Guild Wars 2

Why did you interrupt the RP Walk Parade ;_;

split.3659:

Like I said before, I am excited to see PINK improving. They are slowly moving from a force that I used to mock to a more formidable force.

Gee, that’s pretty heartwarming, man. :P

So, new culling rolling out.

Are your bodies ready?

All that upset over a simple screenshot At least we got the opportunity to be honest with one another, I guess? Someone even referenced the joke “we’re killing CD for camping jumping puzzles” post I made waaaaaaay back.

Another pic from our guild event last night, then? … It’s sorta one-sided, though, I didn’t take pictures of the many times we got ran over.

And god kitten dem graphics, I really need a reward for getting this game to work on a Nintendo 64.

Would you blame them for feeling that way, grinding in a hopeless 1v1 for 3 weeks straight?

’s not everyone, but the sentiment is there.

So, yeah. Fun night.

joocheese.6314:

Sunspots.9861:

I can’t speak for any other guilds, or any other Coasters, but I feel like PiNK has grown so much since we hit t2. Score aside, its great getting to play against so many t1 caliber guilds every night then learn to counter or copy them. Working with DiS was awesome and I hope the other guilds on TC realize the opportunity to improve everytime you take the field. I see WvW becoming GvG more and more over the coming months with the inadaquacies in server populations, and this is the boot camp.

Agreed. As guilds grow and improve (including ours), fights in wvw are becoming more fun and epic. Well organized guilds are becoming more important and tactically more decisive in combat. It is a form of GvG that I’m enjoying immensely; especially when fighting amazing guilds such as [PINK]

Much respect to the folks from [PINK]. I already know you won’t leave TC, but if the impossible were to ever happen, we would love to have you guys join us in SoR

For what it’s worth, I appreciate hearing that. We tend to enjoy fighting against [Choo], and probably [GSCH] or [TW] as well, win or lose. You’re good peoples. Folks outside those guilds can be pretty mean-spirited at times, though.

I only hope this week will pass by quickly, so we can get a legitimate three-way going on. We don’t mind fighting SoR mostly 1v1, but being Bay-side of your map is terrible. It basically becomes a competition of wills between our elementalists and your trebuchets, and that’s assuming we can get a foothold at all.

Five hours blocking trebs last night.
Five
Hours
shudder

This has been a very enjoyable and action-packed reset night, kudos to all.

I do wish we’d cut out the ‘thanks for the farm’ passive aggressive nonsense, though. There’s enough fighting all over the place that everyone probably evens out in the end.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

I figured TC would have a bit more class.

I needed a couple events for my daily so I head into TC borderlands which is pretty much empty. I intercept a dolyak and kill it, one event down. Kill a sentry, another down.

At this time a random warrior decided he wanted to fight me, fair enough. I kite a bit to get my health up and he goes down fairly quickly. As I just finish stomping him, a thief decides to join in. Once again I kite him a bit to get my health up, and he goes down fairly quickly. At this point a group of somewhere between 10 and 15 decides they were going to fight. They eventually kill me but not until after I get a kill of my own.

As I finally go down I’m treated to a nice bit of /laugh from TC. After killing 3 and eventually being taken down by 10 people.

Stay classy.

Let me guess. It was a Thief with the [TSP] tag, right? He’s been /laughing whenever our zerg rolls over smaller numbers all through the CDBL and TCBL fights. I don’t think many of us like him all that much, either.

Edit: Hey, CD, d’you guys still have that Naughty Ninja Squad [Poo] around?

Shrouded.6450:

I don’t know about anyone else in TC, but it was disheartening to see SOR/Blackgate wiping us off our own borderland back then. That’s why I also prioritize it first, its also the reason why we dont mind you guys double-teaming us. We want to be prepared just in case we have to face these two again…

Yep. While nobody really likes playing Supply Camp Raiders Deluxe or Spawn Camping 4000, the home borderlands are key. It’s a huge morale-boost to see that your home BL is painted its intended colour. This lets your pubs know that everything is fine, and it’s safe to go on the offensive in the other borderlands.

ryan.3915:

Not sure if CD has that much to share, since you guys are obviously advanced in your tactics. One of which is using ele focus skill 4 to protect siege and keep walls. I don’t know why our eles hardly ever do that. We just sit there and let the siege get hit by other ballista.

Just keep setting an example, I’ve learned. A month ago I felt like I was the only one on the server bothering with it. Even on my own it bought our groups a significant amount of time. Elementalists in my guild caught on, and now we’re regularly chained to trebs and keep walls like slaves. Pubs end up cluing in not long after, though the awful wages and living conditions usually deter them.

