Guild Wars 2

First, realize that you are pvping for gear skins to look cool, not for gear bonuses. sPvP was designed around the idea that everyone has equal stats. No grinding up points and then roflstomping noobs. You can do that in WvWvW.

Second, pvp gear is not actually character bound. Just click “deposit collectible” and it will go into your PvP wardrobe. You can then pull the item out on any of your other characters.

Just a minor correction, everyone does not have the same stats, stats are entirely customizable due to the variety of sigils, runes and accessories available, but everyone has equal opportunity without needing to grind.

Yes, I’ve also seen this Thief Guild hack/exploit. There is definitely something fishy going on.

Mobs are supposed to reset if you kite it too far from their spawn or area where they are supposed to be located. Otherwise people would be kiting the whole map in a massive zerg of mobs following one person, that would be fun to watch.

http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/7641/gw023z.jpg

PvP Rifle looks like a rifle but is actually a spear.

What the heck is this?

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/8291/gw021ro.jpg

Monsoon.2589:

I was in game during the reset at 7pm. WvW comes back up and immediately stuck in a queue. It has been about 2 hours. I don t want to play wow. I want to have fun in WvW.

Please tell me you are either planning to add more maps or more servers vs servers instead of limiting each server to 166 people. I love your implementation of WvW but fighting the queue monster is not fun for a friday night

Move to a lower population server. Problem solved.

This game already offers amazing PvP for people who moved from Dota, Startcraft, FPS games and other competitive skill based games. I love that there is a division between the Heart of the Mists crowd and Outside world crowd. People who are hardcore PvPers never have to set foot outside Heart of the Mists.

I say take this one step further by giving us the option to move to Heart of the Mists immediately upon character creation.

More cosmetic type PvP rewards. Maybe give us a Home Instance in the Hall of Heroes which can have artifacts and NPCs from PvP achievements or from PvP rewards.

Some casual mini-games in Hall of Heroes. I want Keg Brawl to be moved to Hall of Heroes. Or add a second Keg Brawl entrance NPC there.

I know Ladder and Ranking systems are already incoming, and I’m fondly looking forward to those.

http://www.twitch.tv/gweff/b/333713698

As you can see the necro fears me at the last moment while I’m trying to cast Battle Standard. However, the animation skill occurs, no banner is placed, my ally is not revived and Battle Standard goes on its full cooldown rather than interruption cooldown.

Back when I was at Orr there were very few people there. Infact I was aching for more people because soloing some of the events was difficult/boring ( I went there when I was lower 4-5 lvl than the mobs). But, but then again I lvled kind of fast and other people might have been lower lvl.

Remember it depends on your server population too. I suggest transferring to a lower pop server.

Klinch.2964:

I played about 15 tpvp games with a necro for the first time last night. When ever I ran into a quickness build, I’d just pop Death Shroud until their quickness runs out. I’d think that any necro build could do that.

Warriors get access to shield block with makes them block all damage for a short period of time. My main used to be warrior (although I think that will change now). DS is like shield block on steroids, it has an incredibly short cooldown, can be toggled on and off whenever you want so that you you don’t waste it. It’s just plain awesome.

With dagger siphon and the Death Shroud siphon combined with the incredible rate at which you generate Life Force (depends on your build) you have practically an infinite HP pool. If played well necros are more tanky than guardians and many times more mobile (especially now, with recent changes to certain skills), this makes hem incredibly difficult to kill.

Smackjack.5071:

As far as i know DS does not prevent 100% dmg.

It is like a second HP pool. All the damage that you take while in death shroud reduces that second HP pool while keeping your real HP intact. So, yes it does prevent 100% damage.

Xhieron.2168:

What about a trait or signet that caused you to passively gain LF (when out of Death Shroud)?

There is already a signet hat does his (in combat), it’s called Signet of Undeath. It Signet’s active ability is incredibly good too.

