Guild Wars 2

ngdani.9482:

If a thief resets the fight, the opponent also gets the reset.
That would only make sense if there are other enemy players that have also engaged and are still in range or NPC mobs around.

Did I mention Golanta yet in this discussion? That’s the “beauty” of the system … thief hides amongst skales, when things become a bit tough thief stealthes … Skales will immediately break aggro on him and as soon as bleed or poison is off of him he will be out of combat. The player he attacked still has like 5 skales attackign him so he won’t get out of combat. Once fully healed (or 3/4 healed) thief will say hello again to the enemy who now is lower on health than before and also has a few skills on cooldown …

If you play against a smart thief (that is one who knows when to break off) it’s next to impossible to kill him because they can distance themselves out of your range easily and will heal/cleanse while in stealth.

Easy thief kills are only those against a player who pushes too much.

Many classes have target-only skills and those are at a dire disadvantage against a thief. Every class that can use untargeted skills (life blast, well dropping, 100 Blades, etc.) has an advantage in thief fights over those who don’t.

In addition to that thieves also have bugged escape skills. Take #3 on D/P. Got the thief paralyzed/rooted … doesn’t matter -#3 will get him away. Have a ranger use SB #3 under the same conditions … the ranger will stay where he is. So #3 offers a thief an almost unlimited amount of stunbreakers because they’re initiative based, not cooldown based …

Runewolf.8456:

People who don’t play thieves and think they know everything about the class.

Or

People who see a skilled thief pull a combo and assassinate someone and automatically claim that thieves are OP.

They both make me laugh, and this thread gives me lots of laughs.

Staying invisible in a keep or tower is not a “skillful combo” it’s annoying and a single thief can easily solo a tower and – if it’s a good thief – solo a keep so you naturally want them out of your home before you move on.

Chairface.9036:

coglin.1867:

5 decent players will not be tied up for any more time with a thief than they would with any of those professions.

Agree to disagree.

The fact that you have to outnumber them 5 to 1 and still the only way to down them is to stack burst, condis and stuns in the brief 1 second flash that their targetable should tell you all you need to know.

Perma stealth in pvp is a strange choice.

I asked him for a scenario and I chose Jerrifer’s for a reason. When I am the troll thief I always manage to become visible while outside of their range … I’ve hidden in Jerrifer’s for 90 minutes with up to 10 people hunting for me … so I’m really curious about the strategy that will kill me

Everyone balls up: Enough damage to down me but, hey, I won’t become visible while inside your range :P

Everyone splits up: Fine, I probably cannot become visible while outside of someones range but one dude isn’t going to kill me, I’ll outheal the damage I take and with shadow stepping + untargeted heartseeker or longbow 5 I’ll be a loooong looong way from where I appeared when the others arrive and layer AoE where I was 2 seconds ago.

coglin.1867:

Chairface.9036:

ChoChoBo.6503:

With that logic, get rid of Mesmers, Rangers, Necromancers, Elementalists, and Engineers while your at it.

I’ve seen half decent Mesmers, Rangers, necromancers, Elementalists and Engineers all solo, 1v5 and keep them all occupied for 5-10 mins.

5 decent players would not be tied up for 10 mins by any of these classes, you must have seen some newbies getting farmed.

A Mesmer traited for stealth can run for awhile but its not nearly on the level of a thief, and could still use some balancing imo.

5 decent players will not be tied up for any more time with a thief than they would with any of those professions.

I am curious – please exlain your superior strategy to me.

Scenario: A newly captured tower (let’s take Jerrifer’s for this example) and you just see a thief stealth at the door. You have 5 players. What do you do to get rid of the thief – we will assume the thief has full initiative and no cooldowns on their skills as they slipped through the gate just before capture was completed and didn’t have to fight or evade.

ChoChoBo.6503:

Chairface.9036:

ChoChoBo.6503:

With that logic, get rid of Mesmers, Rangers, Necromancers, Elementalists, and Engineers while your at it.

I’ve seen half decent Mesmers, Rangers, necromancers, Elementalists and Engineers all solo, 1v5 and keep them all occupied for 5-10 mins.

5 decent players would not be tied up for 10 mins by any of these classes, you must have seen some newbies getting farmed.

A Mesmer traited for stealth can run for awhile but its not nearly on the level of a thief, and could still use some balancing imo.

True, my point is any decent player can handle another other decent player. If your getting farmed/gank’d by a thief, its not that the class is broken, its the skill level is too far apart.

The thief’s have been nerf’d and ‘balanced’ so much since launch, how much more do you want to take away from them without removing them from the game.

A thief traited to run around is vulnerable to burst condi’s. Especially with their low health pools, just burn them down. Thief’s that run around at best have 2-4 cleanses, I run around beastly with my thief, but get 1 good stun/immobilize on me then burst condi and i’m down. But MOST will try to burst dps me after a stun/immobilize and fail because I’ll be able to recover and reset easily. So its not that my thief is broken, its that my opponents failed to recognize my weakness. (and yes I know my thief has tons of stun breakers, which make it hard to stun/immobilize me, but its not impossible especially if its a 1v5, it happens more often than you think. A 2sec stun/immobilize isn’t enough to dps a thief down but its long enough to get a good condi burst off)

Ponders – solution: Only play condi builds and classes that have lots of condi in case you run into a thief. Hey, those builds might be entirely worthless for the other classes but they’ll get the thief down …

Not broken, eh?

Chairface.9036:

ChoChoBo.6503:

With that logic, get rid of Mesmers, Rangers, Necromancers, Elementalists, and Engineers while your at it.

I’ve seen half decent Mesmers, Rangers, necromancers, Elementalists and Engineers all solo, 1v5 and keep them all occupied for 5-10 mins.

5 decent players would not be tied up for 10 mins by any of these classes, you must have seen some newbies getting farmed.

A Mesmer traited for stealth can run for awhile but its not nearly on the level of a thief, and could still use some balancing imo.

A Mesmer can go stealth for a while but then cannot re-steakth before a rather lengthy cooldown. That’s why a Mesmer has to be smart if he is detected and wants to stay in the tower/keep. All a thief has to do is hit doors or NPCs that don’t hit back when being backstabbed.