I can see it being nerfed some time in the future, honestly. That will be a sad day. I think it adds a certain element of strategy, as it is, which is a good thing. Plus, there’s nothing more satisfying than catching four treb shots in a single block. Nothing.

Maniac.5163:

I can see the explosions but I can’t see the people/person you are talking about. I watched the video over and over and haven’t seen PRO.. can you show me what point of the video do you select the enemy? What race were they, hairstyle? There is 3 different [PRO] guilds on FA, I need to see the target selected, etc. What are the explosions? Thief cluster bomb?

I think Seyrah kicked the glitcher/exploiter in question. I have several screenshots if you really need them – I’d be infracted here, though, so you can poke me ingame I guess.

As for what you’re seeing – the map glitch in question lets you go under the map, which is basically nothing but an endless ocean. From there, you can freely use projectile-based attacks to kill anything above you. The engineer in this case kept using their grenades.

As I hear it the hacker is now finding himself guildless.

I could say a lot of things about a lot of FA’s guilds, but [PRO] are some upstanding guys and gals.

20 minutes into the match
TCBL painted completely green
Both enemies intermittently Outmanned

guys where da zerg at :<

Lock the skill out for 1-1.5 seconds after being downed.

I can count at least four times where I’ve gotten myself killed because I got downed with near-max death penalty, hit vapor form due to having died in the middle of AoEing an enemy, dropped and then was immediately defeated due to death penalty.

In general, I accidentally use this skill at least three times a day. Just a tiny cooldown would really improve things.

nvmvoidrays.2158:

do counts as a spell cast: dodging heals you, swapping attunements heals you, etc.

plus, elemenetalsits have a lot more skills to work with and use. you should be constantly switching out spells and shizz. you’ll heal for a lot more.

This, this, a thousand times this.

Elementalists have a lot of actions that you’d think wouldn’t count for spell casting, but they do, including receiving damage from confusion.

Signet of Restoration is pretty much the PvP staple unless you’re running a staff bunker build. In PvE, it can work with any weapon set (except maybe sceptre) so long as you’re constantly casting and swapping attunements. High Arcane investment and dagger/dagger usually receives the most payoff.

The Lightning Hammer and Ice Bow are pretty much the best conjured weapons out there. Spammable blast finishers + heavy AoE damage on the hammer, plus the Ice Bow’s AoE just wrecks environmental objects. I have one or the other on my bar at all times, regardless of my group composition.

They work decently as “fifth Attunements”, so to speak. With the Hammer you can just spam, but with the Ice Bow I’m usually conjuring it, blowing its best abilities (3, 4, 5) and dropping it to continue damaging. A conjure-only build could be somewhat effective, but locking yourself out of 20 other skills … not worth it in the long run.

Another thing to consider is that most non-Elementalists have no idea how conjures work, so you’ll have group members that pick up your second Ice Bow and spam autoattack until it’s gone, completely killing their usefulness for the duration unless you give them pointers. That, or they ignore it entirely – which is usually a good thing, since it means more damage for you.

I turn around and Ride the Lightning away.

They usually give up pursuit immediately, cap the point, and leave. RtL back, flip the point behind them, gg.

Works fantastically, depending on your build and who you run with. Just don’t get caught alone. Super funtimes if you run with a guild group in vent.

Would recommend traiting Air over Fire; higher damage payoff, all in all.

Absolutely unreal fight.

With no offense intended to YB – FA is the unknown in this matchup. None of us knows how transfers have treated them. TC managed to beat YB before and can reasonably assume they will manage to do so again, especially after how many CD guilds jumped ship at the end of last week.

Even if the focus on Fort Aspenwood were deliberate (which it’s not; FA seems to be in its offhours right now, and Yak’s Bend was attacking Stonemist not an hour ago) it would be completely valid from a competitive standpoint.

Furienify.5738:

Ended up encountering this problem just now.

Our Mesmers were able to glitch through the door, though, allowing us to skip ahead to Alpha and get our tokens. Thank goodness.

Since I got some tells about this, I’ll elaborate (though I risk some infraction/ban for “exploiting” past bugs):

There’s a door between the Bjarl room and the room where you fight Alpha for the last time. If your Mesmer stands back on the stairs before that door, they can see through the gap underneath the door, and use that to target their Blink skill. The reticle won’t go straight to the other side due to LoS issues, but you can get it mostly “inside” the door.

You’ll teleport, either into the door itself, or to the other side. If you get stuck inside and don’t get trapped in a “falling” animation, you can use Blink or Phase Retreat to try and get through. If you get through all the way, you can use Portal to get your team across. Just don’t die/wipe on Alpha.