LF generation has not been a problem for me, but I can’t speak for all necros. Some weapons are better than others at generating LF. I myself play a Dagger necro. Remember, you can’t just pop DS and stand there and take hits. Your second HP bar is still an HP bar and it does get damaged. Your main defense is should be your mobility. The plethora of chill and swiftness abilities available to necros give them a significant mobility advantage over their opponents. I rarely stay in DS for more than 3-5 seconds at a time, it depends on the situation

No joke, yesterday I fought a (good) guardian on the waterfall point for 10 minutes! Then his allies came. Probably one of the most amazing fights I have ever had, we both went down to near death several times during the fight.

I love this game!

Hello, I play a mostly warrior and guardian. Currently Rank 22. I have more practice on Warrior and will be running Warrior for some time. I am trying out different builds, but I have played support CC Hammer Warrior for a long time and fairly competent with that.

Right now I’m practicing with axe/mace and liking it a lot. I always run mace/shield alt no matter what.

Swap, which is the mesmer skill that follows Illusionary Leap (sword ability) currently breaks all manners of CC.

Mesmers are un-CC-able.

The same might be true for the Staff skill Phase Retreat (unverified).

I never thought I f2p game could be this good and have such a reasonable cash shop. Compare it to any other f2p and the difference is surprising. This is a p2p quality game for sure. Infact better than the p2p games I’ve played.

I would say this game is the “killer” of the hundreds of f2p games out there. The cheap factory made f2p games have already seen a substantial decline over the past few years with numerous games shutting down permanently. I would imagine that it’s only going to get worse for them. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it will make future mmorpg developers innovate rather than flooding the market with cheap trash f2p mmos.

As for Gw2 endgame here is my statement:

- Gw2 endgame is sPvP -

After I hit lvl 80 I went into the Heart of the Mists and never left since. This game is the only game that is able to look past all the imaginary roadblock content and give us what we want without having to mindlessly grind perpetually to get there. The only roadblock is needing to press H, clicking the PvP tab and clicking Enter the Heart of the Mists.

Nobody likes to grind dungeons/mobs, it’s boring. In other games it was something you were forced to do in order to get your foot in the door into the PvP scene. Not so in this game.

If that roadblock is removed what’s the point of all those imaginary roadblock content? To be sure Gw2 still has the imaginary roadblock content which are almost like archaic step-children inherited from previous mmos.

Ofcourse there are those who would willingly subject themselves to the roadblocks like a swarm of masochistic 90 year old drivers. But, at one point you will come to realize that you are grinding to get all the shineys to do what? To grind more and get more shineys? The endless cycle or boredom continues.

Let me analyze GS a bit more thoroughly so that you guys understand where I’m coming from.

Autoattack- Only Warrior Auto-attack that stacks vulnerability. The vulnerability stacks have a significant duration too.

Hundred Blades- It is a channeled ability and it is situational, therefore the large damage makes sense, somewhat. Certain CC’s make atleast half the channel hit (assuming no frenzy), unless your opponent uses a stunbreak. The half channel is still a significant amount of damage.

Regarding HB all of the above is fine imo, but the thing that makes it not-fine imo is the 8 second cooldown. The short cooldown nullifies the situational-ness of the skill. It’s not really a cooldown that you need to save. If you know that that your target will take 1/4th of the channel you can still use it.

Bladetrail- Comparable to Throw Axe, Warrior’s only other ranged cripple. It has a 15sec cooldown, higher than Throw Axe, but it hits x1000 more reliably due to the width of the projectile and the double pass.

Rush- One of only 2 weapon skill gap closers available to Warriors that does not require adrenaline. Earthshaker can also be considered a gap closer, assuming adreneline presence. Eviscerate is not a gap closer in my eyes because of the short distance and lack of reliability.

Whirlwind Attack- Saved the best for last. This skill provides reliable burst (unlike HB which needs CC). This skill hits incredibly hard and rarely ever misses. The damage of this skill might be bugged.

All these skills together make GS not only very bursty, but also highly mobile. No other weapon set comes close in competition.