It wouldn’t be quite as bad if thieves were kinda slowed down when stealthed but, no, they are, of course, one of the classes with the highest mobility in the game + get extra mobility when steathed if traited so … so you see the thief hit the door – in 1 1/2 seconds he is 2.000 away from that door while the AoE lands there …

ChoChoBo.6503:

HtFde.3856:

ChoChoBo.6503:

It sounds like there are a few people here who would prefer that all classes are nerf’d in WvW and overpowered in PvE.

Being gank’d in WvW isn’t fun. But there are plenty of traits/skills that prevent being 1-shot. Either take the time to learn them or get used to being gank’d whenever you roam. WvW is a PvP zone, you get players in every MMO who speck out for burst damage like the thief. Its why they’re so appealing. Don’t try and ruin the PK experience for others.

That’s only part of the problem …

We usually have 3 enemy thieves in Golanta … all those skales around make it hard to select them in the few seconds they are actually visible. When you try to follow them the skales will get you into combat and you will move much slower – so the thieves will get away, heal and get rid of condis while in stealth and re-attack while you’re still trying to get rid off the skales.

In a tower – every half decent thief can solo it. So when you have one inside after capture … how many people does it take to flush that thief out?

You call that balanced? One guy tying up 5+ people for like 10 minutes?

Another line I’ve come to hate is: Oh, you have to gear for WvW … yeah .. if you’re not a thief. THEY can go full glass cannon and still have a good chance to survive if they know what they’re doing everyone else has to adjust of course.

I have a thief as well (was my 2nd characer) and I say now what I said 2 years ago: Broken class – get rid of it.

With that logic, get rid of Mesmers, Rangers, Necromancers, Elementalists, and Engineers while your at it.

I’ve seen half decent Mesmers, Rangers, necromancers, Elementalists and Engineers all solo, 1v5 and keep them all occupied for 5-10 mins.

I can 1v5 on my Warrior, even if I can’t win I can at the very least keep the 5 occupied for 5 mins easy, so take the Warrior away too.

Just about every class is broken when you go against someone whose practiced a bit and experienced with 1v2+. Just happens most of the time its the thief, if I remember right, a while back, it was the mesmer and necro’s that where solo ganking everyone in WvW

1vs 5 in a keep for 5 minutes with a warrior? You must have horrible enemies where you play …

I am not talking about 1:1 balance by the way. I am talking about someone being able to more or less perma stealth in a keep by hitting doors or jumping through self created smoke screens. Every other class that can have stealth can use it as a tactical thing only … for a very brief amount of time. Thieves can keep it up indefinetly and that makes flushing a thief out of a tower a group task. No other class requires you to do that – but, of course, thief is absolutely ok.

ChoChoBo.6503:

It sounds like there are a few people here who would prefer that all classes are nerf’d in WvW and overpowered in PvE.

Being gank’d in WvW isn’t fun. But there are plenty of traits/skills that prevent being 1-shot. Either take the time to learn them or get used to being gank’d whenever you roam. WvW is a PvP zone, you get players in every MMO who speck out for burst damage like the thief. Its why they’re so appealing. Don’t try and ruin the PK experience for others.

That’s only part of the problem …

We usually have 3 enemy thieves in Golanta … all those skales around make it hard to select them in the few seconds they are actually visible. When you try to follow them the skales will get you into combat and you will move much slower – so the thieves will get away, heal and get rid of condis while in stealth and re-attack while you’re still trying to get rid off the skales.

In a tower – every half decent thief can solo it. So when you have one inside after capture … how many people does it take to flush that thief out?

You call that balanced? One guy tying up 5+ people for like 10 minutes?

Another line I’ve come to hate is: Oh, you have to gear for WvW … yeah .. if you’re not a thief. THEY can go full glass cannon and still have a good chance to survive if they know what they’re doing everyone else has to adjust of course.

I have a thief as well (was my 2nd characer) and I say now what I said 2 years ago: Broken class – get rid of it.

After the patch things have settled down. It’s still amazing that I could get to a crammed full map in Silverwastes and had absolutely zero problems there, could get immediately into WvW and had no problems there but it took 3 – 5 minutes to load an almost empty Durmant Priory (maybe 15 people there) and it always timed out after 8+ minutes when trying to create the Hidden Arcana instance.

Now with the patch it still takes a long time to load Durmant but the instance was created quite fast and also the subsequent instances that are created from inside that instance.

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s the unfortunate consequence of tying RNG to the parts bags across four bosses while giving the newer parts a lower drop rate. Not everyone has the time or patience to farm a single boss until they get everything they need until they move onto the next.

Well, that’s countered to some degree by the specialized extractors, isn’kitten

Ever since the update many maps take like 10 minutes to load – if they do not terminate with a “connection to internet lost” message – a fun little message since the rest of the internet bar ANet’s server structure is performing just nicely …

Unable to enter Lion’s Arch
Unable to contine living story – instance creation will throw a timeout …

Is it one of those things where the EU players are kindly reminded again that, yes, we love to take your money but, no, we won’t provide sufficient infrastructure so kindly live with the ressources the US players leave to you?

Problem is all the locust style leechers in SW – a totally disgusting behaviour that is even rewarded by ANet. There’s a whole BUNCH of players who just look at lfg to ferry in to sw maps with 50%+ completetion – then they get taxi’ed in by a guildie and run all over the map, hitting a few mobs to get the rewards.

When the boss stage comes they start at yellow, use an extractor, hit the boss a few times – leave and run for blue. Hit a few times and run to indigo. When a boss dies they use the next extractor.

If the other people perform nicely they’ll get 4 parts instead of the 1 or 2 those players get who actually contribute and do not just leech + a lot of “reward” chests (what an insult) from all those events they, ahem, participated in …

Horrible map design …

The ferry-in also makes sure you have a map crammed full that a normal player who wants to do Silverwastes never will be able to enter. Those are instead thrown into a new, empty map where those 3 or 4 then struggle onward until they have reached a significant progress (getting reinformcements once in a while) and the locust swarm comes in, leeches and passes …

IndigoSundown.5419:

Mega-servers should have solved the “nobody in a zone” issue. Why, then, attract so many players to one zone? What’s the point?

Mega-servers happened while I was taking a break from GW 2 so I cannot say anything regarding their exact purpose but as far as I understand it the megaserver should help get enough people to get the big events done (Arah chain, Orr Temple chains, World Bosses like Tequatl, etc.).

