assertion failed. Typically, this is a configuration issue. note the following line:

\Engine\Audio\AuReverb.cpp(699)

this is the source code file and line number where the assertion that failed was. In the tech support forums, they should be able to tell you exactly what went wrong.

Based on the name, it is something with audio reverb (echo). I’d recommend checking sound drivers.

Remove Invulnerable Mobs
The problem isn’t invulnerable mobs, it is the poor detection that leads to mobs going invulnerable when they shouldn’t. If you’re trying to exploit the terrain, there are two real options. Either the mob walks out of your range and gets a bunch of friends to build a cannon with which to shoot you (my preferred solution), or they stand there invulnerable because they can’t effectively path to you. This behavior is a band-aid for all sorts of hacks and exploits and, while being a band-aid is bad, I’d rather suffer the penalty and prevent the exploits.

Remove Teleporting Fees
While the fees are a little high for high-level players in many low-level zones, they aren’t that bad. Encouraging people to walk from A to B isn’t a wholly negative thing, either. It encourages interaction with others. Gone are the days of half-hour boatrides talking with random strangers—I met a lot of interesting people and made many friends that way. Teleport fees are a way of encouraging this sort of thing.

Dynamic Level Scaling = Area’s current level + (Character Level / 10)
As long as you wear level-appropriate gear, downscaling isn’t a problem. You can make a case for level X1 to X4 when in a level X0 area, but that is such a contrived situation with enough workarounds I don’t think it is really that much of an issue.

Add timers to force advancement/reset broken events
This is getting better. Yes, watchdog timers are nice, but they cover up a mroe fundamental problem that may lead to resource leaks and other really bad problems in a persistent world—I don’t know the potential ramifications because I don’t work at ANet, but there are a lot of really serious potential issues… still, yes, I would like to see that as a precaution going forward after they work out as many kinks ‘the hard way’ as they can.

Increase Defend events’ difficulty for each successive success
I’ve asked for this too. The issue, in my opinion, isn’t bots, and a new player approaching an area and being steamrolled isn’t really a typical case—we’re talking defend events where the centaur have not taken a bridge in over a week because it really is easy for any number of players to hold them off. Gradually ramp up the difficulty until, yes, the players fail—there is still a reward for an event failure, and this will open up new possibilities on the map (there are events I haven’t seen because the players never fail defend events). Gradual is the key here.

Be able to readjust trait points at will
The cost of 3.5s is minimal. The isoaltion to town situations is not a big deal, either. Maybe my acceptance is just because I played GW1 and were accustomed to the town restriction. I can change my traits, skills, and weapons whenever I want to outside of combat, I see little penalty in having my traits locked down—I need to choose a rough build and stick with it, but I still have so much variation available to me. I see this is simply a general framework in which I must operate to overcome challenges.

Mob respawn times scaling to the number of players nearby
I was under the impression this already happened. There are tiems that enemies respawn seconds after being killed and the same enemies take minutes to respawn—I’ve been able to tie this to population with enough evidence to support a rough correlation.

Fade obstacles to improve camera angling
It is worth noting that part of those challenges is the obscured camera. That said, I’ve heard first-person view is in the pipeline and would make a lot of people happier with more than just this. I’d definitily like to see a first-person view for some parts where the camera motion is so restricted by walls that it is not obscuring terrain, but your character that gets in the way.

I haven’t had the problems leveling up skills that others tend to report, but I also do it differently…

Combining Weaponsmithing + Armorsmithing means you need to double-dip almost all your materials. Of course you will run into shortages this way. Combine Cooking + Weaponsmith, and there is no cross-competition for resources.

My guardian is an armorsmith/jeweler. Yes, I needed to work to get the ore for two metal-heavy professions, but I knew this before I chose the path.
My warrior is a weaponsmith/cook.
My elementalist is a tailor/artificer.
My ranger is a huntsman/leatherworker.

The overlap on these combinations, with the exception of my guardian, is fairly minimal and you can progress the crafts as you level. Yes, the elementalist and ranger have fine crafting material shortages, but at this point I can bankroll those easily with the surplus materials each acquires.

Is it worth it in the end? If I place no value on my time, then no, it isn’t. However, since I do value my time, then playing the TP cycles to minimize cost and maximize profit while I sell materials and buy finished products is more expensive than simply crafting what I use myself. I encounter the raw materials while playing, and I turn them into items I use quite efficiently. Surplus materials are sold for a profit or turned into ectos. While leveling, the experience boost from crafting is a large time-saver too. Working on cooking has caused significant inventory complications for all my characters, but I also have enough buffs on-hand to last a long time.

The main advantage to having the crafting skill is that you can produce the item you want, when you want it. You call the stats lackluster, but what they are is level-appropriate—crafted gear has the same stats as dropped gear of an equivalent level. If it is weaker, thats because you’re making items beneath where you should be.

One of the factors influencing aggro in GW1 was health. After someone soaked a death, they would have -15% max health until they worked it off. This would make that player a target… and they would often be at -30% soon. Repeat.

It makes sense that a mob tries to kill the player which has the greatest threat/difficulty ratio. The low natural health of a guardian (easy to kill) and proximity (you’re in melee range) can help support this. Healing also makes the guardian a threat, which also reinforces the behavior.