Rangers are x100 easier to play than warriors. Just auto-attack all day. Turn on utility buffs when you need to burst. Dodge/immobilize/cripple when the enemy comes close to you. Win.

Even a bad player will be helpful to the team if playing as a Ranger. On the other hand a bad warrior player will be kited all day and his presence would not matter, except to be a meat punching bag for a few moments.

Sorry to misguide you guys. I meant this discussion to be about sPvP, not PvE or WvW.

Also, don’t get me wrong. I’ve played Hammer+Mace/shield for a long time and I agree that it has the best CC out of anything in the game, damage is okay too, but nothing can match the damage output of GS.

To put things in perspective: Using around the same build (same stats but different traits):

GS’s Whirlwind Attack which is on a 10 second cooldown + rarely ever misses + gives you some mobility does about the same damage as Eviscerate at max adrenaline.

About 3/4ths of the Hundred Blades channel (8 second cooldown) does about the same damage as max adrenaline Eviscerate.

Eviscerate inexplicably misses like 50% of the time even if you are directly next to the target.

Guardian is balanced

Thief is balanced

Mesmer is not balanced

Actually it is the opposite of what you think. It’s pointless to go glass cannon spec because you will die too fast to do anything (unless you are some class that can burst and run away without being detected)

I really don’t like GS. I’ve tried Hammer for a while and I’ve also tried axe and mace. But, in the end nothing comes close to the amount of damage and mobility GS provides.

Sad. I guess I’m stuck with GS for now until they make some sort of changes to make other weapons viable.

LMAO! Why not remove CC altogether then? There are so many stability buffs and CC removals available to every class.

There is somewhat of a diminishing returns aspect. If you would pay attention it is fairly obvious due to the large pop up achievements and pieces of yellow glitter that float over to your exp bar. Then again, it’s too much to ask people to read in an mmorpg.

This is subjective.

Thanks for the tips.

Although I will say this, these tips may work against bad~average mesmers but good high rank mesmers will use decoy or some swap or stealth or do some other BS whenever you actually finally get on on them as melee and when you get back on them they will do it again. Furthermore they are practically unCC-able with the amount of stunbreaks they have.

As a (not-GS) Warrior I’ve never defeated a good mesmer 1v1 unless they are already low on health or there is a teammate who comes in atleast halfway through the fight.

When I first started the game in the early access weekend I started in Blackgate. Blackgate was doing fairly well for some time in the first few days. Their success might or might not have been due to the incredibly high population. The swift decline or Blackgate might have been caused by people leaving the server.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Henge of Denravi’s playerbase is now largely comprised of former Blackgate players. During my time in Blackgate, the Blackgate players have proven their ineptitude over and over again. They have no inkling of an idea on how to play effectively. Any success they have had after the first few days was infact due to their high population and relentless ineffectual suicide squads. The PUGs will not take instruction of any kind and will forever move around in a zombie zerg banging their heads against keep walls until they die, respawn and return to what they were doing.

I didn’t want to leave Blackgate I wanted to give it a chance, but I was forced to leave out of sheer frustration because nobody will listen to any instruction. it’s like dealing with kids. The server is just terrible. I don’t know how they suffer the repair costs. The server I moved to (not HoD) views Blackgate as a laughing stock, the perpetual suicide squad militia.

I still have hope for Blackgate. Perhaps some day the zombie zerg will grow a brain, but I don’t anticipate that it will happen any time soon just because of the large number of guilds in the server, none of them worth a dime, and none of them receptive to any type of cooperation suggestions.

Suggested change to the following Warrior hammer skill:

Staggering Blow: The skill currently has an incredibly long attack animation, and on top of that it roots you in place while you are using it. This makes the skill have a very limited range of usage scenarios. Please consider making the attack animation shorter.
——
Option to remove skill queue: Please give us the option to not have skill queues if we don’t want them though an option checkbox. This will benefit those of us who prefer to spam buttons in order to get more responsiveness and fluidity in our actions.
——-
Option to have overhead health bar: Similar to the overhead health bars of enemies please give us the option to have an overhead health bar for our own characters.