This here aims at a different target, though – it (I think it does) aims at the problem of more or less empty zones that do not have a world boss/champ chain which promises loot, precursor drops, etc.

So – getting more people together to do Balthazar, Lyssa, Melandru …. solution: Megaserver instead of 10 people on this server, 8 on that one, 12 on that …

Getting more people into, er, Snowden Drifts … dailies … and just those because you can get the materials from there from more efficient maps. Megsaserver won’t really help here with 0 on this server, 1 on that and … hey … 2 over there …

Rin.1046:

But that still doesn’t mean the problem rests with the event daily. The event daily is merely highlighting the problem with the scaling, up or down.

Yes to the highlighting but the design of that particular daily enforces this highlighting

Rin.1046:

However, I disagree with peoples suggestions of changing it back to regions, as this will only result in empty zones and it seems clear to me this is something Anet is trying to avoid.

But they’re going at it in the wrong way. The question is “why is this zone so unattractive” and fix it – not force players to go there, vent a lot of frustration in chat which will most likely have a negative impact on new players – much more than an empty zone.

I usually try to avoid “examples” but let me try. Strawberries are a fruit and your kid should eat fruit but detests strawberries. So .. you can, of course, go at it and say “If you don’t eat your strawberries, you’ll not be allowed to play today!” Or youc an say “If you eat these strawberries I’ll give you 5$” … both will probably result in the strawberries being eaten but not more than absolutely needed and they’ll still be loathed.

But there’s other fruit than strawberries and unless you insist on the strawberries being the only valid fruit you might have your kid try various types of fruit until (hopefully) you find one your kid likes – which will result in extra fruit being consumed and a happy kid.

I prefer the 2nd option whereas ANet uses the first one to populate low level zones: “Forcing” us to go there for the daily and forcing us to go there to gather materials needed for ascended crafting.

Rin.1046:

Whichever way you look at it there is a problem, but I feel fixing the scaling issue would be a much more productive way of resolving this issue than focusing on the thing that is highlighting the problem.

I’ve said it before (among others) and I’ll say it again:

Make low level events into upscaling ones and it will have a negative impact on new players because content will become much harder than before when in a group.

Make low level events into upscaling ones and you’re either back at champion trains in low level areas or you’ll make them very unpopular for high level players if you kind of stop at elite mobs (and do not progress scaling to champion) because they will take a lot of time to complete and not give loot (why bother with them then?).

Make downscaling more effective and you’ll lose players (like me) who do not want to spend months on grinding for equipment that is worthless in 90% of the game. GW 2 has not enough high level areas to justify the amount of time needed for exotic or ascended armour if they would be completely downscaled in 90% of the maps.

You only have 2 maps in Orr and 1/2 map in the Shiverpeaks that actually are level 80.

Karka Island, Dry Top and Silverwaste are not solo player maps and I know many PvE players who don’t go there for that very reason.

I agree that you could upscale events “a bit” and that you could downscale “a bit more” without getting any of the dire consequences I mentioned above but I do not think that fine-tuning will fix the underlying problem.

If you want to populate maps make them attractive – that’s the best fix.

Rauderi.8706:

It’s basically the same problem as the pre-events for Fire Elemental. You’d think they would fix the scaling, but they haven’t. So yeah, event scaling is terrible in many cases, and the daily quest zones aren’t fit to handle it. I don’t overly mind daily zone events as a daily, provided that 1) dailies actually happen, and 2) the zerg is challenged enough by scaling that they don’t just sit around doing nothing. More mobs, more elite ranks.

Well, downscaling players isn’t something … natural … in fact, GW2 is the only game I’ve come across that has it implemented.

The main problem is that it is trying to get two things together that completely different and … at some times .. oppose each other.

Low Level area: Low monster density, allow players to get their feet wet – i.e. forgiving monsters – content must become easier in a group if players are challenged solo.

High Level areas: More monsters, nastier monsters, monsters scale up in health/damage as more players are around, amount of monsters is increased with more players – content should not become easier with more monsters …

Now, downlevleling players can substitute for lack of monster nastiness (less HP on player so they do not need to hit you that hard or use cc so that they can land more hits) but it can’t solve the problem that monster density has to be low in a low level zone and you cannot get more mosters because you’d make things too difficult for entry level players.

So downleveling has always been a compromise and – from my personal view – it does work OK-ish most of the time. It stops working, however, when you have too many people on the map and this is being enforced at the moment by the “do 4 events in” daily.

If ANet does this to re-populate unpopular maps, they’re making a mistake. There’s a reason why these maps are unpopular for high level players (low monster density, map too large with events too spread out, etc. = not good for loot) and coercing players to go there, do 4 events and then leave as fast as they can doesn’t make this map … popular. The other reason people go to low level maps is that they need to farm materials (another form of coercion – mostly not a voluntary decision) – and if there are better maps (less map, nodes packed more densely, events in closer proximity) they’ll always prefer those maps over, say, Snowden Drifts, which happens to be up now for the 2nd time …

Rin.1046:

A lot of people are complaining about the zergs destroying events, but this really isn’t a problem with the event daily. The problem effecting players is to do with downscaling. At the moment downscaling is so ineffective that a level 80 can one hit a low level mob with its weakest attack, and this shouldn’t be happening anyway let alone on the event dailies. All that is happening is the event dailies are highlighting this problem even more, they are not the cause of it.

The downscaling problem should not be a reason to fix the event daily, the event daily should be a reason to fix the downscaling problem.

You’re (mostly) wrong …

The events in low level zones do not upscale … so there’ll always be 8 grawl to kill on the second stage of the Shaman questline. Now have 60 players and 8 grawl …

Even players of the appropriate level can kill a grawl in 3 – kittens so there’s no way that all 60 will score. And – even though you might enjoy self flagellation – if ANet really would not make a difference between a true level 6 and a downscaled 80 they’ll never have to worry about the megaserver because you will have an easy time of fitting the remaining players on one server.

Just so you get it – a true level 6 has less than 10% crit chance – if you’d truly want to downlevel you’d have to take away all traits that enhance cc – rendering all sigils that proc off critical useless – forcing all players to use different weapons to use in low level zones, readjusting their builds whenever they go to low level zones.

