Guild Wars 2

Why do people not understand the game is constantly trying to match you people that challenge you enough so that you win some, you lose some?

You’re SUPPOSED to have a 50% win rate. If you’re doing better than that, congrats, you’re beating people the game thinks are better than you.

If you have an 80% win rate you’re either god-like, or stomping the kitten out of new players.

Shadelang.3012:

And he was responding to me on the nature of the current amount of projectile hate in the game haha.

Ya his story was about [sic] “If put ahainst a skilled opponent with reflect it is also a huge disadvantage for the user.” and I gave an example of how that’s always been the case.

Shadelang.3012:

Err Im not sure your talking about the same thing we are. Were not refering to the damage of the attacks. We get that ranged dmg is weaker than melee. Were used to that. Its the fact that actually connecting with attacks is alot more difficult now. As the ability to prevent those attacks from functioning is much more common and more easily accessible than it used to be. Thats all.

I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about, I was responding to the guy I quoted.

Edit: So re-reading your post a bunch of times, I think you’re saying the same thing I am. Reflects defeat ranged.

alain.1659:

Projectile damage is the weakest form of damage in the current meta. If put ahainst a skilled opponent with reflect it is also a huge disadvantage for the user.

This has been the case since day 1. Distance is the huge, huge advantage, which is a major reason why you don’t see people running soldier’s LB ranger instead of marauder/zerker.

The first day RF was updated to be 100% faster, I went roaming in WvW with my zerker ranger and collected a bunch of scalps via my off-hand axe. Then I went in to PvP with a condi ranger and killed a bunch more LB rangers trying to take my point.

This post seems relevant to the thread in general.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3rn9ry/dnt_updated_pve_build_guides_for_all_nine/

I have been enjoying your videos. One comment: your music is pretty much all or nothing. For example I could make a video with just all death metal for hella intense fights, but maybe you wouldn’t want to watch it. Muting music in this type of video I think removes a lot of the video-makers intent.

One example where I thin the music did a fantastic job complimenting the content:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WdcXE-j6qY&feature=youtu.be

Both FrouFrou and I use it primarily in power builds.

Edit: Maybe that was a short answer. I use it for damage, even to the point back when condi-survival was meta I used cele- survival to get sword damage. You just have to not use it stupidly, i.e. immob a necro and attack them from behind.

Are you a returning player? LB is actually semi-meta for PvE high-end content. It will probably fall out of favor to healing druids and condi rangers with raids, but if you were to run low level fractals or dungeons, you’d take a meta bow ranger.

LB roamer is also (IMO) the best WvW roaming build we have, and it’s been meta for PvP (which is currently in flux.)

Bow rangers stronk.

The other spirits I’m pretty familiar with from running a spirit ranger back when it was a thing, as well as in PvE. Spirits last for a certain point and then have a CD, so as to not just have spirits up at all times. In PvE, we’ve always dealt with this by killing the spirits via skill swap to have it ready for the next fight.

The bigger question is why someone in the pro-league is experimenting with water spirit.

Substance E.4852:

Yes, it’s unique in that it will get you killed if you don’t deactivate the auto attack cycle.

Other classes should be so lucky.

We’ve had (I probably mean you and I specifically since you’re a regular poster) this conversation thousands of times. Sword has drawbacks. It also adds value.

There is no value in revenant sword, that thing is pure garbage design-wise. It has a powerful autoattack, UA chases while simultaneously evading for a stupid length, it even has a ranged chill. But where is the value-add in this? There are no advanced tactics possible with UA because you can’t control your character, and it’s actually a damage decrease from autoattack depending on how many targets are around. It also has such a long warm up you usually can’t even use it as an evade in PvE (say against those giant frog stompers in HoT). There just isn’t anything more to the sword “spam UA”.

Now compare to ranger sword, where FrouFrou was reported for cheating because she used it to evade a warrior and guardian to the point of them “taking action”.

Unrelenting assault looks sweet and is otherwise just dumb. Ranger sword is something skillful and an asset to the game.

The general gist of the old builds is still applicable. Take as much damage and movement as possible. If you’re new to GW2, the core game open world is extremely easy, so you can focus entirely on doing whatever it is you’re doing (burning through story, doing hearts, etc.) You can completely forgo any sort of defense.