DiogoSilva.7089:

It was worth a grandmaster trait even before people discovered it counted as blast finisher and abused it like mad for absolutely crazy bunker builds.

So we’re on the same page that a PvP nerf screwed over one of our most versatile PvE support options?

Ended up encountering this problem just now.

Our Mesmers were able to glitch through the door, though, allowing us to skip ahead to Alpha and get our tokens. Thank goodness.

There are NO blast finishers anymore. Zero.

It wasn’t just a fix for the lack of cooldown. There are no blast finishers at all.

Gorge Express.7163:

Evasive Arcana: This trait no longer creates unintended blast finishers.

So it WAS a bug..

This was one hell of a nerf.

Probably brought on by PvP, no less.

Static.9841:

Furienify.5738:

Raincrow.1840:

I’ve never seen so much complaining over a jumping puzzle…..

Sunshine.3452:

Dude don’t go on about it.. it’s CD.. we gonna push them into T4 and we will be done whith those hypocrite whiners, also YES we focus you guys because we want you out of T3.

I mean… seriously??

Well, yes and no. We’re quite serious. We’re talking an organized, multi-guild effort to completely oppress Crystal Desert into the lower tiers. But this isn’t something drawn out of complaints. Just brutal pragmatism. Yak’s Bend has been nothing but courteous when we run jumping puzzles together. Crystal Desert is fielding guild groups to lock out our PvErs and folks looking to make Legendaries – one of our foremost backers, at least financially, in our WvW efforts. If they’re dissatisfied, we’re dissatisfied, and we act thusly, in the name of Buttered Justice.

Really? I’m a TCer and your reason is both pathetic and lame, nor have I ever heard any talk about “oh hai guyz, lets bump them down because of the puz!” and if that IS your reason, you guys should be absolutely ashamed of yourselves. Really? over a puzzle? People camping have gotten you that bent out of shape? It’s a freaking PvP area and the puzzle has player activated traps, what did you think was going to happen?

Honestly, it was a joke

Talks of ~~conspiracy~~ seem par for the course in these threads.

TheFug.5278:

Sunshine.3452:

When your server is in T4, because all this kitten stuff you guys are pulling, is ruining whatever little honorable players you got left on that server, and I honestly feel sorry for em

Someone is pretty mad, this is how threads get locked.

You misunderstand. We’re not mad. Disappointed, annoyed, sure.

But when entire guild groups go out of their way to camp a jumping puzzle, then harassing the people they kill with insults and mockery in tells, it warrants action.

Raincrow.1840:

I’ve never seen so much complaining over a jumping puzzle…..

Sunshine.3452:

Dude don’t go on about it.. it’s CD.. we gonna push them into T4 and we will be done whith those hypocrite whiners, also YES we focus you guys because we want you out of T3.

I mean… seriously??

Well, yes and no. We’re quite serious. We’re talking an organized, multi-guild effort to completely oppress Crystal Desert into the lower tiers. But this isn’t something drawn out of complaints. Just brutal pragmatism. Yak’s Bend has been nothing but courteous when we run jumping puzzles together. Crystal Desert is fielding guild groups to lock out our PvErs and folks looking to make Legendaries – one of our foremost backers, at least financially, in our WvW efforts. If they’re dissatisfied, we’re dissatisfied, and we act thusly, in the name of Buttered Justice.

I once asked why the Gates and so many other things have been untouched, and I received a very succinct and appropriate response:

“I pray to the Spirits of the Wild, but they rarely answer.”

You can play support.

But for the most part, you really don’t want to skimp on the damage. That makes runs take forever. A group of five damage-oriented players that know their class and how to dodge will clear the instance far faster than five support-oriented players.

Dear CD in the EB jumping puzzles,

I was saving your guy from the veteran marsh drake.

You did not have to kill me for it.

xoxoxo,
A good samaritan

It’s not explicitly stated whether this is a new armour tier for everyone to get, with availability similar to the current exotics (which are still pretty easy to get!), or basically legendary armours under a different moniker.

I am very, very leery if it is the former. If it’s the latter, I won’t care, just as I don’t much care for legendary weapons. Either way, clarification is very much desired.

The best warrior I’ve been with in the Lupicus fight basically spent the entire fight acting as a combat medic. Something/warhorn, running all over the place and rezzing anyone that was downed, using the war banner elite for emergencies/group rezzes.

Aside from that, Maximillian is mostly right. It comes down to reflexes and practice. Skills like the shield’s block skill or Endure Pain can really help you get out of tight spots, though. Shouts are good for the first phase, but after that their value diminishes since your group will be scattered. If you have something that gives you Vigour, preferably in a way that can be up as much as possible, the fight is made significantly easier.