I think that’d be enough for most players to say goodbye to GW 2 – I know I’d do it if ANet would really implement this. If I would want to play a level 5 char I’d use a level 5 char and not play years to get a level 80 + full ascended equipment + very, very expensive sigils and runes, thank you very much.

Edit: Why the heck does “h i t s” get’s changed to kitten when I type hits?
Edit: Oh I see – kitten s where 5 is seens as a substitute for s … more great programming

JRM.6218:

My thumbs for PvE:
Daily Mystic Forger: Down (don’t play lottery).

Well, you can buy 4 green sigils/runes and combine them in the MF for < 1s. But – if you’re so totally against lottery … there are many recipies for the MF that have a defined outcome:

For example:
Mystic Salvage Kit (I love those – 250 uses, yay)
Material Promotion (why not convert unneeded T5 mats to T6 mats?)

Keta.9601:

I’ve played WvW extensively and find it rather dull and necessitates running with a zerg these days.

Depends on the server you’re on – but especially now with the white swords gone that statement is so absolutely wrong. Now you can flip camps and even take towers and keeps with a small havoc group without fear of immediate interception unless your opponents have placed sentries everywhere (which is uncommon on most not-top-tier servers).

Ever since the sneak event attack I’ve been in “enemy territory” with a group of 4 or 5. Zergs lose you points at the moment because 4 groups can capture more objectives than one combined zerg can.

Fredjesus.7085:

just try to buy low lvl materias on TP, they’re absurd more expensive than dnd content materials, it happened because we not have new players on the game (not like before).

Nope -wrong reasoning, sorry.

The lower end “materials” (i.e. cloth, everything else is not a problem) have always been an issue – back to launch day. New players do not really help here because most of them will use what they get for crafting and as they rise in level their drops will change which will no longer salvage into the desired component … loot bags have always been the main source for cloth and 80s can get those much faster than low level characters.

For some materials like linen, cotton and wool the main source has been event farming for high level characters in the appropriate zones. What kept prices from exploding was the fact that those materials were not needd once you got past their need in crafting.

With the introduction of ascended armour, though, those materials are in constand need and that is why prices went up. Yet another reason for the rising prices is that most farm routes were seriously nerfed.

I did most of my leveling in the first year GW 2 came out and I had to buy linen, wool and cotton back then and it was expensive even back then.

Another main issue is silk – silk used to be dirt cheap and you used to get one or two stacks of it in a day. They changed it – unless I remember wrong – from 2 to 3 scraps needed and they seriously nerfed the rate for cloth salvaging items and drop rate from bags in Cursed Shore. In addition to that they added that 100 bolts of silk thing for ascended items … which changed silk from being dirt cheap to horribly expensive.

None of this has to do with “no new players” – new players level too fast to have an impact on the economy of those items. I created a few low level characters and hoped to increase my drop rate for cotton, wool and linen … no cookie. My 80s are still getting that stuff faster by event farming.

Julischka Bean.7491:

(1) PVP, WWW-put them together . They understand, and are properly geared, for fighting their fellow players

I agree 100% with the “they understand” part but the second one is where you are wrong. I see many uplevelled characters in WvW and they sure are not “properly geared” for fighting other players. The main difference is that they don’t care if they’re killed because they know it will happen if they run into an enemy player of a higher level – the trick is to not have that happen too often and accept the inevitable outcome when it does

Julischka Bean.7491:

When one does dailies in PVE, one can do them without fear of a squad of enemy players leaping out of a bush, killing you, and telling you that your mother wears army boots, and you are such a sorry player you should just die, die, die….which I am told, happens in PVP, and WWW…something about making the player you are attacking mad enough that they will make mistakes…but still…

May happen in WvW, it’s very rare in PvP – most of the time you get bashed by your team mates in PvP – and I’ve yet to see bashing on the farming servers.

But – let’s get serious – how did people who are actually bothered by such behaviour survive school?

I’ve yet to meet people in a game who are more spiteful than I see kids behave, especially against glass wearing kids, overweight kids, underweight kids, red haired kids, book reading kids … you get it.

And – let me restate it – while normal PvP is stressful – I doubt anyone can be stressed on a farming server. And the chance of being enemy players leaping out of bushes (unless you run a very low end computer) are pretty small when you (a) stick to your homeserver, only do ruins and land claimer (and spender but this requires the badges from the other two tasks) and remember ALT+F4 when you see enemies approaching and don’t feel like fighting.

Capturing camps, running in a zerg, assaulting or defending a structure, etc. is a completely different experience and should not be done unless one is really sure that they enjoy this … because, yes, that can be stressful and sometimes brings out the worst in some people (dancing on dead players, derogative IMs after having been killed and such things).

Albadaran.1283:

We ONLY play (solo) PvE, and have no other choice to make.

Just out of curiosity – what made you pick an MMO? I mean … Diablo 3 or Skyrim (to name but two) are much more solo friendly and Skyrim offers way more depth than GW 2 does if you actually care for roleplay and D3 fulfills the hunter/gatherer and action part much better …

Serophous.9085:

The one daily is basically do any fractal instance. ANY FRACTAL. Not a full run, just one instance if it. Set to lv 1.

You’re absolutely right but there’s people who don’t do dungeons or fractals (which is actually just another dungeon, although a scaling one). Dungeons require knowledge of the dungeon mechanics and teamwork …

I’ve done enough newbie introductions to fractals to be throroughly discouraged

Many people don’t communicate/listen, bother with mechanics … they’ll try it seat of pants and if they fail, they rage quit. For those players no fractal will ever be easy or fast … just try to get the giant one done if noone bothers switching hammers with you or they keep killing stuff although you tell them that you need to kill them with the hammer … frustration pure …

Gayle.1807:

— snip —
Many people have indeed tried and do not have the skill to survive long enough to reach their daily. In other words, you are suggesting someone participate in events they have to spend weeks trying to learn an area of the game
--- snip —
WvW and PvP only works if you can stay alive to be able to earn the daily’s. Leaching off WvW zergs only succeeds if you can live long enough to find a zerg, assuming a zerg is around.
-- snip —
WvW and PvP are time consuming to learn. They are hard to learn on your own if you can’t stay alive long enough to familiarize yourself with these areas. So, if you find these areas “easy peasy”, are you willing to take some hours to teach others, and leave your egotistical bragging out of the conversation.
--- snip —-

Problem is most often that people who "do PvE but not dungeons or fractals " have a serious communication issue … for some reason they don’t use map chat …

(a) I mentioned farming servers above – just scroll back a bit. It took me like 5 minutes to understand how things work – part of that was simply asking in chat then following my team mates and look what they were doing This should take care of 3 PvP dailies (player kills, point capture and – if you quaff the vials – rank progression).