Thank you.

Yeah, if the people you are fighting arekitten who can’t CC or dodge and miss all their cooldowns and keyboard turn and click their hotbar then obviously you can win 2v1 or even 5v1, but the OP mentioned explicitly: if they are not half as skilled as you are.

Sivii.2749:

I’m actually not doing that badly 1v1, running S/D – but you can only play like that for so long without literally burning out your mind, it takes so much concentration. I’m fine with a harder skill-cap class, but when you have dudes just spamming 2 buttons to win it’s a bit ridiculous.

I totally get what you mean. I’ve been experiencing the same thing on my hammer warrior. I spend so much effort trying to time my CCs and keep on my target and switch target if needed if my target is uncatchable.

But, then you see Rangers sitting in the back relaxing and auto-attacking all day long, or generic warriors using their one button macro Frenzy>Bull Rush>Hundred Blades>Whirlwind>gg, and you wonder what’s the point?

Did you finish exploring the WvW maps? There are 4 total. The names vary based on the particular servers you are fighting against but they are still essentially the same maps.

The problem with mesmer is that they have way too many Break Stuns. Basically there is no point in CC’ing a Mesmer because they will break out of CC. This means that the mesmer has incredible survivability, which is fine on it’s own. Pair the survivablility that with the fact that the longer a mesmer stays alive and the more phantasms he has on you the lower the chance that you will win and you have a very powerful class.

Mesmer break stuns and CC’s removals need to be toned down.

Who cares about the outside world? A true PvPer never leaves the mists. Tell your guild to grow some balls and join you in the mists.

After hitting lvl 80 I have never left the mists because the outside world is full of silly people fighting A.I. pointlessly forever to no end. I’m not talking good A.I that responds to your actions, but stupid A.I that does the same things over and over again. Would you rather defeat that stupid A.I. or an intelligent human? Which would bring more satisfaction?

Very good post. I agree with some things mentioned and not others.

Disagreements:
-there is skill required in the current conquest system. This is especially true if you are fighting in tournament pvp or tpvp as it is forced 5v5. This is not as true in hot join games where the amount of players makes it too beneficial to zerg as a team. Remember that it also depends on map size.
-Along with being good at 1v1, another skillset you must cultivate is knowing when to go where and being aware of the points and whether or not they are being contested (by simply looking at the top of your screen), and acting appropriately.

Agreements:
-I agree that this game might have benefited a lot from some kind of death match gameplay. But, WoW Arena style or BLC arena style will not work with the current skills available to classes for a few reasons:
-Arena maps are too small.
-Some classes are meant to be bunkers or point defenders (like guardians/warriors). If given the option people will always focus down the squishies first and leave the tankies. But, a tank standing on a point essentially forces you to take him down.
-And, a number of other reasons probably.

If the game could have had successful arena balance, then the devs would have probably added it. I’m sure they have done testing and determined that it would not work for one reason or another. All that being said here is a possible resolution that perhaps was not considered.

FPS style arena:
-Exactly similar to Battlefield game conquest matches.
-Larger maps than sPvP maps.
-Capturing and holding points will not give you points towards winning, but will give you spawn points (or probably some other form of convenience).
-You start with 50 points (or some other number, it depends on testing and balancing) on each team. Every time one person on your team dies you lose one point. The team that reaches 0 points first loses.

This forces the game to still be essentially kill based. But, having and defending points is still an important aspect. I do not know if it will work, just an idea. Everything depends on dev testing.

If you are an sPvP-er and you go into WvW you will see a palpable level-of-skill difference between the people you fight in sPvP and the people you fight in WvW.

I hope I’m not being a major elitist here, but in reality to be good at PvP it requires a certain amount of practice. A lot of people in WvW probably mouseclick their hotkeys and backpedal rather than sidestrafe or simply autoattack all day long.

