Guild Wars 2

If you’re over 5,000 range away from Portal Entre when you try to use Portal Exeunt it will still play the visual effect you won’t be able to interact with the portal.

In the April 19th update we’re forcing some options by default in spectator mode. Check the list and let me know if what you’re seeing makes sense:

A handful of options are now forced in spectator mode:
Free Camera: ON
Camera Shake: OFF
Disable Area of Effect Rings: ON
Show Ally Names: ON
Show Enemy Names: ON
Show All NPC Names: ON
Show Simple Condition Floaters: OFF

Note: necro minions, mesmer clones, and pets shouldn’t have visible nameplates.

Nabbo.2845:

Josh Davis.6015:

We’ll look into this.

Could Mace 3 block more than just one attack before it triggers? With the current amount of things flying around it’s entirely useless as a defense mechanism. Or at least give it a duration (.75-1 sec block) with the ability to trigger a counter attack while it’s still casting

I agree that it could some love. We’ve already got it on our list for investigation.

We’ll look into this.

Hey folks,

Just wanted to chime in to say that we have seen the various rev bug threads floating around, and we’ll be shipping a good number of fixes with the next balance update. I can’t promise everything will get fixed, but it will be progress.

The trait is actually working as intended (25% chance to apply torment), but the tooltip is incredibly inaccurate.

That said, I don’t think it’s GM worthy with a 15s ICD. How does 10s sound?

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

it also doesnt remove immob when traited.

After the remake I would defo class it as a mvoement skill.

I’ve got fixes in for making Stomp work with Warrior’s Sprint and to make it function as a blast finisher. Should be out for the next balance update.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

When will anet realize, that amulets are not the (main) issue?

As mentioned in the OP, there will be a few balance changes coming next week as well, but runes/sigils/amulets are one of the things the PvP team can change on our own without impacting the rest of the game. To be clear: the PvP team, just like fractals/raids/wvw/etc, does not handle profession balance – there is a separate team for that.

Salamander.2504:

Thanks for the comms, Gaile, we definitely appreciate it. Any update on when Season 3 starts? We’re all dying to know.

Next week.

Car Crashed fielded an ineligible player during their April 18, 2016 Pro League matches against The Civilized Gentlemen. According to our logs, the person playing as “Sam” was not the owner of the account, but was instead “Frostball”, a member of Vermillion. This violates rules set forth in the ESL Guild Wars 2 Pro League Rulebook as well as the Guild Wars 2 User Agreement. Frostball and all Car Crashed members that played on April 18 will be banned from ArenaNet-sponsored competitive events effective today through the end of the 2016 season, at which point each individual’s eligibility will be revisited.

All match-ups against Car Crashed will be changed to a 2-0 score in favor of the opposing team for weeks 1 through 7.

Affected Players:
Car Crashed

• Posi
• Sam
• Nag Nag
• Super
• Blackjack

Vermillion

• Frostball

Relevant Rules:

ESL Guild Wars 2 Pro League Rules

• 1.2.7. A participant may only play for one organization at the same time in any ESL Pro League, Intel Extreme Masters, ESL Pro Series, or ESL Amateur series.
• 1.2.9. Players must utilize their own account for use in the ESL Pro League

Guild Wars 2 User Agreement

• 9b. Each Account may only be used by one person. If a minor has been allowed access to an Account under Section 9© below, only that minor may use the Account thereafter. Except as provided in Section 9© below, You may not make any assignment or transfer of rights, obligations or liabilities related to this agreement and any attempt by You to do so is null and void.

https://competitive.guildwars2.com/en/news/competitive-ruling-car-crashed-and-vermillion

Hi Argi,

The matter at hand is between your team and ESL, and as such should be routed through their communication channels. These forums are not frequented by ESL.

That said, I am looking into the situation personally and look forward to getting to the bottom of this.

Some of our community organizers have shown interest in running it – and I’d certainly like to see it happen again this summer. The reward boxes from the event need to be reworked a bit before ToL4, mostly to adjust for a new single-day format.

DeathStorm is Unreal.5217:

Snip

That’s cool to hear – thanks for the reply!