(b) WvW only takes practise when you’re up against enemy players. Outside of that it is PvE – I’ve seen people kill guards and Doliaks who were uplevelled from level 2! Just today I announced which two camps I’d go after, collected a few guys and then we did those camps. You can also ask if someone will show you the best way to the closest ruin or explain how to best get to the closest camps. Sometimes you might get snotty answers (or no answers as well) but eventually you’ll find a helpful soul …

But, as I stated initially – it boils down to communication and many people I talked to who LOATHED WvW did the same … go solo, never ask questions, get killed by enemies … rage quit. For some reason many people do seem to have a communication problem …

Edit: Daily Ruin, Daily Spender and Daily Land Claimer are safe, Caravan Disruptor slightly less so, especially in enemy lands where a suddenly vanishing/oddly moving Dolyak might be noticed … capturing camps, towers or keeps requires at least a party (easier in a zerg – you can solo a keep but it takes AGES and ages is bad as the chances rise that you’ll get visitors)

Astral Projections.7320:

@HtFde

What is a “map farming server” in PvP and how do you find or get on it?

It’s not a map farming server but a rank farming server and the farming takes place on two different maps

Call up the PvP interface (top right icon with the crossed swords) and choose the 3rd tab (game browser). Farming servers are listed as such under the description (e.g. [Rank Farm] Red Caps, ….) and depending on the map (Skyhammer or Kyhlo) you know what to expect if you did read my previous post.

Edit: Select one of those entries and hit “Join Game” – depending on the amount of players you might not be able to join – so select one that’s not full or wait a bit. (If it says 18/20 but has 2 reserved slots in the description it is full)

Beldin.5498:

GW2 is especially better designed since it gives me the choice to avoid everything
that has to do with PvP. And after playing AION for 8 months i finally took the
conclusion that i never ever will set a step in a game where i am forced to have to
deal with PvP players.

And there are of course more things that bother me .. and yes i know not all PvPler
are total idiots .. but i simply avoid PvP like i would maybe never visit a Hells Angels
Bar .. even if maybe most Hells Angels are really friendly persons.

Well … Real Life != game, I’m not a hardcore PvP player but I wouldn’t frequent a biker hangout either …

I can understand if yout got some really bad experiences from another game (didn’t play Aion, so I can’t relate) but did you actually try to do one of the aforementioned PvP or WvW dailies (and didn’t like them) or are you just against them because of prior experience in a completely different game?

How about trying them … once ortwice and then decide?

As I said – a few re done in seconds …

PvP: Player-Kill
Just enter one of the Skyhammer map farming servers, run to point B (middle exit then right if you’re red, middle exit then left if you’re blue), throw some AoE into the enemies under Point B and jump (over the side or through the holes in the ground if the glass doors are open). You can get your 3 player kills in less than 20 seconds (less than 10 if you enter an existing game and don’t have to wait for the timer). You can leave right after that (although it’s not looked kindly upon)

PvP Point Capture
Enter one of the Kyhlo map farming servers and make your way to the middle and go up the stairs. Wait till it is your team’s time to recap. Assuming the “enemy” starts recapping when you appear it’ll take about 30 seconds to get that daily, much less if you appear “upstairs” at a different time.

WvW Ruin
In your homelands (assuming your side does not have a waypoint in the middle fortress) run left, exit through the arch and drop off the ledge to the left of your homeland’s NW tower. Continue along the path (speed boosts help) and you’re in front of your closest ruin. Enter it and stand in the circle until it turns your team’s colour. If you’re somewhat familiar with the path and have speed boosts you can get this done in < 2 minutes.

WvW Spender
Save the rewards from the ruin runs (10 badges) and once you have enough just buy blueprints from the siege master – second panel sells them for just badges (so no real money loss) and this one’s 100% guaranteed without enemy interaction because you never leave your own fortress where you are invulnerable.

Those 3 (4 once you have some badges) can be used to complement your PvE routine and one of those should always be available and allow you to compensate for fractals or those “do 4 events” things which take a whole lot longer than all three (4) activities I mentioned above combined.

I can understand if you’re hard set on “never setting a foot in PvP” territory again but you’re really missing out on 3 (4) super easy and fast opportunities then.

Beldin.5498:

HtFde.3856:

Vayne.8563:

Can you be killed by other players attempting those dailies? If so, it has something to do with PvP. It only has nothing to do with PvP if no one chances upon you.

Yes you can – and I can fall off in a jumping puzzle and die, I can get killed by a champ … I really can’t understand the problem some people seem to have with being killed by players while aparently having no qualms about being killed by NPCs or the environment.

A champion doesn’t laugh at you and dances on your dead body, or whatever else
some ganking kids in MMOs do after they jumped you from behind while you were
fighting against other mobs.

And this actually bothers you? Seriously?

In PvP farming arenas (and ranking arenas) NOONE dances on you – (a) they have better things to do and (b) you respawn way too fast for that to actually happen.

In WvW it happens but (a) I love it when they do that because it gives me enough time to direct people to them and it’s a resurrected me that dances on them a few moments later and (b) if you do ruins and guard killer your chances of running into someone is really, really small and most of the time (when you do those in your homelands) those guys have better things to do because of (a).

I have had VERY bad PvP experiences mself in some games – you left the town and were insta-ganked by people who camped there all day and had nothing better to do than to kill people leaving town – kitten poor game design. GW 2 is much, much better designed in this aspect.

Vayne.8563:

Can you be killed by other players attempting those dailies? If so, it has something to do with PvP. It only has nothing to do with PvP if no one chances upon you.

Yes you can – and I can fall off in a jumping puzzle and die, I can get killed by a champ … I really can’t understand the problem some people seem to have with being killed by players while aparently having no qualms about being killed by NPCs or the environment.