Greatsword, longbow, and sword are all good choices for leveling if you want to rush as fast as possible, but I also always recommend getting to know every weapon you have available.

General leveling tip for GW2 for a complete new players (apologies if you’re not one): just do anything and everything. Try crafting, explore, do jumping puzzles, do events, try PvP*. Find what you like. It all gives you good experience.

*PvP doesn’t give you experience per se, but at regular intervals you will be rewarded 1 complete level gain.

Photinous.4628:

Anyone who defends sword auto attack has obviously never used the warrior, guardian, thief or revenant sword auto to see how much better life is on the other side.

I don’t understand where my warrior, guardian, thief, and revanant came from!!! I think someone must have hacked into my account.

Edit: Thinking about what you said I think you got it completely backwards. Maybe I love ranger sword so much because I have played those 3 professions extensively (got herald on revanant, obviously haven’t played it extensively.) Warrior and revenant swords are boring and generic. Thief and guardian have fairly unique swords, ranger has a unique sword.

Majic.4801:

“HoT is dead” is not a good impression for the expansion to make so soon after launch

An unusual number of people don’t understand different maps having different foci, so they probably need a UI created that says “do you want to join the meta-progressing map (80 current players) or etc.”

It’s understandable that anet did not expect players to organize themselves at the expense of the megaserver at first, but by this point they probably should know better, or at least explain it to newbies who have no idea what a taxi is. Players have been implementing the current tactic for literally years with things like Tequatl, triple trouble, vine wrath, etc.

Widowmaker Z.4802:

The low population maps you refer to after people leave, should end up being re-populated if there are a lot of people playing on the HoT maps, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Nope. If I want to do a meta event, the first thing I do is join one of those empty maps, which anet has “repopulated” (with me and whoever), and then promptly leave it for a taxi. Once a map gets abandoned, it can’t progress the meta-event in time. It also doesn’t have a stated focus, so I’m not going to trust that the current population wants to do the meta at all.

Widowmaker Z.4802:

So either HoT isn’t attracting people or able to hold people’s interest enough to keep playing on these maps, or the megaserver is still bugged,

It’s not bugged (well it might be in some ways, but not relevant for this discussion), people are leaving maps intentionally.

If there are 120 people, let’s say the game puts 40 on each map. But only Map A wants to do the meta event, Maps B and C have people doing map completion, adventures, AP hunting, mastery farming, etc. So 20 people each leave Maps B and C to do the meta event on Map A. Now Map A is at max population and Maps B and C appear completely deserted. But that’s what all 120 players wanted.

s/a + hammer on rev plays extremely similar to a LB + s/a ranger. You can bounce back and forth and enjoy both professions.

I don’t see any reason to abandon your ranger though. Rangers are far more versatile, and if you enjoy it, I don’t know why you’d stop.

Ya I thought about revenant as well. It might make GS completely obsolete. They’d have to buff GS autoattack, and add evade frames to sword. If they want to go with that solution I would be very happy.

Widowmaker Z.4802:

Snoopy Shannon.5123:

Utilizing the LFG system makes HoT a million times better. It’s pretty necessary to use.

It’s pretty sad then if you need the LFG tool to make HoT better. If things were done right or fixed, it shouldn’t be necessary.

You don’t, you could play with a guild or “alliance”. But since it’s an MMO, LFG is the easiest way to find people to play with.

What you’re saying is sort of the equivalent for “you shouldn’t need to use LFG to be able to play dungeons/fractals/raids.” You don’t of course, but it’s a very quick and easy way to do it.

On the other hand, you don’t have to complete map-wide meta events. I’ve spent 98% of my time in HoT on my own, just enjoying the maps, exploring, getting achievements and mastery points, and so on. And I’m sure the meta-event maps are glad I did not taxi to them and take up a pop slot.

Sina.9208:

Anything is better than the current sword auto. Too bad the vocal minority oddballs are rather loud about this :-)

Anytime someone has a differing opinion doesn’t automatically put them in a vocal minority.

If they want to make it dodge-rollable, they probably have to bite the bullet and create new animations. Perhaps a shield bash style slide, although I would be very sad to see our old animations leave. They’re some of the best in the game.

I suspect it will never change though, a lot of people value it. The easiest solution is giving ranger a new 1-handed melee weapon.

