Guild Wars 2

DivineBeing.2086:

Kerithlan.1659:

AngryGoodPop.9586:

We actually did kill him once.

I hope that, for the sake of realism, you all /point-ed and /dance-d and /laugh-ed and performed the /sit maneuver upon his corpse, then ran off to the forums to brag about how good you and your server are and how terrible he is.

HAHA! Quoting for the very truth of this!

Double points if he was up-leveled.
Triple points if he was alone in and you were in a zerg.
Quadruple points if your team is losing the current match-up.
Quintuple points if you jumped him while he was getting a skill point or vista.

Shamrocky.5036:

The Winter Wonderland Jumping Puzzle is quite easy and defiantly more toned down from the Halloween JP. Skilled elite jumpers? Love it. Is your spacebar broken? Most of the vistas are rather easy to jump to. It is usually finding where to start the jumping is the challenge for the vistas.

I have a poor connection so whenever I try it the first snowflake is already dissolving by the time I get to it. I sit on loading screens for 20-40 seconds. Being paired up with other players for this puzzle is absolutely crippling for me, especially because it’s timed.

You don’t need to patronize people when you don’t know what their circumstances are. Since you’re going to be that way, I will too and point out that you misspelled definitely (in fact you used the wrong word entirely). Unless for some reason you were stating that the jumping puzzle is rebelliously more toned down than Halloween’s jumping puzzle was, you need to climb down from your high horse.

AngryGoodPop.9586:

We actually did kill him once.

I hope that, for the sake of realism, you all /point-ed and /dance-d and /laugh-ed and performed the /sit maneuver upon his corpse, then ran off to the forums to brag about how good you and your server are and how terrible he is.

Sunspots.9861:

If you find them on your side you will find them fighting just as hard as you for whatever goal you are fighting for, whether it be defense, yak killing, golem rush. I’m sure they get alot of tells though, and one mentioned to me that Anet doesn’t really want them talking much. It might be that he just got so many whispers it was easier to just ignore them and pretend it was against the rules, I dunno. It was fun though, and he helped us kick FA butt that night.

I always send them a quick/simple, “Thanks for showing up and hanging out,” and move along. I know from first-hand experience as a GM in another game that it isn’t fun getting constant questions/complaints, so I try to mix it up a bit for them.

Look at us, all huddled around the ArenaNet tag, prodding the poor person as though they’re a lab rat and demanding some kitten results. Our previous efforts don’t seem to have worked; the subject has retained emotional calm and a polite outward demeanor. Hypothesis: not enough flaming, insults, and questions — try tripling dosage.

Raven Paradox.1860:

You get a very rare exotic or rare… but the rest is “oh great my inventory is full of barbs”.

I wouldn’t mind some mats being dropped more often in there.

Which is a good point, actually: why do humans drop thorns and barbs when I kill them?

Re: loot scaling in PvE: 100% fact. I do my daily quests in low level areas (1-40) specifically to spend an hour or so helping low leveled players out. I get gear appropriate to the zone occasionally and gear in the level 65-80 range often (most is around level 76).

Re: loot in WvW being bad: it’s really not. From players it’s really lame and boring, but you get T6 material drops fairly often from the random monsters. I sometimes swap out one of my rings for a Magic Find one while defending camps just to hit the nearby monsters in between zerg rushes. ~10% MF gave me way more material drops than my buddy that had none on over the course of three days. My only complaint is that some camps are boring as there’s no creatures near them (I’m looking at you Rogue’s Quarry).

style.6173:

Wait noooo. I thought Anet only played <insert qq class of the week>

I’ve seen Anet playing both rangers and necromancers on Tarnished Coast before, which just makes your sarcasm even more delicious. 10/10 A++++++++++++++++

Pvp.2758:

We killed him and he came back. He is under the map and I am recording video now.

If you can catch a guild name, please contact them in-game to sort it out re: removing them from the guild. I’d be willing to help you get in contact with them if you message me in-game. (Edit: Jayne’s contact list will be more helpful/useful than myself, so go there first.)

Otherwise, let’s try to keep this out of match-up topics, regardless of the server(s) involved. Report it to ArenaNet via email at exploits@arena.net and they’ll sort it out.

I know that I (or anyone else) don’t need to lecture you (or anyone else) regarding this, but I’d like to keep posting that email address up there so that those who visit the forums less frequently have it readily available.

Vi Au.8341:

So I just hit 100,000 supply used to build siege. Next tier is 1mil!!!

Looks like Mags Holy Ram will keep mysteriously appearing at supply camps

The guy in your screen shot there (see: Woah Oh Oh Oh) — what’s new kittencat?

I know right now before I post this that the censor is going to filter that to say kittencat which is both hilarious and contextual, and would make Tom Jones shake his head sadly while muttering to himself, “what has become of this world we live in?”

pot.6805:

You guys are awfully vague. Now I’m curious lol

My guess is that it has something to do with the entirety of Sanctum of Rall getting drunk and waking up in the same bed. They just need some time apart to sort everything and figure out who they are anymore and what’s become of their lives. Also I’m sure it has something to do with burning photographs and lab tests.

I mean, when else have you heard people say, “still trying to recover from a terrible decision that happened [the other] night,” and have it not involve alcohol and unmentionables? I’m just saying guys. Just saying.

