Guild Wars 2

Hey Jasher! I enjoyed reading your post – you seem like a decent human being! Don’t get me wrong, I love skilled players as much as the next champ slayer, but the “decent human being” thing can be harder to find…
Anyways, I am part of a small guild of players that seem to do pretty much as you describe: We love pvp tournaments, but ultimately, we are fairly casual. We play to win, but when we don’t, we try to learn from the experience instead of raging.
As far as being active… as I said before, we are small. But there’s usually at least 2 of us looking for a team during prime time; often more. Hey, a 4+pug team is better than no team, right (also, we do try to communicate with our pugs, many times with good results)?
It’s funny that you should mention a “strong command of the English language” – I would like to reply with a resounding “yes!” to that, but I have to mention: our guild leader speaks English as a second language, and occasionally it shows. He’s a nice guy though, so we forgive him.
Now as for skill…I think the best thing to do is, if you’re interested, for you to join us for a few matches to really see if we’re right for you and you’re right for us. There’s not any pressure in our guild; you’d be free to be a part-timer, or simply leave if things don’t work out.
I’m making this post on the forums to give other like-minded players the chance to join our guild as well; but if you specifically (and your friend as well) would like to join us, then you can whisper or mail me in-game, and I’ll send an invite your way.

LowestTruth.2635:

Torvic.8256:

Kitcat.1739:

Ah, I see. The effect would be positive, because:
Survivors of this auditory onslaught would be forced underground for fear of a second occurrence; all races (assuming any Sylvari remain) would have to adapt to a subterranean lifestyle. This, of course, is the precursor to how we will eventually confront and defeat the Elder dragon Primordius.
Effect: positive. Thank you, screaming plants.

It would be quite ironic, though, if the underground moss then joined in on the screaming.

I believe the fact that it is a bed of moss means they are in perpetual slumber. The only sound would not be screaming, but snoring.

Precisely. In this case, only the RPers would be effected; the rest of us would be fine.

Interesting. I doubt there will ever be any hard science on the matter, but it’s fun to speculate! I think it is true that certain types of people can be attracted to certain professions in this game.
However, I’m not sure the forums are the best place to evaluate a class community. Take the thief forums, for instance: they are pretty volatile, but if you look through enough of them, you’ll see that many of the problems come from NON-thief players posting in the threads. This causes a lot of misinformation to float around, and in turn, the thief players get defensive.

Elmuerto.9840:

I got called a noob heartseeking spammer today. Which was impressive with my sword, pistol and shortbow.

Here’s another one for you: My team took a rookie with us into tpvp for a few matches; the guy spent most of his time typing complaints in team chat, and he definitely had a chip on his shoulder about heartseeker.

The last match we go into, he starts complaining about heartseeker spamming….thing is, I look at the teams list and THERE’S NOT EVEN A THIEF ON THE OTHER TEAM.

With the amount of “Leaderboard!” thread clutter going on right now, you might actually get away with this thread.

Oh, and I agree with you, too.

A friend and I went into a tourny the other day and got stomped; seriously, our team score went:
10
0
0
0
0
But then my friend does something brilliant: he invited all of the ENEMY players to our party! We only got one to join, but things went significantly uphill from there, and we gathered more good players along the way. The point is, there a things you can do to have a better tourny experience that have nothing to do with the questionable MMR.

tPvP and WvW take different mindsets to play well. That said….I’m just imagining a WvW pro wandering into his first tournament… LOL. He’d get his care-bear handed back to him so fast.

Lots of interesting things going on this chapter! The sylvari ghost was certainly…sad/creepy/intriguing. Ah, I see the Easter reference – nice.

I am so glad that Laurel feels the need to rescue Liath; I felt so bad for him, and I was half afraid she would forget about him! Who knows, maybe he will be allowed to just grow his little garden in peace? …no? Too much to ask for? :P

And our innocent sylvari is now a murderer….hmmm. Hmm. Hmmmmmmmmm….bit of a big change for a character; I think you’re handling it well, though. Not callous or vengeful yet, but traumatized. I admit I like this as an opportunity to see Laurel grow as a person a little more – there are times when I have difficulty trying to figure out what she’s thinking/feeling.

Swamps are delightfully eerie in this game, aren’t they? I love that I can recognize the places in your story from the game – without being outright told place names. Good job on the descriptions!

Rescue mission: Hooo!

The best advice I ever got:
1) Open your inventory
2) Hit the little tool button on the right side of your inventory screen
3) Click “Deposit all collectibles”
4) You’re welcome

It may take you awhile to realize the full value of the profound advice I have just given you – in the meantime: welcome to the game!

Saw a human running around the other day named: “Human Story Achievement”

Is this former Sword/Pistol thief gonna have to slap a kitten?