Rym.1469:

Dear Papa Grouch,

What’s up with Stronghold? Any plans for it? Updates (besides new champions), fixes? Maybe start some official feedback thread for it. It’s sad to see new game mode being, more or less, dead in Legendary division. It’s been some time since last major updates (that were made back in Beta Weekends I think) and I haven’t seen any mention of this new game mode in Mike O’Brien’s posts, just in AMA that new map is eventually coming, if I remember correctly.

It’s sad to see a new game mode that has potential dropping so low in interest due to no fixes that during official ESL Stronghold tournament no ESL admin even bothers to show up.

Stronghold definitely isn’t going anywhere, but our priority right now is conquest – both old and new.

I looked into this and the thread is in the process of getting reinstated.

Agemnon.4608:

Snip.

RE: DotaCoach -> that’s a pretty slick website – thanks for sending it over. I’ve seen some initiatives like this run on our forums in the past. I’ll mull it over and see if there’s something a bit more structured we could do.

RE: Balance -> Contrary to popular belief, the PvP team (or wvw, fractals, raids, etc) doesn’t actually handle profession balance. There’s an entirely separate team dedicated to handling balance for all core areas of the game (appropriately named the Balance team). The PvP team (and the other aforementioned teams and more) gives regular feedback on balance issues, but the balance team is ultimately in charge of maintaining the design vision across the game.

For reference, the PvP team is focused on infrastructure -> PvP Leagues and maps, for example.

Re: visibility -> agreed!

Edit: heading home for the evening. Will check back tomorrow.

Hi Frands,

I haven’t had much time to spend on the forums as of late and as a result I’ve unfortunately been mostly mum on these types of threads. Since many of you are fresh faces and didn’t visit the forums back when I used to frequent more often, I’ll reintroduce myself (in tl;dr format), and after that we’ll get down into the nitty gritty.

I’ve been at ArenaNet for a little under 3 years. Prior to that, I was a PvP fan just like yourselves. I ran multiple GW2 PvP-specific podcasts, hosted GW2Guru’s State of the Game (wow, that’s old), managed some of the earliest tournaments such as Curse’s Masters of the Mists, and casted dozens of other events (including the first ESL tournament and the 2013 Pax Invitational). Little known fact – in the early days I even played on Team Paradigm NA with Phantaram as well as a number of other teams. I was offered a job at ArenaNet in 2013, and after moving around to a few different teams I ended up on the marketing team as a Brand Manager. My time isn’t dedicated entirely to the PvP (I work with a number of other dev teams), but I am for all intents and purposes the “commissioner” of Pro League and most other events that we’ve run in the past.

Ok, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s address the OP’s question → “200k on pros, why?”

Competitive play is something we’ve always been a fan of at ArenaNet – you could say that it’s a part of the company’s DNA, and it’s something we’re committed to supporting just like any other part of our game. The PvP team has been working hard to take PvP from where it was at launch to where it is today (seriously, think about it) and the marketing team has been keen on supporting them. Together we grew the active player-base for PvP by 135% last year – and that’s pretty awesome. After all, things like matchmaking quality and queue times gets better the more people that you have. It’s more or less my job to try to figure out how to replicate that growth as much as possible, and after looking at all the options available for the marketing team, we decided to go down an admittedly riskier path and dedicate some of our budget towards the Pro League initiative. I’ll add that most of Pro League’s costs were funded out of our paid media budget which fuels the advertising banners you’ve probably seen displayed on a variety of websites (or maybe you don’t, because it’s 2016 and you use ad-blockers, which is why initiatives like this are so important!).

There’s certainly a unique opportunity for growth here. We get to talk about our game in new interesting ways with an entirely new group of gamers – some of which may never had been interested in playing MMOs previously. It’s not often that you get to do that.

I think the main takeaway is that Pro League in no way takes away from development for any other aspects of the game (but I can understand how that assumption could be made), but the upside here is that when any part of the game grows – the entire game benefits. We’re not trying to make GW2 into a PvP MMO – it’s just one of the many facets of the game that we all love and want to see be even more successful.

Anyways, I’ll keep an eye on the thread for questions over the next few days, so feel free to AMA!