Eventually you’ll get to the point where you’re so good at it, you’ll be soloing the guy while all your pubs are running back from the waypoint.

Soulcheg.5048:

No, i’m not new to Lupi. I’m and ele in vitality/toughness/power set. You saw the screenshot? ONE second, 50k in ONE second. No matter how much toughness you have, it’s freaking ONE second.

>Elementalist

How on earth can an Elementalist complain about this fight? You have, the most leeway to slack off in this fight, bar maybe someone who is playing a Guardian.

Magnetic Aura granting you, essentially, 5 seconds of immunity against his ranged attacks.
Renewing Stamina feeding you loads and loads of vigour, augmented by Fireball’s buggy range.
Burning Retreat for a third dodge.
Arcane Shield and Mist Form whenever anything really hits the fan.
Plenty of healing from water spells and water fields.
Pets to absorb attacks for you.
All the snares in the world for phase 3.
King of the fight come phase 1.

As someone who does this fight without a single death – often soloing it while my group runs back in phase 2- in Berserker gear, I risk repeating myself: what on earth are you doing?

These dungeons are fantastic with a group of friends, especially when everyone’s competent.

But they are needlessly punitive towards new groups, groups that don’t have the same organization level as a long-acquainted nakama, or are simply having a bad day. Want some specifics? Off the top of my head:

• Waypoint disparity in Arah, particularly for the Lupicus runback. The Forgotten waypoint is fairly far away, back at the second boss. The Mursaat waypoint run has about half the duration of the Forgotten’s, while the Jotun route is bugged (and has been, like everything else in this dungeon) and doesn’t even have a waypoint near Lupicus.
• Alpha’s Essences not proccing their stun-on-death mechanic with any reliability or regularity.
• Alpha’s Essences having an inconsistent spawn rate in general, in addition to the massive healing they do prolonging the final fight to a nightmarish duration. This serves no purpose.
• Waypoint bug in CoE, Teleporter route: there’s supposed to be a waypoint that spawns immediately after the Evolved Husk is killed, to make the runback to the Alpha fight easier. This waypoint only spawns after Alpha is defeated and the dungeon finishes.
• CoE Front Door Route. The Evolved Destroyer fight is decently designed on its own merits, but the lack of a nearby waypoint kills it. Nobody wants to risk jumping down to burn the boss since it entails a three-minute runback if they fail, which can span up to six minutes if there aren’t enough people left to fire lasers. Yes, that’s right – you are dissuaded from having fun and actually fighting the boss, which leads to the awful safespot strategy that every pug group uses.

No amount of rallying or threads has ever brought any attention to these issues, though. Probably because so few people actually run the dungeon. Which is caused in part by the reputation the punitive mechanics lend the instances. Hmmmmm.

Cone of Cold & Drake’s Breath have a small inconsistency between the two, more a UI thing than anything else.

When you use Cone of Cold, the damage numbers displayed from the skill’s multiple hits are cumulative, sort of like a mesmer’s Blurred Frenzy or warrior’s Hundred Blades. That is to say, it’ll show something like: 1200 → 2200 → 3800 → 5400, with 5.4k being the total damage done.

Drake’s Breath doesn’t behave this way; it’ll just show the separate damage ticks individually.

tl;dr: Despite both skills being considered channeled skills, only Cone of Cold displays its multiple instances of damage as a cumulative number. Drake’s Breath displays the individual ticks.

Now that you mention it, I do remember an Arah nerf. Early on, the two abominations outside his door were champions instead of elites. They may have touched him in the same patch – that was back when patch note procedures in general were still being worked out – but I haven’t noticed anything different of late.

Tweek.3190:

And then to think poor old Lupicus was already nerfed. I wonder how all those people managed to kill this “impossible” guy before that and get the armor.

I’m curious, when and how was he nerfed?

Orr turned out to be very disappointing once I stopped being wowed by the sudden aesthetic/terrain shift. It’s a haunting landscape, sure. But once every started hitting 80, the place showed its true colours. The whole place feels like a grind.

I was hoping that Cursed Shore, being a level 80 zone, would be full of high-than-level-80 mobs that would generally smack the player about unless they were very competent or with a group. Full of dynamic events that had been designed and tested to get everyone working together to overcome large and enjoyable challenges.

Instead, it’s a buggy, unfinished mess that people go to for grinding. You can feel the IQ plummet as soon as you zone into the place. It’s not meaningfully difficult. It can hassle you when you’re trying to roam about on your own, but it doesn’t demand the player to push themselves to their limits in exchange for a decent payoff.

Gribold.4298:

Maybe I should just video a fight and then you’ll see what I mean.