Kittens are adorable; don’t make me wanna slap no kitten

Is that what the NPC voiced by Sam Regal has been trying to talk Moto into? Becuase that would make sense…

I second the short bow + sword/pistol suggestion. It’s especially useful for your mob problem. Pistol Whip does damage to multiple targets, and you can always just save your initiative to blind your enemies, auto attack, blind enemies, auto attack*….you get the idea.
*Don’t fight dredge with this strategy.

Briix.6872:

Venom Share build does, yeah. You could also just go Forever Alone and bring Thieve’s Guild, Ogre runes and Ambush and share venoms within your own little army. Not super viable, but can be very fun to try.

That would be funny. We’ll call it the elusive minion thief. “Elusive” because it sits in the respawn point, waiting for thieves guild on CD.
:p Nah, I jest; it would be fun to try. Thanks for the idea.

And I can’t follow where this potential argument about dodging is going, but I just want to point out that it’s a moot point anyway, because you don’t have to dodge PW, you can just walk out of it. It’s kinda funny to see, actually. Opponent: “OH MY WHAT IS HITTING M- oh wait, never mind.” Yeah, it’s just some asura testing out her anti-gravity device, which apparently requires her to swing a sword frantically in front of her face. Nothing to see here.

Briix.6872:

The thing with players moving out of the pistol whip, isn’t that the same issue sword mesmers are facing? All mesmers still use sword though.
I really don’t see it as a problem, because: It still offers a lot of CC and it’s limited how far away a player can move if that player still wants to stay on the point. When that’s said, you should never go for S/P if you want to play burst. It’s for CC and venoms.

Doesn’t the venom build need good team communication to really shine, though? Sadly, if that’s the case, I don’t think that’d be the build for me. I might look into the D/P thief…or just make some ugly hybrid whose only advantage is that nobody knows what it is I’m trying to do. :P

Kryshade.6075:

You guys are crazy if you think S/P isn’t a viable build. I play strictly high level tPvP and I can assure you a well played S/P thief will destroy any other build on tournament play. Most thieves run d/p or d/d. S/P is a fantastic counter to that as the dazed,lockdowns and teleports will destroy most backstabbing thieves. After the haste nerf not so much unfortunately but saying that s/p isn’t viable is just noobish.

What is your view on pistol whip now? The problem with PW has always been that people can just walk right out of it – and of course, the answer to that problem was haste. Now though, it seems that even the HoTM NPCs don’t have the time to wait around while I PW them at 50% speed.
So, do you simply not rely on PW at all when you play? I agree that the teleports and dazes are great, but even then, staying alive long enough to do damage is tricky for me. Avoiding damage and then timing the burst right was my playstlye before; I’m thinking that may have to change, but I’d still like to try to play the S/P thief. So, all powerful S/P one, got any advice for me?

Shukran.4851:

Yesterday I was testing pw against npcs and someone saw me and gave me compliments (I hope) because I was playing smart instead of brainless as cg d / d thieves.
shame that the players are not as stupid as the npc

I was there, doing the exact same thing with my pistol whip yesterday to see how things would play: turns out, even the NPCs aren’t dumb enough to sit there while I pistol whip them 50% slower :/
Sword thieves are fun; I hope some creative player can find a way to still make them viable.

A lot of light armor is fairly ornate…maybe they could just give female asura the option to wear light armor regardless of profession? At the very least, it would get my poor baby out of that trench coat she’s been stuck in…

Feminine does NOT equal skimpy

Just thought I’d throw that up here.

Authority.6145:

My vote goes to Sword/Pistol.

Is this sarcasm? ….or maybe you’re not talking about pvp?
I genuinely would like to know; I run S/P in tpvp, and after the haste nerf, I’m feeling confused and lonely….

No.
As others have said, this nerf needed to happen in conjunction with other changes to compensate for it. As it is, all this straight-up nerf did was kill some builds.

Sifu.6527:

They reduced all haste by 50%. This means, your attack speed is now 50% instead of 100% faster.

Cries My poor Sword/Pistol thief…it wasn’t even that good to begin with. Whyyyyyy?!

Same thing happened to Sword/Pistol thieves. Not sure where this leaves me….I’ll try to work around it, but I may end up rolling one of those stealth/burst thieves that everyone loves so much. :/

Ah, I see. The effect would be positive, because:
Survivors of this auditory onslaught would be forced underground for fear of a second occurrence; all races (assuming any Sylvari remain) would have to adapt to a subterranean lifestyle. This, of course, is the precursor to how we will eventually confront and defeat the Elder dragon Primordius.
Effect: positive. Thank you, screaming plants.

He look’s awesome. Whoever did the wallpaper did a really great job, too. Looking at it makes me wanna go raid a village or something. Raaaaah!

Azure Prower.8701:

I find the Norn Racial skills are most interesting to me. How ever Norn are cumbersome, large and dumb. I simply cannot bear to play one.

Agreed. You’d have to be stark raven mad to be able to wolf down norn culture.

I almost got all the animal puns in there, but then I realized that there’ s no leopard.