In the current system you fight for long periods of time to gain keeps for your team to acquire more points and whoever has the most points after X amount of time wins. No doubt this system works, but it is not very motivating after a while because you go through all that effort just to see numbers on the scoreboard.

In Warhammer for instance you win Realm vs. Realm by capturing all the Keeps on a map after which you get some nice loot/gold/exp and the map resets to neutral after some time.

It would be nice if we could fight for a meaningful end goal (for instance like capturing all the keeps on a map). Such a task might be arduous and might take weeks if the teams are well matched, but that would make the win all the more satisfying. certainly more satisfying than: Fight for X amount of time and see who wins.

A similar system might not work in this game or it might, I don’t know. This is not a suggestion, but rather an invitation to discuss the matter.

I wonder, does the client downscale/upscale rendered objects on the screen depending on PC hardware?

I have some marginal evidence that it does upscale:

Yesterday I was in a massive raid with my guild. Our gang was so big that mobs would not come on screen for me as well of many others but some people (like guild leader) was saying that there are mobs all over the place around us, we just can’t see them and told us to AoE all around. Low-and-behold some time later lots of mob dead bodies started appearing.

From this incident I can garner that some PCs are able to render more objects on screen (as our guild leader was able to see the mobs).

I decided to alt+tab our of the game and overclock my GPUs from 857 Mhz -> 900Mhz. Some more mobs started appearing on my screen(not all), ALTHOUGH this might be because some of the people in our guild group had left by this time.

Note that I don’t have a bad PC, specs:
Intel 3960X Sandybridge-E Hexacore processor
Asus Rampage IV Formula x79 Motherboard
x2 GTX 580 Graphic cards in SLI
32 GB RAM

Why don’t you try the build out yourself and tell us what you find. It is so easy to try out different builds in this game.

I’m incredibly skeptical of Longbow ever working out in sPvP, even the noobiest of noobs will be able to dodge a majority of Longbow attacks. The weapon is mostly made for WvW where zergs have to either stay in the Longbow AoEs to sustain their push, or retreat.

Hammers do not take advantage of a Crit+Condition damage build due to their low attack speed. You are better off going with a Power build if you want to use a hammer. Otherwise switch out Hammer for a higher attack speed weapon, ideally sword because their auto attacks already add one stack of bleed, if crit that will be x2 bleed stacks.

First of all Ranger shortbow spec has higher dps output in a crit+condition build than rifle.

1.) Like x2 attack speed of rifle.
2.) Ability to poison taking further advantage of the high condition damage.
3.) Sharpening Blade utility skill for even more bleed stacks per attack. Assuming you are flanking and you crit you will stack x3 bleed per attack booting an amazing attack speed.

Ranger is less tanky, that I will grant, but they have more escapeability. On shortbow alone you have quick shot which is a free no endurance cost dodge + swiftness + damage (note: this skill does not require you to face your target). Cripple. 1 second inescapable stun +daze. if you have longbow alt you have 1 additional swiftness ability, Another cripple ability and a knockback.

If you are talking about WvW Warrior Longbow is by far way better than Rifle for pushing enemy lines. Rifle in general is not a weapon I would ever main as a warrior and alt slots are always better filled with X+Shield (in sPvP) and X+Warhorn (in WvW)

Can someone please confirm what Swiftly said?

I haven’t tested it thoroughly but from what I’ve seen Sprint does give a slight movement speed buff over non-sprint in-combat. When you go incombat your movement speed is reduced by an amount regardless of whether you have sprint or not. Comparing non-sprint in-combat to sprint in-combat there is a slight movement speed increase. However, this must be tested more thoroughly in order to be confirmed.

Example
Say your non-combat (without sprint) speed is 300 units/second
In-combat it will be reduced by 30% so: 210 units/sec

So theoretically with warrior’s sprint it will be as follows
Out-of-combat: 300 +10% = 330
In-combat: 330-30%= 231

(300-30%)+10% yields the same result so it doesn’t matter when in the sequence of operations the +10% is added.