If they adjust sword in some minor way to stop people complaining, I’ll probably be ok. If they rework it, especially in a completely generic manner like OP suggested, I’ll throw my computer out the window in a childish temper tantrum. Sword is the major reason I’ve played ranger for 3 years.

You need to taxi to full maps with LFG. The game evenly distributes people, and then they abandon maps to move to maps with max population to make doing the meta easier.

I don’t care what you do, but if you’re interested in playing the events, that’s how you do it.

Odokuro.5049:

Am I the only one here that had little to no problem in dealing with these mobs, sure I died when I first ran into them, because I had no idea what these mobs could do, now that I know, it’s just using my brain, instead of mashing buttons on my keyboard…

No you’re not. I’m actually down right confused by people having a lot of trouble. I’m honestly not trying to be a forum bad-kitten and mock people for struggling, I just don’t understand how people can possibly struggle after giving your brain 30 seconds to learn the new enemy mechanics for the rest of your life. Smokescales?? Jeez, I was 1-hitting them earlier, it was appalling how easy they are to kill.

For mastery farming I try to gather as many enemies together as humanly possible and I’m still not having problems. I find it extremely enjoyable to massively overaggro.

You don’t even have to do the story at all if you don’t care about it, although you get some nice rewards out of it. The HoT story won’t make as much sense without doing all the living world seasons. Alternately if your find it boring, but want to know the background, or just want to dive right into the new expac, you can just read the recap on the wiki.

Haven’t all spirits CD’s always been like that?

Can’t comment on water spirit, I used it in one fight when they first released it and then never used it again.

Check your achievement panel for how to get mastery points. There are separate ones for HoT and the core game.

Hero points are everywhere, you get them from hero challenges which you can see on your map. The core game ones are only 1 point per challenge, but they’re all incredibly easy. Later when you move to HoT (or now if you want), they’re worth 10 per challenge.

The LFG will say “DS taxi”, or some iteration. Right click on the party leader and join them in their instance.

Warriors have consistently been the most played profession and one of the most wanted professions across all the game modes for 3 years. Same for thieves. I think that explains a lot.

Is that the one with the voice of Lord Faren? I get all the exalted mixed up. There are very limited number of voices used throughout the game though, I’d guesstimate like 10 people do the overwhelming majority.

I really enjoyed some of the paths. Especially the ones that weren’t run en masse like CoF1 was. AC P2 in beta for the first time might be my favorite in-game memory.

I think a better way to nerf dungeon rewards would have been to UP the gold reward, but like x10 every enemy’s health or something. So you could still do that odd run and feel like you got something out of it, but no one would farm it.

Edit: Actually I take that back, they could make the bonus chest once per week, or even once per 2 weeks. Then people could still enjoy the content they love from time to time, and anet would also get their wish of killing it off.

masskillerxploit.2165:

Can i get an elaboration on why the :: MOST IMPORTANT QUALIFIER :: is soo “cut throat”?

There could be hundreds of teams in theory, right? I don’t see a limit.

Nope. Spirit ranger. After spirit ranger we were borderline unusable for a while, so any improvement makes a big apparent difference.

vespers.1759:

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

If you are playing WvW for rewards, you have gone to the wrong place. I would recommend to keep playing Druid if you find it fun. That’s what games are played for anyhow, not just for the shinnies.

Oh look THAT guy appeared. THAT guy always appears doesn’t he?

I think you’re misunstanding his intent. If I may speak for him, I don’t think he’s saying “real WvWers play only for the win” but rather “you don’t get any rewards in WvW no matter what you do.”

Urosh Uchiha.9732:

Aveneo.2068:

Killed her twice now during the dragon fight but no achievement. Maybe the achievement was only added to the legendary version and ANet forgot to attach it to her triple champion split-up stage at the end?

Apparently Fluffball got the achievement.

I don’t remember how I did though. I have barely played any DS at all, and I just popped in to game to make sure I had the achieve when I posted that. I have no idea how I wound up with it, there may have been something I did differently and don’t remember.

Since nothing gives you gold anymore, just things you can TP, I wonder if the economy will ever drop down to the point dungeons are worth running again. When GW2 first launched, I bought character slots for every profession for like 6 gold total.

Sacrifice a goat.

He shows up when you get the channel “event” in stronghold. He’s not in conquest.

Majic.4801:

Ask me again in six months.