Plok.6145:

Kerithlan.1659:

I’m completely fine with supply being carried around between maps and even across servers. Supply isn’t difficult to get anyway — just go to any camp on the map (even if you need to flip it first). Supply is an infinite resource.

Since players are unable to deposit their supply into keeps and towers it isn’t as though there’s teams of people granting more or less infinite repairs and siege for defense. Camps constantly spawn new supply for players to use and Dolyaks basically spawn free supply for keeps etc just by reaching the destination unmolested. I like that supply is readily available and all over the place.

I know this post is messy sounding but I don’t feel like putting much effort into it, sorry.

Supply is not infinite. If you had 60 people drain a map, it would be TIME before you got more. That is a finite amount available.

Supply is very much in fact infinite. Unless you have 10-25 people sitting in every camp on the map spamming F until their knuckles develop cartilage tears, there is always supply available.

There’s two supply camps per team in EB, and six per team in borderlands. Either you need 50 people standing around in your camps in EB or you need 150 people in a borderland. If the camps aren’t upgraded or defended then sure supply becomes problematic, but in that case just get one person to solocap your camp (or roll through with a zerg, whatever, I don’t care) and you’re back in business.

You can’t argue that it’s finite because it respawns. You are incapable of preventing it from resupplying itself, and there is more than one place to get it from. If you’re pressured and need it for defense during a siege then it becomes finite as keeps/towers need to be supplied, but from camps themselves it’s like a magical ground spring that allows you to build cannons and magical robots.

The only thing that makes supply remotely finite is camp capacity. Standing around waiting for it is user error, not the game’s fault. It’s not as though there’s one big magical warehouse per team that everyone needs to use.

DivineBeing.2086:

I already made a similar post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/T2-NA-Tarnished-Coast-4AM-12PM-CST-Needed

This thread is suggesting that all players join TC when in reality we need people willing to cover a coverage gaps.

I’m not looking to discredit or defame you or anything like that. I’m just going to say that this topic is older and that I already made quite a contribution to the topic that you linked us to.

Master Blipp was known for his redundancies as well as his redundancies. He often said, “Your first try should never be your last, especially if it succeeded. You can always succeed bigger next time.”

Jeknar.6184:

Jayne.9251:

TC tends not to attack solo players, assuming they’re after a poi or something, unless they attack first.

Unless the TC in question is a Thief…

That’s every thief though, as the profession encourages it. Can’t fault players for playing something how it was designed to be played.

So here’s a tip for people that, like me, aren’t ever going to go into the jumping puzzle.

Four step process.
1. Get a couple of friends together.
2. Everyone create new characters and finish the tutorial.
3. Enter WvW in your own borderland.
4. Map your own borderland.

Home borderlands tend to be the safest and most secure. Grab some supply so that you can repair things as you see them, or so that you can help commanders build siege or whatever’s going on when you’re in the area. You’ll want to be in a small group so that you can get your skill points more easily (one of them requires you to kill something) — you’re going to be in terrible gear with terrible stats, so having 3-5 of you will keep you mobile.

Completely mapping any borderland map grants you some random siege, some badges of honor and some money. Throw the badges and money in the bank, then have everyone drop their siege for others to make use of. Either give it to a commander on the map or give it to someone in your guild. When you’ve done all of that, delete the characters and do it again.

The advantage to doing this over the jumping puzzle is the ability to do it more than once per day. You also have much less fighting to overcome/deal with and less chance of being griefed. The biggest time sink will be running between points, and helping reclaim towers/keeps if they’re taken. If your world controls its own home then you can finish everything within an hour.

If you’re going to spend 4 hours in the jumping puzzle getting kitten off and using portals, then you’ll probably find this to be easier and more rewarding. I’m not happy with the fact that I’m posting this and I’m not proud of myself for sharing it, but until collecting badges is trivialized or the drop rate improves we’re going to keep hearing people kittening about the jumping puzzle or about disconnecting or whatever.

They really just need to give up and turn the jumping puzzle loot into a daily quest reward instead and make everyone happy. Personally I think that badges of honor should have a 100% drop rate from players but hey what do I know.

I’m completely fine with supply being carried around between maps and even across servers. Supply isn’t difficult to get anyway — just go to any camp on the map (even if you need to flip it first). Supply is an infinite resource.

Since players are unable to deposit their supply into keeps and towers it isn’t as though there’s teams of people granting more or less infinite repairs and siege for defense. Camps constantly spawn new supply for players to use and Dolyaks basically spawn free supply for keeps etc just by reaching the destination unmolested. I like that supply is readily available and all over the place.

I know this post is messy sounding but I don’t feel like putting much effort into it, sorry.

Alpaca.9410:

Esoteric.5490:

Who is the Choo Human Elementalist Commander? We keep seeing each other on the field and bowing/pointing/saluting and it’s pretty funny. They recognize me on sight, apparently, because they knew it was me even with no commander tag! Anyway, good fun to be had

As Fray and Mishi had said, that would be me all right :P I had done some makeover recently on my toon so you might have difficulties recognizing her , but then again, Christia Dawnheart is still able to hunt me down together with Stef in the battlefield so I take it that my disguise didn’t work >_>

Anyway it was great fun to play with you guys when you’re around SoR borderlands and looking forward to seeing your silver haired warrior ramming something again :P

This would get so awkward so fast if Esoteric’s character was not a silver haired warrior.