As I said before – I haven’t encountered any enemy while doing the WvW dailies (just don’t try capture a tower or keep – that does increase the chance of an encounter) and on the PvP farming servers you don’t die to enemies, you die because you jump (or in case of the Kyhlo map because there’s a troll at work which happens rarely and it’s usually 1 troll against your team of 5 which makes those guys very short lived).

Steele.8230:

It just seems since the World Tournament in China that the desire of GW2 is try to push everyone into player vs player through fractals.

Call me stupid … what do fractals (PvE in its purest form) have to do with PvP?

Pockets.3201:

You know, you are right. I am limiting myself.

I’ll just hop into PvP matches I don’t want to be in, kitten around and be completely inept as I won’t know what to do or care, and generally drag down my team just to get dailies done faster. Not like I know how to fight other players, nor do I have any desire to learn as I don’t want to be there.

I’m sure everyone involved will enjoy that.

(a) You’re omitting WvW Capturing an empty ruin, killing a NPC guard or killing 5 NPC guards + Dolyaks (in case of capturing a camp) has NOTHING o do with PvP, letting teams down and whatnot. Actually – it is PvE – with the added danger, of course, that you might run into enemy players. So do it in your homelands or near your own spawn points to make it a short run in case you do. I haven’t encountered a single enemy when I did those 3 dailies since they were introduced (ruins, land claimer, camp flipper).

(b) For regular PvP I agree with your statement, although matchup is done by experience and I guess you’d be surprised how many people will probably be worse than you. But then there’s rank farming servers – noone does serious PvP on those. You either take turns flipping the middle capture point (no fighting) or you all meet under point B – hit each other and jump down, rinse and repeat. Who wins is predetermined so your performance does not have any impact.

ffletcher.3468:

I was getting five to eight AP every day while having mild fun in Dry Top, SW, or Orr with top level characters with top level gear. The 10k chest was in range. Now I’m supposed to stand around in a swamp waiting for an oh-so-scary Behemoth, or maybe kill lvl 8 slimes in Metrica Province. I’m not gonna do stupid pet tricks, so the chest is no longer in reach and my desire to play has slipped to the point where I am just senselessly logging on and off for the daily reward. The trait change, the daily change, the lack of expansion, and the appalling lack of communication is becoming too much. All very personal, I know… Not being a good little metric, I know…

You’re not supposed to wait for the champ or to kill level 8 slime somewhere. You’re supposed to pick of the 12 activities available 3 (!!!) and complete them. Unless you’re one of those “I don’t do dungeons, nor fractals – and anything where I might be killed by a player …” players you can get those 3 activities done in less than 10 minutes. Then you have 10 AP (more than you said you had previously) and can spend the rest of your playtime doing whatever suits you.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Vayne.8563:

Crafting is a PvE activity. I’m not sure how you think it’s not. Mystic forge the same thing.

I can’t believe anyone would think it’s PvE. There’s no ‘versus’ involved in it at all. The crafting station offers neither challenge nor resistance. It’s as much ‘PvE’ as moving an item from one inventory slot to another is PvE. Why do you think crafting is PvE? Because it’s not one of the other game modes?

Crafting is usually part of the character’s development – this part is seen as being a PvE thing because crafting doesn’t matter in sPvP. In WvW crafting isn’t an issue either because you an get most armor/weapons for a bit of money and WvW tokens – very much unlike outside of WvW where you have a very limited choice of armor to obtain (especially while < 80) so the developers made you either buy thing from the BLTP or craft them.

I guess since ANet put this into the non sPVP and non WvW mode it’s same to assume that they can be counted among PvE activities. Just for fun: Make a new character, put all your gold away and then see how you get the armor you want while playing PvE if you can’t buy (no money) and won’t craft …

TheToxicFox.8710:

There are maybe 3 achievements for pve and the rest are either pvp or wvw.

There’s an equal number of dailies for every category – period. You only get “less” when – in addition to limiting yourself to PvE only – you limit yourself even more by “no dungeons”, “no fractals”, “no activities”, “no Asura”, “no non-human areas”, “no crafting”, etc.

Miss Pink Floyd.9730:

I am PVE only, NOTHING will get me into PVP, it just does not have any interest to me, never has, never will. So I guess I will never get the daily again. This was not a good idea at all.

You are aware, though, that most WvW dailies actually are PvE? Killing a guard … that’s an NPC, capturing a ruin – that one’s even completely without fighting, capturing a camp – if you use your own northern camp (should it belong to the enemy) is again a PvE fight.

Yes, you run into danger of encountering enemy players … but with those 3 dailies, especially in your own homelands, the danger is pretty small and there’s always ALT+F4 if you run into them …

Devildoc.6721:

I dread the idea of playing a mesmer now, have to get to level 60 to get clones on dodging, and have to do a bunch of crap in game without traits available to unlock said traits.

Sighs – my second mesmer (part of my Asuran Army project) has reached level 80 by now so I was posting from experience and, yes, the NPE has made it even harder to level a Mesmer. I think I managed to get the new one to level 35 or so normally then I was so fed up that I used all my Tomes from PvP and got him to 70 – the rest was done in EoTM where it’s pretty safe to zerg. The needed traits were bought to get a decent shatter build up and running – by now all skills are unlocked via normal play.

Astral Projections.7320:

Djinn.9245:

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Flumek.9043:

Hello.
Just found this thread.

• THE PVP DAILY IS BIGCATKITTEN MESSED UP BLEEEEH. PLEASE REMOVE IT. NOW. NO FANCY WORDS, NOW !!

It does more harm than good. Few poeple try a new class while most already bad pvers in pvp now go on a class theyre not familiar with, while matchmaking still puts them quite high.
MY MESMER GUILDIE IS LAUGHING KILLING THIEVES ON THIEF DAILY DAYS FOR SAKE.

I apologize for the rudeness.

Well in my opinion, players who joins solo or team PvP with a class they have never played are pretty dumb in the first place. So in short, it is not the daily fault it is the players who are stupid enough to join solo or team arenas when they are in need of practice in Hotjoin.

I don’t do PvP: is there a tutorial? Players see these tasks in their Dailies window so they want to try them – are they directed as to the best way to start doing PvP?

Nope. No tutorial, just panels and buttons to click on.