If you play it for even 1 month, you definitely got your money’s worth!

Movie tickets for 2 = 40 bucks, 2 hours
Dinner for 2 = 100 bucks, 1 hour
Musical tickets for 2 = 400 dollars, 3 hours
Bottle of whiskey for 2 = 30 bucks, 6 hours

Kiza.5630:

One other problem with the kicking is, that it sometimes just doesn’t work. On my mesmer the GS #5 skill sometimes doesn’t knock it at all or just a few meters. While sometimes I can see the bomb flying half the distance to the octovine.

It has an inertia type feature, you need to get it moving first, and then it picks up speed. You need a few people working on it, not just one person.

JTGuevara.9018:

Dakarius.3284:

I’ve gone from a 68+% win rate to a 46% win rate and it’s making me really upset.

That’s your problem. That 68% got knocked to around 50% to ‘balance’ things. That’s why this matchmaking is ridiculous! You get punished for success!

He’s not being punished, he’s playing people his own skill level instead of stomping newbies. If you’re good enough, you’ll keep defying MMR’s attempts to find you better opponents until you’re at the top of the pack.

Even that would be pretty easily testable. Find a monster in the middle of a well traveled road, and then find the same level monster in a very secluded area. There are some little cave nooks in the core maps that no one ever goes into. You know, the ones with vets in dead-end areas with no POIs.

I don’t do fractals anymore, but I was under the impression most fights now last longer than 20 seconds, thus the sun spirit suggestion. I’m not even sure it would need to be 20 seconds since the spirit affects your whole group, maybe like 9 seconds…?

Would you be able to see a mini mini raptor?

Why would bonus XP and base XP grow over time, that doesn’t make any sense.

It’s very easy to test though, go to an out of the way location, like Timberline Falls and find two monsters of the same species. Kill one, then kill it again. Kill the other. You’ll see nothing changes except for the bonus XP. You get zero bonus XP and a consistent base XP on the one you killed twice, and a consistent base XP and a huge bonus on the one you killed once. I know because I enjoy farming out of the way mobs.

I would be shocked if the high mobility and stealth isn’t used for something. We already know anet wants certain players to have a unique role in fights.

I also suspect that after people learn the fights really well it won’t matter to an extent what classes people bring except for speed runs. The first time I did CoE it was scary and I died a lot, up till the dungeon nerf I was doing it while black-out drunk.

Sarie.1630:

Can you back that up? I admit there’s a good chance I may be remembering wrong, but I’m almost certain that the base XP I received from mobs in the week after launch was higher than what I receive now.

Base experience is never affected by how long something’s been alive, it’s the bonus experience you see below that. Killing some random chak that hasn’t been killed in ages because that area is unpleasant gets you more experience than the spiders. Spiders are just simple to do.

The artists aren’t the one making any of those decisions… I get paid to do a job too, that’s irrelevant.

Also why is artists in quotes?

Oxbird.1954:

Terimac.5871:

Why do you recommend sword/sword over sword/axe?

I believe the main reason is the block skill in sword 4, especially in unforgiving HoT maps.

Are people leveling in HoT though?

I have been using axe in HoT (at level 80) for helping with breakbars. Also the movement speed.

I feel so bad for the artists that worked on this map. They did a fantastic job. It’s the decisions behind the map concept everyone hates. The poor artists will see this thread, click on it, and then start crying.

Sigma Octantis.5362:

Farming Gems? How do you do that? I know, Halloween is over, so it’s probably not possible anymore, but I’m just wondering.

ToT bags sell for a ton of gold. A stack was like 18 gold and they dropped literally by the second (edit: in the labyrinth.)

Ya that’s what I was picturing and why I think it sounds neat. It would force you to play the class differently to cover all the roles.

Re: skill and experience, if you say had Chaith, backpack, ostrich eggs, etc. all on the same team, you couldn’t pay me to play against that. I run into Chaith from time to time and he killed me 2v1 once. (I doubt he’d want anything to do with this tourney, but you get the point.)

mage.3570:

It is NOT humanly possible to get 50+ mastery since HoT got released doing normal content with all boosters and consumables stacked up.

Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

This is not accurate. If you just randomly wander around you won’t finish it quickly, but with a plan it is absolutely possible. Just killing a random out-of-the-way boar will get you several thousand experience in a few seconds.