It might be worthwhile to have a mace/shield or scepter/shield set handy, at least until you get used to everything a bit more. Having shield #5 available to push a thief back and mess up their burst combo will, if nothing else, help you learn to predict when things are going to happen. Flinging a thief back will tell you loud and clear that you predicted their movements correctly. The mace can also block an attack for you.

I’m not saying that’s necessarily the best way or even the only way to train yourself, but having visual cues has always helped me. Perhaps it’ll help you too.

Edit:
IMHO the dolyak set isn’t worth the 6-piece bonus. It’s just 30hp per second and it doesn’t scale with your healing power. I’ve had a lot of luck running a full shout bar with soldier runes, pack runes and Dwayna runes. I settled on runes of the pack for the extra boon spam and swiftness duration — if you’re using AH, this will heal you quite a bit.

Also while Judge’s Intervention is a very useful skill, I swapped it out for a full shout bar. I’ve found that it’s more trouble than it’s worth, except for when I’m using hammer and staff builds. I use “Hold The Line!” + “Stand Your Ground!” + “Retreat!” mostly. I used to run “Save Yourselves!” until I realized my other shouts were more useful in team play.

That’s just my experience/style though, hopefully you’ll grow into your own soon.

Thieves can certainly defeat guardians. The problem is that most burst builds are predictable and prevalent, and so a guardian knows when to pop Virtue of Courage or hit v, or when to teleport away to a rabbit or something.

I used to lose to thieves a lot until I learned how they work. Now the only builds I lose to fairly consistently are attrition builds, as they’re harder to predict. That also might just be a l2p issue on my part.

TheGuy, my post was comparing spamming Cluster Bomb multiple times for multiple activations within a short period of time to having Mighty Blow available more frequently and as a natural/organic part of hammer guardian gameplay. Your post is irrelevant because it isn’t what I was discussing.

We were discussing team utility between the thief short bow and the guardian hammer, and we were discussing bursting all of your initiative for 4-5 activations once every so often versus the hammer activating things once consistently.

Cluster Bomb cannot be activated 4-5 times in a row unless the thief is standing inside of or directly next to the combo field, as the flight time of the projectile simply does not allow it to be so. In order for Cluster Bomb to activate naturally/organically, it will be slower than a guardian with the hammer as the guardian will already be in melee and will already be inside of the combo field.

Mighty Blow can be used point blank to hit a foe point blank without the guardian moving, or it can be utilized to allow for the guardian to hop ~300 units. This is infinitely faster than a projectile moving between 300-1200 units as the leap animation is simply quicker than the projectile’s speed.

The thief shortbow is a good weapon that can be used for party support just as effectively as the guardian hammer can be, but in the odd gimmicky scenarios you’ve presented for discussion it becomes nothing more than a burst stick. This renders the thief almost useless for 3-5 seconds. The hammer guardian, meanwhile, does not become less effective when he/she performs similar tasks.

It isn’t misinformation — it’s fact. Hitting 2-5 burst finishers in a short amount of time (using your Geyser example, 2 seconds) is incredibly situational, reduces the thief’s efficiency for a short while, places the thief in an unfavorable field position, and does not provide any significant long-term advantage over the thief playing normally.

I’ve been discussing that. If you want to argue that this is somehow incorrect then be my guest, but please do so without patronizing me as you’ve done here.

Hackuuna.4085:

Rhyis.7058:

LittleMissEvil.9416:

No.
They are a great thing.

Sure its annoying when we are on the winning side, because it takes upgraded towers quickly and you can’t paint a borderland in just one color and rule it…
But for the losing server, that lost everything on the map its a great thing. When you are playing against a really big/strong server and have no chance of taking a single tower back because you are outmanned as hell the event is a needed help to get at least some points and a little bit of fun back.

This would be fine if the breakout events only happened inside your own home borderland and eternal borderlands, but that isn’t how it is.

A server with a 300k point lead can breakout into the losing servers borderlands, making it even more difficult for the losing server to defend it’s own borderland.

Why does the meta insist that you hold your entire borderland? When there used to be orbs on the map people would flock to other borderlands constantly trying to get a foothold and an orb. South west tower is probably the only tower that poses much of any danger to a map and even then the danger stops at west keep, which can be retaken by the defenders easily with garrison trebs.

I don’t really see how this hurts a losing team. In the old system the opponents initial towers would be fully fortified, fully supplied, fully sieged, and would discourage attacking with anything less than a large force assuming there was at least one eye out for ninja squads. A large force there means a large force not at your home borderland, which means the dominating server would outnumber you anyway on your home and start taking things.

The meta doesn’t insist that you hold your entire borderland. The meta insists that you earn points, and you do that by holding keeps, towers, and camps. It’s easiest to rally pugs in Lion’s Arch to your own borderland than it is to get them motivated to invade somewhere else.

Holding your own borderland is a solid 145 ppt and is easier to do than holding an enemy borderland is. The breakout event shuffling colors around doesn’t do anything but permanently weaken the south towers. Players don’t want to invest into them. That is horrible and detrimental, and serves to damage W3 more than being outmanned does.