Lol. I was so noob the first time I did a PvP daily I got in one and couldn’t move. I was freaking out, trying to move, dodge, anything, expecting any second that someone would come over to kill me. Then I figured out it was observation only. I have no idea now which one that was, team maybe.

I knew from reading the forums that hotjoin, whichever and whatever the heck that was, was the one I wanted. I eventually figured out how to do it, but no tutorial. I was hitting panels and buttons trying to figure out what did what and how to set up PvP gear.

This!

They understood new players had a problem with thegame mechanics. They decied to do something about it … but did they add guided tours? An ingame help system? Noooo – they went the easy way – hiding content from new players and introducing it bit by bit in a “look now or you missed the explanation” fashion …

There used to be a nice commercial over here. The board of a fictional bank sat together and decided they want to be as successful as the bank the ad was for. One of them suggested they could just put a few flags in their offices which the employees could wave to make the customers feel better. Another suggested they could actually push their own service to the level of the advertised bank. After some people nodded careful approval the manager who propsed this then said “OK, we need 3.500 offices countrywide, 24/7 internet and phone banking, 0% giro ….” when she was interrupted by “Er, we’ll do the flag thing, I guess”.

ANet opted for the flags as well …

Maxakari.5298:

PvP Rank point daily this one is easy. find a group thats good and join if you aren’t, or join a match on the group already winning. or do an unranked match and get them even if you lose.

It’s even easier as the PvP experiance vials you get from completing PvP dailies count as well – so get your player kill/point capper/defender and quaff the vials from those reward chests … and you’r rank point/track advance daily is completed.

Science.6709:

I like the new dailies. They add diversity in the way they’re completed and through the rewards gained.

The only thing I’d recommend is buffing the zone events. Mobs die too fast, even the champs. By the time an event is called out map chat, it’s almost done.

That’s the one thing I wouldn’t like to see them do. See – in newbie zones group making should be encouraged – i.e. content should be easier when you’re in a group. And the game is build this way – stuff that is hard to solo at low levels becomes easy (!) when in a group. Fiddling with upscaling would probably hurt more than it does good. They should, instead, offer those events either not map- but region-specific which should make less players appear on a map …

Filaha.1678:

Anyandrell.6238:

And once again we get shoved in a lvl 1 area (!!!) to do events – Metrica province – and AGAIN fractals. So Anet can say goodbye to any new player who started today and made an Asura as first character.

You’re assuming a new player will be more concerned with getting events done than exploration, and hearts and vistas and such don’t count for the daily, so people aren’t farming those.

Additionally, you’re assuming that someone will be immediately turned off of the game because they see activity, when it could be more of a reason for them to stick around because they see the game is still active with lots of people running around.

You shouldn’t assume you know how every player will feel about anything.

A new player won’t know about heart quests, vistas and whatnot thanks to the new NPE – another highly questionable change they brought to the game.

As for new player experience … there was a lot of negative talk in Metrica when I did my dailies there, so new players didn’t probably get the best impression of the game if they did read the chat …

In case you want to know the gory details:

(1) players venting steam because they saw an event pop up, ran there and … came too late already

(2) players who followed an event ping from chat and … arrived to late

(3) players who were not happy that people camped events, knew them by heart in round 2 and insta-killed monsters before they even spawned

(4) frustrated players who chased from insta-melting mob to insta-melting mob and couldn’t score an xp giving hit and came out empty

I finally took mercy on the poor souls, waited till Parnna’s event chain was up and pinged that in chat. This event runs for a long time, produces endless amounts of Skritt and has a follow up event through the portal as well, so I assume no-one came up dry from that one.

Subdue.5479:

HtFde.3856:

Subdue.5479:

HtFde.3856:

Metallus.7690:

Mhm yeah, allright, you know what you are talking about, <10% crit chance

Try it with a class that actually has to work for crit to be high Oh – and – if you want that balance to be “true to a level of that player” – please use a level 6 char We were, after all, not discussing how downleveling WORKS but how someone wants it to be – i.e. no difference between a level 6 and a downleveled 80. Now go make a level 6, give him all the +crit you can get and then check your numbers again.

This is pretty funny. You’re talking about the effectiveness of your build when downleveled to 6 in a newbie zone. Does your build really even matter when you’re running around in a zone designed for people with no traits at all anyway?

Let’s use some common sense please.

It would be fun to have users read threads or post sequence before they jump in. The original line was some user wanted downleveled players to be exactly like new players of that level. And now go make a level 6 Mesmer and see how much fun that class is to play at such a low level … and that user wanted every level 80 to be set back to that stage where every monster takes ages to kill …

I’d like for you to point me to a place in the game where a regular mob takes “ages” to kill for an appropriately leveled character.

Take a Mesmer and go bash at high lifepoint mobs, veterans even. Mesmers are no fun at low levels – most monsters ignore your illusions, you cannot create illusions while you dodge, you can’t make yourself count for shattering … it’s pretty frustrating below level 40 …

Subdue.5479:

HtFde.3856:

Metallus.7690:

Mhm yeah, allright, you know what you are talking about, <10% crit chance

Try it with a class that actually has to work for crit to be high Oh – and – if you want that balance to be “true to a level of that player” – please use a level 6 char We were, after all, not discussing how downleveling WORKS but how someone wants it to be – i.e. no difference between a level 6 and a downleveled 80. Now go make a level 6, give him all the +crit you can get and then check your numbers again.

This is pretty funny. You’re talking about the effectiveness of your build when downleveled to 6 in a newbie zone. Does your build really even matter when you’re running around in a zone designed for people with no traits at all anyway?

Let’s use some common sense please.

It would be fun to have users read threads or post sequence before they jump in. The original line was some user wanted downleveled players to be exactly like new players of that level. And now go make a level 6 Mesmer and see how much fun that class is to play at such a low level … and that user wanted every level 80 to be set back to that stage where every monster takes ages to kill …

Metallus.7690:

Mhm yeah, allright, you know what you are talking about, <10% crit chance

Try it with a class that actually has to work for crit to be high Oh – and – if you want that balance to be “true to a level of that player” – please use a level 6 char We were, after all, not discussing how downleveling WORKS but how someone wants it to be – i.e. no difference between a level 6 and a downleveled 80. Now go make a level 6, give him all the +crit you can get and then check your numbers again.