The WvW team is making the changes to reset time and have to put it into maintenance mode to do so. See updates here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Friday-Match-Resets-Starting-March-25th/first#post6054910

Added Never Lucky 2v2 Tournament (NA) and ESL 2v2 Tournament (EU). These events are open to all.

Up to date as of 3/20/2016.

Captains, please check your emails for an update. If you haven’t received anything please check with your other team members first and then feel free to contact me at pvpcommunity@arena.net.

If you’re not sure if your team has successfully signed up for the event and you’re listed above, please contact me and we can discuss late registration.

Hi all,

Due to a scheduling conflict, the Challenger Cup will now be taking place on Sunday, March 6, 2016 for both Europe and North America. My sincere apologies for the late notice.

• The European Cup will begin at 9am Pacific (17:00 GMT).
• The North American Cup will begin at 4pm Pacific.

I will be reaching out to team captains next week with additional details.

Due to the fact that I’m bad at calendars and will be on a plane tomorrow when the registration cut-off occurs, I’m extending the sign-up deadline to February 22 at 12pm Pacific.

Updated EU teams list.

The top teams from the Season One Guild Challenger League are cordially invited to enter into the Pro League Challenger Cup, with the top three teams from the event gaining entry into the ESL Guild Wars 2 Pro League where they can compete for $200,000 in cash prizes in Season 2.

Overview
The NA and EU Challenger Cups will take place on March 6, 2016 and will be governed by the ESL Guild Wars 2 Pro League rule set, with some changes to format.

Event Format and General Information:

• The Challenger Cup will be executed as a (up to) 16 team double-elimination, best-of-three tournament. Play will continue until the required number of winning teams has been identified. This may vary based on needs.
• Seeds 1-3 in the Cup will be given to the bottom three teams in the previous Pro League season. Seeds 4-16 (13 teams) will be given to the top ranking eligible teams in the Guild Challenger League. In the event that a bottom ranking Pro League team decides to disband or otherwise not compete in Pro League, another slot will be opened up for the Guild Challenger Leaderboard.
• The list of eligible teams below will contain more teams than 13 total teams. Teams outside of the top 13 are encouraged to sign-up for reserve slots in the event that teams ahead of them do not sign-up. Additional teams may be contacted if required.
• The deadline for communicating your intent to participate is February 22, 2016 at 12pm Pacific. Intent will be made known by completing the steps in the “Sign-Up” section below.
• All participants must meet all eligibility requirements of the Pro League to compete (must be over 16 years of age, must reside in the region they wish to compete in, etc). The Pro League rulebook can be found here.

Event Specific Rules:

• Class stacking is prohibited. You must use 5 unique professions per team.
• All ESL Guild Wars 2 Pro League Gameplay, Delay and Forfeit, Conduct, and Eligibility rules will be enforced for this event.
• Teams with inappropriate names must be changed for the Challenger Cup.
• In order to enter into the competition, teams must consist of 2 of 5 members that were listed on the Guild Team at the end of PvP League Season 1 (January 25).
• Players who were on a Pro League team in Season One may compete on a new team.
• Existing Pro League teams must retain a majority of their roster during off-season to retain their spot in Season 2.
• Existing Pro League teams may not disband entirely and reform using a Challenger slot with more than 2 of their prior team’s members.
• Guilds may have multiple teams in the competition, assuming they meet all of the other applicable rules.
• The above rules may be amended before play begins on February 28th.
• Map Rotation: Forest, Foefire, Temple

Sign-Up Details
In order to sign-up, your team must be on the list below and meet all eligibility requirements listed above. Then, the captain of your team must send an email to pvpcommunity@arena.net with the following information:

• Team Name:
• Guild Name:
• Captain’s Contact Email:
• Captain’s In-Game Display Name:
• Team Member #2 In-Game Display Name:
• Team Member #3 In-Game Display Name:
• Team Member #4 In-Game Display Name:
• Team Member #5 In-Game Display Name:
• Does your team meet all eligibility requirements as indicated in the rulebook? Yes/No
• Is your team willing and able to compete in the Challenger Cup on February 28, 2016? Yes/No

The deadline for communicating your intent to participate is February 22, 2016 at 12pm Pacific. Intent will be made known by completing the steps in the “Sign-Up” section below.