If you’re outmanned then you can at least capture camps to build siege and blitz something. You only need about 10 people to successfully ninja a weakened or non-upgraded tower. Nothing about this event is necessary or good. It’s an unwanted patch over a hole that never existed.

I just want to share a quick story to help highlight why this NPC contributes nothing and is unnecessary.

Yesterday myself and 6 other pugs were alone in an enemy borderland. We did not have 10 people to start the event, so we just went to the nearest tower and dropped a single superior flame ram. The six of us were able to successfully claim the non-upgraded and undefended tower in about 8 minutes. As no players showed up and as the enemy never showed up to check on us, we took the tower with minimal effort.

I understand that this is anecdotal. However it highlights a mentality/attitude that’s started to develop specifically because of this event. Players don’t want to upgrade the south towers because their investment gets blown away by a magical charr. There’s nothing for the defending team to invest in, more or less, because it isn’t user error that strips such investment away.

Because people have been ignoring upgrades on these towers it’s gotten to the point where a tiny group with a single superior ram can take them. If nothing else, that’s a huge problem in and of itself.

Breakout events remove the incentive to fortify and defend towers. That hurts the overall gameplay more than being outmanned does.

Edit:
Basically, and in most cases, the breakout events have just caused each borderland to have three colors instead of one. The points really don’t change. All this does is shuffle things around a bit.

“Hey they just took Bluelake, what should we do?”
“Go retake it, and send 10 people over to the blue borderland to take Redbriar with the commander. That’ll show them.”

/shrug

Kind of useless and annoying if you ask me.

Auesis.7301:

Kerithlan.1659:

Auesis.7301:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Choking_Gas
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cluster_Bomb

Spammable Area Weakness combo. Entire dungeons trivialised.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skale_Venom_
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Judgment
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Savage_Leap
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heartseeker
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightning_Leap

/shrug …?

Leap finishers do the same thing? You can buy it for PvE, so any AoE can do it?

Not seeing how this is special.

The fact that it has no special requirement eg. crits, hits a plethora of targets for a good duration per shot, has no noticable cooldowns and is a completely internal combo and thus needs no co-operation to pull off? Leap finishers also apply to a single target or to the targets that your attack reaches, nowhere near as much coverage as the Area Blast. The poison field is also incredibly spammable by itself and can be exploited by anybody for the Blast Area Weakness, not just you, and you can place it at a whim.

There is simply no better way to spread weakness quickly and efficiently. Nothing even comes close. Try the Dredge fractal at 20+ both with and without a Thief doing this – the effects are immediately obvious.

Ah see there’s the problem, I don’t consider it special because I think Fractals are boring as kitten and thus don’t play them.

Basically, here is the best recruitment message we could give:

Do you live anywhere other than the Americas?
Do you want to feel loved and appreciated?
Do you need to have other players point you out and praise your work?
Do you like to feel like a rock star?

Then join Tarnished Coast, the server that’s in Tier 2 despite having a weak NA-overnight. We’re not leaving this tier without a fight, and just by joining and contributing you are directly improving the overall fighting power of this server.

We’re not a band wagon server, and you won’t instantly win by joining us. However, pretty much everyone will love you if you’re competent.

Auesis.7301:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Choking_Gas
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cluster_Bomb

Spammable Area Weakness combo. Entire dungeons trivialised.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skale_Venom_
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Judgment
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Savage_Leap
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heartseeker
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightning_Leap

/shrug …?

Leap finishers do the same thing? You can buy it for PvE, so any AoE can do it?

Not seeing how this is special.

My problem with using Cluster Bomb like that is that you’re limiting your other options. Where the guardian is able to make use of more fields more often via Mighty Blow, the thief would fall behind. Sure the thief might get more activations out of spamming Cluster Bomb, but that comes at a cost not present with the guardian hammer.

Specifically, you could spam Cluster Bomb point blank in such a way. In fact I do so quite a bit when grinding down weak, low-level mobs in PvE. The problem is that doing so drains a significant portion of my initiative, which overall limits what I’m able to do when I’m done with my spam.

Now granted if you hit it twice you’re not missing out with a 6 initiative cost, that’s only 40-50% of your total bar. However in order to do that successfully you need to be in a position that isn’t always favorable. If you’re trying to layer Might from a Fire field or Stealth from a Smoke field, then you’re probably in no danger at least 50% of the time. When it comes down to layering blind or weakness etc though you find yourself in a rough spot. You have to pretty much be on top of your opponent for this to be reasonable for multiple applications for some fields to get maximum use.

With the guardian’s hammer you’re going to find yourself in a more favorable position more often. You can use Mighty Blow to reposition yourself into the field much more quickly than the thief can, for example. This means that when the stars don’t align and you’re not in the center of the field when it goes down, the guardian has the advantage. The guardian also has the advantage of wanting to be in melee range and has the luxury of standing around for a few seconds if needed, both of which aren’t always shared by the thief. Mighty Blow is also a normal part of the hammer guardian’s gameplay, so there’s no need to resort to spam gimmicks in order to pull the combo off.

Basically what I’m getting at is that while the Cluster Bomb can be more useful in the immediate, that alone doesn’t make it the best burst finisher in the game. You have to consider the whole package. We’ll do a short comparison list to help highlight this.