Carighan.6758:

I don’t see what the problem would be. What does it matter whether you’re lvl80 fighting a lvl80 or lvl5 fighting a lvl5 if the level-scaling works well? Should be the exact same thing, no? Exact same personal difficulty, no?
(That’s assuming scaling is fixed, obviously right now downleveled stuff is vastly easier)

Do you play the game? I kind of wonder …. do you know what a build is?

Downleveling destroys builds – just in case you never noticed. Running a phalanx warrior … good luck with the lowered crit chance. And you want to lower it even more because if you run berserker in a low level zone which only has +strength you’d lose out entirely on the +crit +crit damage if we’d do downleveling your way.

So … remove every trait that is benefitting from crits because your crit chance would be … oh … like < 10%.

Downleveling was ANets attempt of solving the common “deserted low level zones” problem every MMO has – no other MMO I played has this mechanism. It didn’t work … most high level players champ train in Frostgorge or Cursed Shore and only foragers/gatherers are really in the lower level zones (because requiring T3,T4 and T5 materials for gear is yet another attempt from ANet to force players into the low level zones).

I am frequently levelling new Characters (building an Asura army) and I can tell you … if my level 80 mesmer would take as long in a level 25 zone as my level 25 meser does … I would switch to another game …

Carighan.6758:

HtFde.3856:

Well, that’s impossible without rendering 100+ gold equipment useless in 90+% of the zones. Your superior sigil of fire being downgraded to a minor or major one in zones < level 60?

And why not?
That’s the whole point of downleveling, is it not? To make a lvl80 as strong (or weak) as a level X. You’ll already have an advantage due to traits/skillslots (this could be made up by underscaling stats), so why is it so bad if your gear works like lvl15 gear?

Because the game has too few endgame zones, that’s why. Parts (!) of Frostgorge, Southsun, Dry Top, Silverwastes, Cursed Shore, Parts of Malchor … that’s for sure not enough content for, say, ascended equipment you have to grind months for.

If you’d have downlevelled 80s who’ll have to hack at a level 5 grawl for 2 minutes before it flips over you can be sure that a lot of players will go like … thank you and bb.

Just because you obviously enjoy self-flagellation doesn’t mean others will.

Olvendred.3027:

HtFde.3856:

AdaephonDelat.3890:

You can kill guards in WvW from level 2. Choice is there you’re just choosing not to use it.

I’d love to see you kill a guard with a level 2 char … 1 … 1 … 1 … 1 … 1 … 1 … well, one thing it’ll teach … evading.

That was… really easy, actually

I never doubted it wouldn’t (although with a melee char it might be a tad more challenging) – it’s just gonna take a long time … and – depending on your matchup – you might hear an “Ahem …” from behind you …

Vayne.8563:

Oh noes. I have to teleport and mine 4 things before I being playing?

Yes, it’s tragic.

That’s a bit of an over-simplification.

Instead of playing my sub-80 whatever to finally get to level 80 and get my dailies I have to (a) check what the dailies are (b) pick a level 80 char (most of the time) and teleport to that area and © put the xp scrolls in the bank so that after being done I can (d) get my sub-80, telport to the bank, use the XP scrolls and then I can start playing …

The new system is way faster but it requires you to stop what you intended to do, do the dailies as required (at a much faster rate) and then get on with what you wanted to do …

It also differs what type of daily (and reward chest!!) you’re after:

PvP – usually 2 dailies require you to play a specific class. It’s ok when you do that in a farm arena but in real PvP you’re a liability with a class you’re not used to playing and it makes for terrible team setups at time

WvW – they’re ok but they should make higher structures fulfill lower structure requirements so that when you capture a keep or SM you’d fulfill “capture a tower” and when you capture SM you should also fulfill “capture a keep”. It’s kinda crazy that after an 1 1/2 hour battle you finally stand in SM and stilll have to get the tower for the daily – especially since the next 2h will be running defense in SM … (ok, part of the defense will probably be taking Anza and Durios to get their trebs down so that’s ok …)

PvE … hast the most choices to offer and such a meagre list of dailies. I’d be perfectly happy (!) with the new system if they’d just change zones to regions. So instead of – put your pick to 4 metal nodes in Queensdale – put your pick to 4 metal nodes in Kryta. Happy ..

AdaephonDelat.3890:

You can kill guards in WvW from level 2. Choice is there you’re just choosing not to use it.

I’d love to see you kill a guard with a level 2 char … 1 … 1 … 1 … 1 … 1 … 1 … well, one thing it’ll teach … evading.

Subdue.5479:

People seem to throw the word “forced” around on this thread. For a lot of people, the daily changes amount to more freedom and greater rewards.

Er … less effort maybe if your main objective is to just get the dailies but for people who actually prefer to play the game (not play for the dailies) and who are used to the dailies just being completed while you play … the term “forced” is perfectly right.

I can mine 100 ore nodes, chop down entire forests and uproot every veggy available and still not get the daily because I am doing it where I need it (like, say, an area with platinum and iron and soft wood – as I run out of those fastest) but instead ANet wants me to mine copper in Queensdale …

Freedom? Our definitons seem to differ …

Carighan.6758:

Given the existent systems (downscaling and event-scaling) it should not matter whether there’s 20 or 100 people in the zone doing events. And whether they’re lvl15 or lvl80 downscaled to lvl15.

But it does. Significantly.

And that needs to change.

Well, that’s impossible without rendering 100+ gold equipment useless in 90+% of the zones. Your superior sigil of fire being downgraded to a minor or major one in zones < level 60? Even if you are in a level 60+ zone – which new level 60 player has the cash for the superior sigil? Your +a +b +c armor being downgraded to +a in low level zones and have a downscaled as it happens today? Lose all traits you worked long and hard for which are technically not available at that level?

It’s a nice idea how you could downlevel and I bet it would lose ANet about 80% of their player base … instantly.

X T D.6458:

Pets are essentially useless outside small team/solo stuff.

While I agree that they’re more of an asset in small scale/team/solo stuff they do have their uses in bigger fights. Just set them to defensive so that they’ll stick with you and use ones that remove conditions from you and your backline or fear/interrupt enemies who come to close or to prevent nearby stomping.