North American Guild Challenger List:
1. EzPz Lemon Squeezy (Pro League Challenger)
2. Zero Counterplay (Pro League Challenger)
3. Yung Gods – E-Dream
4. Deixa Os Garoto Brinca Markimdj – You Back in Time
5. Wifi Hut – Best Team North Africa
6. Little Boys Big Men – Ascendancy
7. Addicted To Pips – The Sickest Guild
8. Autism Awareness – Autistic Gaming
9. Elementalist Greg Is Not Ok – The Mist Initiative
10. Best Team North Africa – Best Team North Africa
11. Died From A Bunker Class – Howtobasic
12. Its Whatever – Ermagerd Gerd Wers
13. Hardcore Pvpness – Contemporary Heroes
14. Team Name – Inceptio Nova
15. Live From The Wifi Hut Its – Best Team North Africa
16. Hell Chosun – Dcinside
17. Definitely Not Tryharding – I Radioactive I
18. Wutang Torture Skit – Pvp Heads
19. Ng E Sports – Ng E Sports
20. Pipgasmic – GASM
21. Gazzys Tryout Party – GASM
22. Believe – Plush
23. The Worlds Greatest – Ping Pong Posse
24. Hardcore Casuals – Inceptio Nova
25. Quantum Squad- Timekeepers

European Guild Challenger List:
1. Orange Logo (Pro League Challenger)
2. Chaotic Contingency (Pro League Challenger)
3. Purple Noise (Pro League Challenger)
4. Yola – May The Crash Be With You
5. Rainbows and Esports – Rainbows and Esports
6. Yoda – May the Crash Be With You
7. Evris Pirates – Evris Pirates
8. New Team New Life – Rainbows And Esports
9. Mango Trance – Mango Bay
9. Kant on Est Trois Ou Quatre – Kant Talk
10. Kant on Grind Le Ladder – Kant Talk
11. Anti-Social Dragon Finishers – Anti-Social Dragon Finishers
12. Angelz Of Fantasy – Angelz Of Fantasy
13. SMOrc Weed Everyday – Fear The Crazy
14. Mission Drei – Legenden Der Rosa Hoppelhasen
15. Pizza With Nutella – Pizza With Nutella
16. Team Kanickel – Legenden Der Rosa Hoppelhasen
17. Car Crab – Shellfish
18. Team Two – Visceral Gaming
19. The Fluffer Are Real – Pacification
20. Team Teamteam – Last Phoenix
21. Ripugs – Rest in Pips
22. Jebors is the Kapap – Fear the Crazy
23. Saltmine Ladder – Visceral Gaming
24. Feast for Crows – Beyond the Wall
25. Threehundred Percent Torin – Fear the Crazy
26. Team Name – The Invincible Heroes

If you have any questions on the above, feel free to send an email to pvpcommunity@arena.net. Keep an eye on this thread for updates.

Update: Due to today’s unforeseen server issues, we’re going to delay the delivery of Guild Challenger League rewards until after the January 26th release. We’ll provide an update as soon as we can.

Trig.1483:

Josh Davis.6015:

Trig.1483:

Snip

• 0 Pro League players can be on a Guild Challenger League team.
• Rosters will need to be finalized the week of Feb 22.

mm ok, do we have to remake the team entirely and climb the board again to qualify or if we replace the pro leaguer are we still in the running?

Replace is fine. We’ll be looking at rosters once the season closes.

Trig.1483:

Snip

• 0 Pro League players can be on a Guild Challenger League team.
• Rosters will need to be finalized the week of Feb 22.

The Challenger Cup will take place after the Season One Finals have concluded.

Good morning all,

In case you didn’t catch Evan’s post last week, I just wanted to remind everyone that PvP League Season One (including the Guild Challenger League) will end on January 26 at 00:00 UTC (4pm Pacific on Jan 25). There will be a one hour grace period after 4pm to allow any in-progress matches to complete and then the season will officially end.

UPDATE: Due to today’s server issues, we’re going to delay the delivery of Guild Challenger League rewards until after the January 26th release. Better safe than sorry.

Primordial Legend
Information on the Primordial Legend achievement can be found here.