Cluster Bomb:
+1 Can create more blast finishers in a shorter span of time
+1 Is on a popular and desirable weapon that is already utilized in group play
-1 Requires the thief to be in the combo field already in order to activate it in such a way
-1 Easier to mismanage the thief’s resources, which may negatively affect overall effectiveness
-1 Requires initiative to use, which requires the thief to invest more time/planning into setting up
-1 Has the potential to place the thief at risk, which either means the finisher spam is unavailable, unsafe or undesirable some of the time
Total: -2

Mighty Blow:
+1 Is on a popular and desirable weapon that is already utilized in group play
+1 Has a 5s cooldown, allowing it to be used often and consistently over the course of a fight
+1 Can reposition the guardian into the combo field if necessary (~0.5 sec microleap)
+1 Is on a melee weapon, which encourages its use on top of enemies
-1 It’s harder to combo with the hammer’s built-in combo field when compared to Cluster Bomb and the thief’s shortbow
-1 Generates blast finishers less frequently than Cluster Bomb potentially can
Total: +2

The difference between the two finishers is that Mighty Blow benefits from positioning, speed, and consistency. While you can make Cluster Bomb trigger five fields in 3 seconds, it isn’t wise (especially in prolonged fights). Cluster Bomb like the thief itself is a burst finisher. The guardian’s Mighty Blow doesn’t need to worry about resources, or positioning, or what it’s going to do next — the player just presses #2 every 5 seconds and fireworks go off.

If you want to focus on water combo fields, then sure the thief might be able to get a couple extra heals out of Geyser or Healing Rain when compared to the guardian. However if you pair the guardian and thief up with a ranger the thief’s burst is almost irrelevant.

Sure the thief can potentially spam more blast finishers in 15 seconds than the guardian can, but it’s at the cost of pretty much every other aspect of the thief profession and its utility. That makes it inferior to the guardian, who can comfortably get 2-3 blast finishers out of Healing Spring, and without sacrificing any aspect of his/her gameplay choices.

Also warriors just need 5 trait points in strength and they cause a blast finisher whenever they dodge roll, so like, that’s comparative burst when Geyser is used (and is more likely to be properly utilized).

TheGuy.3568:

In the game. Because of the instant access to blast finisher it might be the best group/combo play weapon of them all.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mighty_Blow
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Earthshaker
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Arcing_Arrow
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragon%27s_Tooth

These all function more or less in the same way as shortbow #2. They’re blast finishers with a spammable quality. In my personal opinion Mighty Blow and the guardian hammer are more useful for group/combo play (especially since Mighty Blow is on a 5 second cooldown, which is infinitely more spammable than Cluster Bomb).

Ben Mason.8641:

I cant speak for other timezones but when i play eu evenings with my guild u guys out number us around 3-1 sometimes and u still die most of the time, Especially TC u guys got crazy numbers but loads of sub 80s. I meen today we held SoR’s keep in eb for hours.

I tend to play on alts on Thursday/Friday, because I mean why not right? Unless the score is within 15k points the chances of positions changing within 24 hours is slim.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

And yeah, I agree that a boost to Zealot’s Defense would be nice, since right now it’s basically pointless to use except to proc on-crit effects, or get a bit of extra burn from Justice.

Reflects projectiles. Doesn’t block or absorb or destroy them, reflects them.

Makes Southsun Cove into an easy/lazy farm when paired with the shield.

I don’t tend to have a problem with this. Each weapon can adequately handle range.

Scepter: is ranged
Staff: is mid range
Sword: #2 is a teleport, #3 is a ranged attack
Greatsword: #3 is a gap closer, #5 is a pull
Hammer: #2 is a small leap (about 200-300 range), #3 is a snare, #5 is a cage
Focus: #4 is ranged
Shield: #4 is ranged
Torch: #4 is ranged, #5 is mid range
Spear: is ranged
Trident: is ranged

The only weapon that either isn’t ranged or doesn’t have a way to close the gap is the mace, which I don’t use. I use literally every other weapon except the mace, mostly because I don’t play a symbol build.

What a non-constructive topic this appears to be. I doubt that most of the people checking in for score updates care about which server can talk themselves up the most, or about Blackgate inviting people to transfer for whatever bizarre reason.

I doubt that my unbuffed crit chance % will be above 25%.

BG/SoR: What’s up with not letting the level 17 player get up to the skritt skill point in BGBL the past hour? It’s Thursday — surely your zerg doesn’t need to jump the upleveled player /wave-ing at you when the week’s basically over.

What was I going to do, tell them how much supply was in the camp I couldn’t possibly take?

spacelion.9865:

Renewed focus roots you into place

Uh no it doesn’t lol. I use it on the move all of the time. It’s great to use when busting through an enemy zerg to defend the tower they’re hitting. You can’t use it while dodging and that’s about it.

JaredKincade.9761:

Is this what you guys do in tier 3? End it in some cool way?

Pshh, BG ends it with doing pve, jump puzzles and saving up gold because we’re so far ahead.

TC was ~120k points ahead for three weeks. We still held parades and parties on Thursdays. I don’t see how it’s a big deal/bad thing lol. Why not join us?