Hammer burst is by far the best looking

If you are going to play this type of ranged crit+bleed playstyle why don’t you just go Ranger. Ranger shortbow was basically made for this playstyle and is much more effective at it. I tried both.

I used to use warhorn, but found that warhorn is really meant for roamers who need the extra speed. Shield for the block is absolutely indispensable to counter burst. The stun is nice too.

Here is the main reason for why gaining exp in sPvP will not be a good idea: Imagine if you sPvP all the time and never go out to PvE or WvW and you reach lvl 80 this way. Suddenly you are lvl 80 and you have 1 silver to your name and all lvl 1 gear. That’s a pretty big gap to close.

If you add gold and (non-cosmetic)item rewards in sPvP that ruins the whole point of sPvP.

I don’t understand why people fight the sharks. You know you can kite them right? This isn’t some monumental discovery is it? People can’t be that stupid.

If there is someone defending the Ruins get the other points. They are one man down which means they have less forces on the ground. If you have 2-point control you force them to go offensive which means you can go solo cap Ruins by kiting the sharks NOT standing there and fighting and losing half your health.

If you haven’t figured this out you are stupid: You can swim in a circle around the edges of the Ruins point and effectively kite the sharks. You might get hit once or twice if you are not good at dodging, but it’s better than standing there and tanking. By the time someone comes back to defend, the point should be neutral and the sharks should be aggressive towards both of you.

To be honest you are going about the wrong way. You can’t think of yourself as a point defense because in order to succeed your role has to be dynamic. You have to cultivate map and point awareness and know when to back off.

If the enemy is zerging heavily you shouldn’t just stand in the middle of their zerg to give yourself a few extra seconds of point control. The reason there is such a zerg mentality going on in sPvP right now is because people don’t yet understand that to counter zerg they need to divide and conquer rather than face the zerg head-on.

Conversely you have to know when not to abandon a point. If the situation arises where you know you can take on a couple people without becoming a martyr (as you should be able to considering you are defensive built), then by all means do so.

Remember, you are not helping your team by waiting to spawn.

Without immobilize melee will be kited all day long. There is too much condition removal in this game. What’s the point of CC?

I have 2 suggestions both of which are minor things which if changed will have a major impact on gameplay experience especially in PvP.

1. Add an option to remove skill queing- I’m one of those hotkey mashers who are willing to put up with the inconvenience of having to mash our hotkeys in order to have more control. Split second decisions in PvP are oftentimes necessary and the queing system conflicts with that.

2. (a) Don’t put skills on cooldown if you interrupt your own skill mid-animation without effect- If I interrupt a skill mid-animation with a dodge roll, the skill incurs a very large cooldown (not the full cooldown, but large enough to have a major impact). The skill should obviously undergo the full cooldown if the skill actually had an effect before the interruption took place. However, if the skill is interrupted shortly after the animation start and the skill is not allowed to have any effect then that skill should not incur a cooldown, or have a much shorter cooldown.

(b) Skills should go on full cooldown if interrupted by an opposing player- Converse to the above suggestion, skills should undergo the full cooldown if an opposing player interrupted your skill (as opposed to you yourself interrupting it). The player interrupting the skill blew a cooldown trying to interrupt your key ability, you should not be able to reuse that ability shortly thereafter.

No, a dodge will always take precedence over any skill you are performing. If you are in the middle of a skill animation you will interrupt the skill to do your dodge if you try to dodge before the animation ends.

If you are crippled dodge rolls will have a vastly shorter range of movement (so will any skill that has a movement aspect to it). If you are not CC’ed and you are still experiencing dodge quirks you may be experiencing connection lag.

Actually this game can be quite demanding when there are lots of people in one area all spamming skills (i.e in WvW). My rig is as follows:

Asus Rampage IV Formula X79 Motherboard
Intel i7 3960X Hexacore Sandybridge Processor
x2 Nvidia GTX580 Cards in SLI
32 GB RAM.

On high settings in WvW my FPS often goes down to about 40-45. Still very playable for me, but on lower end machines I bet you can expect major issues.