Challenger Cup
For those of you interested in the Guild Challenger League and the Challenger Cup (the way you make it into Pro League), here’s some clarifications:

• To keep their spots in Pro League, the three bottom ranking teams at the end of the Pro League season will need to compete in the Challenger Cup and earn first, second, or third place.
• The bottom ranking teams in the Pro League will automatically earn the top 1, 2, and 3 seeds in the Cup.
• The Challenger Cup is a 16 team double-elimination tournament.
• Seeds 4-16 will be given to the top 13 teams on the Guild Challenger leaderboard.
• Teams consisting of Pro League players on the Guild Challenger Leaderboard will be discounted and the next eligible team will be contacted for an invite.
• All Pro League region/eligibility rules apply to the Challenger Cup.
• Pro League Season 2 rules will be in effect for the Challenger Cup (no class stacking).

Thanks!

oDe Da Beast.7596:

Mercenary’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

Pls.

Valid concern – it’s the amulet that I’ll be watching the closest. We’re going to give it a shot and if things don’t work out we won’t hesitate to remove it.

WatcherJason.2678:

Kicker.8203:

• Removing bunker amulets is a dream come true! Great job.

Give it week 1 of Season 2 and it will be “This is no fun… I just die in 2 seconds constantly to this <insert burst spec here>, wish I could build more defensive”

That’s a potential risk, but that’s also why we’re putting these changes in weeks before the next PvP League season. If we get an early indication that things aren’t going the way we want them to we’ll have time to make any needed changes.

Bradley.8520:

do i get my money back for buying the runes/amulets?

Any sigil/rune/amulet you purchased you’ll get refunded for. The new amulets we’re adding will be free since we’re removing a number of other core amulets.

Hi all,

We’re planning on making some changes to amulets/sigils/runes available in PvP for the Winter 2016 Update (January 26). Some of these changes will greatly affect the way that PvP is played, so I wanted to take this opportunity to get the changes in front of everyone, discuss the implications as a group, and see where we net out. Most of these changes are easily reversible, so don’t view this as a “forever change”, but rather something we’ll tweak until we get PvP’s gameplay closer to our vision for it. These changes will go out prior to our next season PvP League season, so if we identify a change that isn’t accomplishing our goals we’ll have time to address it before the season begins.

You’ll note that a lot of the changes below are directed at more defensive stat combos/items. Our intent is not to eradicate this type of gameplay, but simply to improve the pace of gameplay overall.

Runes
We’ll be removing the following runes from PvP:

• Rune of Durability
• Rune of Mercy

Sigil Changes:

• Sigil of Demon Summoning: this sigil will no longer be usable in PvP.
  • We already removed a majority of AI summoning sigils/runes in a previous release – we’re just finishing the job.
• Sigil of Energy: the functionality of this Sigil is changing slightly. Instead of granting 50 endurance on weapon swap, Sigil of Energy will instead grant 5 seconds of vigor to the player with the usual 9 second ICD. This change only applies to PvP.

Amulet Changes:

We’ll be adding the following amulets:

Mercenary’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

Sage’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Healing Power
560 Vitality

Paladin’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Precision
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

Mender’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Healing Power
560 Precision
560 Vitality

We’re also removing the following amulets:

• Soldier’s
• Settler’s
• Celestial
• Sentinel

/discuss

PS, gold for purchases runes/amulets will be refunded, and the newly added amulets will be free.

The intended design is that you should receive the achievement for initially entering legendary (1x). We’re still investigating the issue and will update as soon as we can.

The web-based leaderboard did not work with the current league system, so we’ve disabled it for the time being.

AegisFLCL.7623:

Snip.

I’ve thought through the implications of removing cele from PvP and what would happen to elementalist quite a bit, actually. It’s pretty risky. I think elementalist would need a new 4 stat combo to be viable at roughly the same level (maybe something like 1050pow/1050condi/560vit/560healing).

lighter.2708:

and when will this be?

More deets on that tomorrow.

Mysticjedi.6053:

Josh Davis.6015:

Aside from skill adjustments, another way we can adjust balance in PvP is by looking at the runes/sigils/amulets that are available for use through the customization panel.

I would be interested in hearing thoughts (with the high-level goals from the blog in-mind) on adding/removing various sigils/amulets/runes. In general, our goal for PvP is to be faster-paced with a higher-level of lethality than what we’re seeing in S1.