Iohanna.4863:

For the convenience of readers:

2:00AM to 10:00AM Pacific
3:00AM to 11:00AM Mountain
4:00AM to 12:00PM Central
5:00AM to 1:00PM Eastern

I’m using UTC/Standard times for all of these as it is way easier to communicate. If Daylight Savings Time is currently in effect in your region, add 1 hour to these times. I’d rather give a set, unchanging time bracket and allow you guys to finish the conversions for yourselves than confuse you/myself with DST.

If you’re unsure of whether or not DST is in effect where you live, then don’t worry too much about it — DST just adds 1 hour so you won’t be too far off looking at these times at face value.

For the convenience of North Americans:
Hawaii: 12:00AM to 8:00AM Honolulu/HST
Alaska: 1:00AM to 9:00AM Juneau/AKST
US/CA: 2:00AM to 10:00AM Server Time (Seattle/Vancouver)/PST
US/CA/MX: 3:00AM to 11:00AM Denver/Edmonton/Chihuahua/MST
US/CA/MX: 4:00AM to 12:00AM Chicago/Winnipeg/Mexico City/CST
US/CA: 5:00AM to 1:00PM Washington, D.C./Ottawa/EST
Nova Scotia: 6:00AM to 2:00PM Halifax/AST

For the convenience of South Americans:
Peru: 5:00AM to 1:00PM Lima/PET
Chile: 6:00AM to 2:00PM Santiago/CLT
Argentina: 7:00AM to 3:00PM Buenos Aires/ART
Brazil: 7:00AM to 3:00PM Brasilia/BRT

For the convenience of Africans:
Morocco: 10:00AM to 6:00PM Casablanca/WET
Nigeria: 11:00AM to 7:00PM Lagos/WAT
South Africa: 12:00PM to 8:00PM Cape Town/SAT
Egypt: 12:00PM to 8:00 PM Cairo/EET

For the convenience of Europeans:
UK: 10:00AM to 6:00PM London/UTC
Central Europe: 11:00AM to 7:00PM Berlin/Oslo/CET
Eastern Europe: 12:00PM to 8:00 PM Kiev/Istanbul/EET
Belarus: 1:00PM to 9:00PM Minsk/FET
Russia: 2:00PM to 10:00PM Moscow/MSK

For the convenience of Asians:
Iran: 1:30PM to 9:30PM Tehran/IRST
India: 3:30PM to 11:30PM New Delhi/IST
South Korea: 7:00PM to 1:00AM Seoul/KST
Japan: 7:00PM to 1:00AM Tokyo/JST
China: 8:00PM to 2:00AM Beijing/CST

For the convenience of Oceanics:
Indonesia: 5:00PM to 1:00AM Jakarta/WIT
Philippines: 6:00PM to 2:00AM Manila/PHT
Australia: 8:00PM to 4:00AM Canberra/EST
New Zealand: 10:00PM to 6:00AM Wellington/NZST

LiuliRenai.3928:

When it comes to condition duration vs damage I try to find the middle ground that will offer the most damage over time. I’m using 3 krait runes, 3 afflicted runes, and 2 agony sigils (yes they stack, tested in mists) for a 50% duration. This makes my pistol bleeds last 6 secs, my death blossom bleeds last 15 secs, while still ticking for 110 damage. On a build with 20 points in deadly arts I’d use +30% condition duration food to push the +% duration to +100% (since pistol bleed ticks only increase every +25% of condition duration).

It’s less of a worry with the duration of weakness and poison, as even with +50% duration they should last long enough to keep bosses perma-weaknessed and perma-poisoned. Asuming you spread the venoms to a couple more people.

Hey thanks, I’ll give something like this a go. Regarding the sigils and since I’m looking primarily at D/P and Shortbow (which shouldn’t be causing much if any bleeding), would you recommend Debility, Paralyzation or Venom more, or something like Hydromancy or Leeching?

I’ll play around with rune sets and see what I can come up with to boost poison or healing instead of bleeding.

Kerithlan.1659:

Regarding smoke fields and switching to the shortbow: I’m not worried about that. Right now on my guardian I sometimes play a greatsword/hammer set specifically for the Banish > Leap of Faith combo (knockback -> leap, fun but not really special or competitive). It’s really not very difficult -- you can begin using skills before the bar has completely finished its skill-switch animation. Pressing 5 ` 2 in rapid succession should be non-issue, especially when I have a full four seconds to make use of the combo field.

I played for a good 5-6 hours today in PvE and tried this combo out in multiple situations/scenarios. It worked incredibly well against things charging at me in melee and at range it was viable but less important. I did some of the pack bull escort quests and found that with proper initiative management I was able to maintain stealth on myself and the bull about 50% of the time, which is roughly what I was hoping for.

Having allies with blast finishers makes it obviously much easier to pull off, but solo play is still rewarded by this.

Lymain.6723:

In my experience, it can be difficult/annoying to rely on heal procs from Withdraw because the heal (and thus the proc) triggers at the end of the roll. I quickly replaced my Centaur runes after one night of WvW for that reason.

The main issue with Venomous Aura is the very short range. It can be worth it for the immobilize/chill in small group WvW (or sPvP), but I don’t feel the benefit is even close to being worth the cost for PvE. Note that the lifesteal does not appear to share, which is a shame.

I’m looking at either Withdraw or the signet for my healing skill and originally opted for Withdraw because of the condition cleansing. Between the two skills, which one is generally considered more useful? I’m picking it for the 15s cooldown anyway, so either way I’m just looking for the more useful option.