This would really help. Also, in my opinion, your trait spread is extremely unoptimized. I don’t mean to be condescending; all the points in Fire are more or less wasted, as Fire simply doesn’t have that many good traits to begin with and you’ll get more power from gear anyways. Your water ones are slightly better, but you’re missing the mark on truly great ones, in addition to ignoring some of the great Arcana traits.

This is the build I use in just about any situation short of sPvP:

0
30/VI/I/X
0
10/V
30/V/VI/XI

This is for dagger/dagger, but it also works decently with staff. Comes with Glyph of Elemental Harmony, Mist Form, Arcane Wave, and an optional utility of your choice. Use your auras (Water 4, Air 3) liberally for constant Fury, regularly Arcane Wave and dodge into your own fire fields for might, swap attunements like a madman.

It’s hard to say what you’re doing wrong without more specific information. What is your trait spread like? How much health do you have? What skills do you slot?

As a largely damage-oriented Elementalist with anywhere from 12k to 16k health, I usually don’t have any problems. 2k power, 1.8k precision, 900 tough, 1.2k vitality. If you’re dying repeatedly in dungeons, but your party is not, that usually indicates that nobody is bothering to rezz you when you’re downed, or you’re overextending a bit.

Consider traiting Arcana VI – Renewing Stamina to help with your dodging. The 33% figure it gives you is extremely misleading, especially when you’re using daggers, which have several multi-hit and AoE abilities. I often exit extended fights with over a minute of Vigour stacked on my character.

Been this way since day one, not a word about it.

The most common bug seems to be when a server fails the Meddler’s → Shank Anchorage push event, immediately after escorting Lightbringer Palfinier. There’s no reset. It just freezes there, forever.

It feels like the aggro on a lot of mobs is simply bugged. Many bosses in Arah will just tunnel one player to the exclusion of all others until they die, at which point they will relentlessly tunnel another.

This makes the fight absolutely awful for the person under fire, and usually very boring for everyone else who is not.

Yeah, your objective is completely wrong. Looks like you hopped over the cliff to Lupicus.

Nobody will turn down a competently-played warrior or guardian. You simply can’t get any better.

People in tune with the metagame will be leery of rangers, necromancers, and mesmers, for many reasons that would be argued over for centuries.

Keep in mind when choosing between Valkyrie and Berserker’s: we can shave off a few precision in favour of vitality without compromising our damage output. Hell, you can even trait high into Water without compromising yourself much. The Fury boon comes fairly easily to Elementalists, so missing crits are easy to cover for.

It’s been bugged since launch with not a word spoken by a dev concerning it. Getting really tiring having to panhandle in overflows just to access a dungeon I -should- be able to walk into, but can’t. Cursed Shore in general has a lot of problems that feel like they’re being disregarded.

We get it, Altie. That’s pretty much what we were saying verbatim when facing Sanctum of Rall. The third server tries, but if they can’t match or exceed the second server in forces, the first server doesn’t get formidable opposition. (Which is not to bad-mouth any of your efforts so far!)

We tried to get an agreement going with ET to help take on Rall together, but they had so little overarching organization it was futile. It might be different in this case.

It’s not that Arcana is necessary. It’s that Arcana is so good and applicable relative to the other trait lines, especially on a class that has as many boons and combo fields as it does.

All the other trait lines just feel like they have a narrow focus. Which is to be expected, I guess, and no different from the trait lines of other classes, but on a class that focuses on stance dancing, it doesn’t mesh that well. Outside of some specific examples (which are, not by sheer coincidence, popular for the same reasons as Arcana) like Cleansing Wave or Bolt to the Heart, most of the other trait lines are just restrictive. While in X attunement, Y happens. Do A while attuning to element B. Your J element spells are K more effective.

Lingering Attunements help mitigate some of this, but to what extent? The effect of these particular traits is often very ambiguous, while requiring micromanaging above and beyond what the class already demands (“Okay, I can only swap to Fire from Water so I can get the Powerful Boons buff on my Meteor Shower…”) to get the full effect.

If there is a solution to this problem (if it is even a problem, some would question) it is not one I’m able to come up with.

The only time I’ve ever used S/F is when I’m defending against siege fire in WvW. Which will probably be nerfed at some point, robbing the Focus of one of its only useful skills.

I see it a lot in sPvP, though, and I’m not sure why. The survivability is even worse than dagger/dagger, somehow. It seems to rely entirely on your enemy being dumb enough to stand inside a dragon’s fang, all while doing very little overall damage. I remember it (at least, the sceptre) being very strong in the beta, but that was more the Arcane skills carrying the build.