I know we’ve had this conversation a few times before, but it’s always important to have this discussion with the correct context in mind.

It would be nice to be able to customize our amulets instead of being stuck with static amulets. This would open more possibilities for players to make more unique builds. Allow for the amulets to be either 3 stat or 4 stat combos.

More variety in stat combos can definitely be a thing – but I don’t think manual stat allocation is in the cards currently.

/sticky

FJSAMA.2867:

Snip

Worry not, friend – the changes were actually announced in a neutral location (our blog). I spun up the thread in the PvP forums afterwards to start working on getting some more directed feedback on runes/amulets/sigils in PvP.

ronpierce.2760:

Josh Davis.6015:

Aside from skill adjustments, another way we can adjust balance in PvP is by looking at the runes/sigils/amulets that are available for use through the customization panel.

I would be interested in hearing thoughts (with the high-level goals from the blog in-mind) on adding/removing various sigils/amulets/runes. In general, our goal for PvP is to be faster-paced with a higher-level of lethality than what we’re seeing in S1.

I know we’ve had this conversation a few times before, but it’s always important to have this discussion with the correct context in mind.

Just ensure that “faster paced” doesn’t result in spammy aoe/1-shot meta at the same time. Shave some of the active defenses from those who have too many (Chrono) and give them to some who need it more (Necromancer) and keep damage kind of similar and you will see less of those bunkers and more people dying.

Just be careful of over-correcting by “making bunkers less sustainable” and “making damage dealers do more damage” resulting in a hard swing in the other direction. Other than that, it sounds good. :}

Good feedback. Something to keep in mind as we talk through proposals/suggestions, etc, is that while the meta does indeed have a heavy bunker aspect to it, there’s actually a considerable amount of damage going around that is only offset by how prevalent rezzing is. Think about the impact of the normalization of downstate and quickness/slow and how that will affect snowballing.

Also, since I’m getting a lot of messages about this →

Pro League S1 Finals will use the Winter 2016 balance update, not the current.

Aside from skill adjustments, another way we can adjust balance in PvP is by looking at the runes/sigils/amulets that are available for use through the customization panel.

I would be interested in hearing thoughts (with the high-level goals from the blog in-mind) on adding/removing various sigils/amulets/runes. In general, our goal for PvP is to be faster-paced with a higher-level of lethality than what we’re seeing in S1.

I know we’ve had this conversation a few times before, but it’s always important to have this discussion with the correct context in mind.

FYI: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/profession-balance-goals-for-the-winter-2016-update/

Nova Stiker.8396:

Erik what are your plans for balance?

The amount of CC out there is nothing short of ridiculous, people being toss around like ragdolls. The amount of sheer condition spamming is just as bad as the huge amounts of condition removal. There is so much boons out there yet so many of it feels like it has little to no impact.

I was hoping to join the development team myself and redesign a lot of mechanics from the ground up to create a healthy combat system. For fun I challenged myself to redesign combat with a more impactful and with dynamics in mind. I’m reaching 40 pages and I am not even done with 1 class.

You got a lot of work ahead of you.

Erik and the rest of the PvP team focus on the infrastructure that drives PvP (maps, leagues, matchmaking, reward tracks, etc). We have a separate team that handles balance from a more holistic perspective (keeping PvP, WvW, and PvE in mind).

The good news is that we’ll be sharing some of the details of our next balance update with you as soon as next week. Stay tuned.

The title should unlock once you enter legendary. It’s a bug, and is slated to be fixed in our next release.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Oh my God.

Brb, eating my words and my hat.

/15Dwaynas

This is why I only wear hats made of fruit roll-ups.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Upcoming-Balance-Changes-Week-of-December-14-2015

It’s back on Tuesday, December 15.

KyleBradley.4193:

Wow, really?! just remove stealth from the game then. Whats the point of stealth if you can’t use it….

Minions being able to be stealthed is intended. Minions that never come out of stealth even if stealth wears off is not intended.

We have temporarily disabled the Stronghold map “Battle of Champion’s Dusk” due to an unintended interaction between stealth and minions such as doorbreakers. We will provide an update on the situation next week.