If the dodge component is problematic then I’ll probably want the signet, right? I’m not worried about Hide in Shadows (even though it’s the more powerful single-shot heal) because I feel I’ll have enough passive healing/regen to make it matter less.

In terms of Leeching Venoms not working with Venomous Aura, that is either a new change/silent nerf, or it’s a misunderstanding. It’s on the wiki as working, so I’ll grab a friend and test it out with them in the Mists when I get a chance. I’ll be sure to report back here for you when I do so.

I know that Venomous Aura’s radius is pretty terrible, but it’s still something that I’d like to give a chance.

phaneo.4597:

Given the fact that both servers have faced us in the past, TC isn’t exactly a new server for them.

That’s irrelevant to what I was saying — when I say ‘new opponent’ I don’t mean a totally new server. I mean a new challenger in the current tier. I’m speaking purely from a points/rankings perspective. When servers move through the tiers it doesn’t matter much what the actual server is, but rather who they faced the week immediately prior — at least in terms of initial point jumps. We’re gaining points this week not because we’re wizards Harry, but rather because Blackgate is not able to improve upon their victory over us last week (as we didn’t face Blackgate last week).

Am I excited to be in T2? Yes. Am I excited to see how well TC can hold up in this tier? Yes. The problem is that this week’s points can’t accurately gauge how justified my excitement is. I have to wait another 7-8 days, lol.

Darek.1836:

The people of FC have long realized that defending doesn’t matter against the zerg servers, that’s why they don’t want to defend with you.

Ah but see, if you keep 1-3 people in each tower with the following siege, then they’ll hold the tower long enough for reinforcements to arrive:
2x Catapult
3x Arrow Cart
2x Ballista

Place the Ballistae and one Arrow Cart in the tower’s lord room, keep one Catapult ready for countering enemy Catapult fire, keep the other catapult within range of the door to knock people off of flame rams, and keep the other two Arrow Carts within range of the door to burn away enemy flame rams and catapults.

Holding a tower against a zerg boils down to how well you can keep the enemy’s siege down, not how well you can keep the enemy zerg down. Between a tower’s oil drums, cannons, mortars, player-built siege and ability for players to move to different siege devices as required, it’s not very hard to hold most towers, if not permanently then at least for a solid 10-15 minutes (which is enough for reinforcements to wipe the enemy zerg).

I’m not exactly the best player in the world, but in my personal experience this seems to be the best generic setup for defense. When you guys take a tower, have your zerg/offensive force place a few pieces of siege for you, then have 3-4 guys stay behind to run dolyaks, build the siege, store up supply, etc. If it gets too expensive, then designate someone to buy all of the upgrades and have the offensive force mail them 50c-1s from each person each time they take a tower or camp or sentry.

Hopefully this is stuff that you guys are already doing, but if not then I hope it helps you guys out. Either way the motto we should be taking as a community is that we want every player and every server to do better and improve, so even if you don’t take my advice that’s the spirit I’m posting in.

insanemaniac.2456:

our pugs in EB tend to have a strange obsession with the castle… but apart from that the only trouble i have gathering defenders is when we have 5 people on our border.

Don’t feel bad, that’s how most servers act. They don’t realize that while Stonemist gives you 35 ppt and allows you a strategic control advantage over the center of the map, it’s a real royal pain in the kitten to hold onto if you can’t manage your resources well. It’s very easy to pressure whoever controls SMC, and if they don’t have enough people to hold it then their third is up for grabs.

It’s basically a death trap if your server is unprepared to have it. I like it when other servers have it because I can get those 35 points from controlling a keep and a couple of camps on their borderland, which is much easier than dealing with constant defense of SMC.

phaneo.4597:

Are we losing the matchup? Yes. Are we gaining ratings? OH HELL YES.

Don’t get too excited about that. History has shown that a server generally is expected to gain rating during its first week in a tier. We’ll probably either gain a small positive next week or dip anywhere from 0.1 to 20 points.

This week’s scoring doesn’t matter for two important reasons:
1. Blackgate has a new opponent, which means they can’t go as strongly positive this week as they’re no longer beating Isle of Janthir. This usually results in the top server in the tier tanking in points. TC experienced this when CD and YB swapped places in Tier 3.

2. It’s the holiday, and so population coverage has been shuffled around. We won’t get a realistic representation of how well Blackgate and Sanctum of Rall face up against Tarnished Coast until at least this coming Tuesday (when Blackgate is back in action after the weekend).

Due to these two factors, our score this week does nothing but confirm that we’ll be here next week. It doesn’t accurately represent our ability to play in the tier. We won’t understand how well we’re doing until this time next week when things are more normalized.

So it’s now Thursday — what’s the plans? We know who is most likely to win (BG) and who is most likely to take second (SoR). Shall we wind down the week with some sort of multi-server holiday celebration (giving that this week doesn’t exactly matter as much as next week will), or should we keep at each others’ throats for the next 24 hours?

I like Tome of Courage for escorting dolyaks in WvW. It lasts just long enough to get them through the gate when the enemy comes rolling along. Tome of Courage is also fairly good for tower defense/healing from inside of a tower up on the walls. It gives your allies a little bit of extra time/breathing room to push back the enemy.

I like Renewed Focus quite a bit. It allows me to pop aegis and a heal to boost my allies without losing them for myself at least once every fight, which is great if someone’s getting focused.

I haven’t used Tome of Wrath extensively enough to have a real opinion.

Cameron.2315:

Its called learn how to misdirect them if you are worried about them relaying what way you’re going etc

You can’t really misdirect wall health, supply count, etc.

Kerithlan.1659:

LiuliRenai.3928:

First thing is, get rid of healing power. Your best healing by far comes from Leeching Venoms which were changed to scale on power.

The wiki said that Leeching Venoms stacked with healing power — did this get changed to power recently, or where are we (or rather, where am I) getting mixed up?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Leeching-Venoms/first#post1085230

After doing a quick test in the Mists, the healing component of Leeching Venoms does not appear to interact with the Power stat, while it does appear to benefit from Healing Power.

Thanks BobbyT, I didn’t think of going to the Mists.

Here are my stats before equipping the amulets:
- 1116 Power
- 465 Healing Power

Full runes of Dwayna and Shadow Arts 30 is where my Healing Power is from.

I healed 418 health per venom application with no amulet equipped. My power increased to 2039 and I healed for 418 health per venom application with a Berserker’s Amulet equipped. My Healing Power increased to 1034 and I healed for 532 per venom application with a Shaman’s Amulet equipped.

Therefore, if Leeching Venoms scales with Power rather than Healing Power it is not associated with the healing component. Therefore, for the purposes of my question, the wiki has the correct information.

The wiki says that this trait stacks with Healing Power. The patch notes from November 15th say that Leeching Venoms, “now scales based on the thief’s power.”

I am interested in figuring out how the healing effect works. Do you gain more healing benefit from healing power, or from power? I can’t find a clear answer.

ANCHORS.

You can get an anchor skin from Weyandt’s Revenge in Lion’s Arch (9800 karma at the end of the puzzle), or by purchasing the exotic hammer The Briny Deep.

If anyone knows of any other anchor skins please let me know because it’s seriously my favorite weapon skin type in the game.

Edit:
Pirate Sledge: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/c/c4/Pirate_Sledge.jpg
The Briny Deep: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/5/50/The_Briny_Deep.jpg (your character swings this with one hand)

You might have some luck visiting www.yaksbend.com — this is the community site for the Yak’s Bend server. I’m not sure that the Guild forum is necessarily the best place to get their attention, so why not take a look over there and see what’s up?

LiuliRenai.3928:

I’m actually having a lot of fun on my thief in dungeons. I switch a few traits and utilities and viola, a support build.

First thing is, get rid of healing power. Your best healing by far comes from Leeching Venoms which were changed to scale on power. I recommend Carrion equipment (condition damage/power/vitality) if you focus on condition damage (which is easier if you go for venom share), or the power/toughness/vitality equipment from Orr temples mixed with Knight set (toughness/power/precision) if you go direct damage.

While not my spec, I’d recommend trying 20/0/30/0/20, which allows you to have venom share, leeching venoms, condition removal on stealth, lower venom cooldwon by 20%, grant party might, fury and vigor on steal, apply weakness whenever you poison and apply poison on steal. The trick to this build is not to try to heal your friends to much (you can only heal them so much), but instead to debuff your foes with weakness, poison, blinds etc. The build I use is 0/0/30/20/20 which is less supportive but has more survivability.

For weapons if you go condition damage you can use D/D since AoE bleeds are great in dungeons with alt set of P/P to spam blinds at bosses. If you go direct damage then shortbow is the way to go.

When it comes to utilities take either blinding powder or shadow refuge (Shadow refuge has extra healing, but blinding powder can be used while you are stunned to lose aggro fast and has a shorter cooldown). Either of those are great to use on downed allies when ressing them. The next two utilities that work great in dungeons are the venom that applies weakness/vulnerability, and the one that applies poison. With the build above the poison venom will also stack a lot of weakness and can help keep bosses perma-weaknessed. Be sure to be close to allies on low health when applying the venoms since the healing from leeching venom is quite good.

For Elite use Basilisk Venom – it’s shareable, it stacks, and it’s one of the few CCs that works on dungeon bosses. Run near a friend before applying it to stack extra duration of Boss being unable to react.

This build is almost an inverse of guardian and elementalist support builds, as it relies more on debuffing opponents than on buffing allies.

Most of this is in the build I linked in my post, so it’s cool to see that I’m moving in the right direction. The wiki said that Leeching Venoms stacked with healing power — did this get changed to power recently, or where are we (or rather, where am I) getting mixed up?

After playing a guardian for a couple of months I’m eager to try out a debuff support build (as you’ve stated) — in your experience, how important is condition damage versus condition duration? Is stacking condition damage worthwhile when only bleeding and poison will benefit from it? Or is condition duration preferred for the extended vulnerability/poison/weakness debuff duration?

Regarding smoke fields and switching to the shortbow: I’m not worried about that. Right now on my guardian I sometimes play a greatsword/hammer set specifically for the Banish > Leap of Faith combo (knockback → leap, fun but not really special or competitive). It’s really not very difficult -- you can begin using skills before the bar has completely finished its skill-switch animation. Pressing 5 ` 2 in rapid succession should be non-issue, especially when I have a full four seconds to make use of the combo field.