If you trust your teamates, have them call target on any enemy players near where they want you to treb. That giant red target is visible across the entire map, and it can help you get a sense for how the enemy players are moving.

Also, if you’re just playing for the lols: have a buddy pick one player on the enemy team to call target on every time. Then, harass that player EVERYWHERE he goes with treb hits. Excuse this behavior by pretending that you are practicing with the treb, which y’know, technically you are…

Yasha.5963:

To me 5vs5 hotjoin is not that much different to solo queue tourney. Still see people group capping and not really knowing what they are doing when I solo queue.

But I understand what Davinci is saying, it is kind of annoying reading posts demanding nerfs or saying the game sux because thief is so OP etc from players with 10 hours spvp experience and/or who haven’t seen the game from various perspectives (premade/ casual groups/ solo queue / 8vs8 / 5vs5 hotjoin) or played various classes in spvp.

One problem is that the game is skill based, so your uber gear can’t carry you, a good healer can’t carry you (no healers); you just have to get good (and run in a premade if you want to be good at winning tourneys). That takes more than 10hrs and rabbit rank.

Feedback from players that still don’t know most of the intricacies of the game is not appropriate for basing class balance on-although it is important to know what new players feel like.

I say as a rough guideline give it 100hrs spvp and playing across all spvp variants before demanding nerfs/buffs. Come to the forums and ask for help when getting beaten before that.

I think this post does a very nice job of summing things up, and all without trying to offend players who are still learning. Thumbs up!

Jski.6180:

Its always in wvw when ppl getting a bit too mindless and jump off a cliff when the person leading had a fall skill.

If all your friends jumped off a cliff…

I am really enjoying your story so far! The guild wars universe has such potential as a writer’s playground; it’s so nice to see someone who can craft a good story! You’ve also managed to hit a sweet spot for me with this latest chapter – I find the strange relationship between the Asura and Sylvari races very interesting.

Although, in my own travels around Tyria, I’ve happened to spot a red-crystal golem or two, and it’s never a good sign…I noticed your other subtle hints about this as well. Methinks Malomedies could have been a bit more specific in his teachings…
The rather clueless sylvari crowd was entertaining

One thing that jarred me a little when I was reading (and believe me, I wouldn’t bother critiquing if I didn’t think your story was worth the effort)- This line: “The joy in their faces was lost on the asura, however. Her mouth tightened to a thin line…”
Because “asura” is both singular and plural, I had a moment where I had to figure out who “her” was. At first, I thought you meant the group of asura that was there. Small thing, but probably an easy fix if you’re into post-editing.
Another note (and maybe this is a personal preference), be careful with the dog. Animal companions in writing are tricky; I’ve seen many authors OVERwrite the animal in a attempt to endear them to the reader, but it winds up having the opposite effect. Displaying the animal’s actions and emotions is also a tough task, because it can lead to scenes that feel a bit… juvenile. Perhaps less is more? I wish I could give you some real advice about this, but the truth is, if there are any hard and fast rules about writing animal companions, then I don’t know them :/

I’ve been working on my own GW “novel” lately, so I had to laugh when I saw this on your website: “You got X wrong in the lore!” Haha, even with a “creative liberties” attitude, doesn’t it just haunt you sometimes that someone’s going to jump out and shout “wrong Wrong WRONG!” :P

Anyway, great work on this! I look forward to reading more.
(Disclaimer I leave on all my reviews: If you never hear from me again, it’s not you. No, your story doesn’t suddenly suck. If I review you once, it means your a good writer – if I never review you again, it means I’m a bad reviewer.)

I always hated the story of Plumbo.

Well, Sebrent… you just combined the idea of “press one button block everything – then do massive damage” with the idea of “high skill.” I can’t speak for everyone, but I just don’t think we’re on the same page.

In my opinion, playing with stealth does require skill. It’s a mind game that, in my experience, the top players already know how to play/counter very well.
Everyone saying that a thief may not have to press but a few buttons in order to kill something is right, though. Being able to play a thief well depends on lot more than pressing the buttons.

I run a full GC burst thief, and I’m used to throwing myself into the middle of things and either killing or being killed in a matter of seconds (note: I don’t necessarily endorse this play style).
So the other day in spvp, I had just capped a node when up runs an enemy guardian. I get out of his way and throw some damage at him from the sidelines….not even a dent. So then he throws some pixie dust in my face with his little staff…yeah. Anyway, I hop around him a little bit while he sits there like a rock, and there’s that awkward moment when both of us realize this battle thing just ain’t happening. So I left :P I’m sure he was happy.

But absolutely nothing is more awkward (yet nail-biting) than a battle between two stealth thieves. LOL

I play a female asura, theif, and I have questions about two lines that maybe somebody could help me with:

1) A while back in pvp hotjoin, I called out thieves guild and my character (or possibly one of the thieves) said a line I’d never heard before; something about more numbers assuring victory? I can’t remember, but I call thieves guild all the time and I’ve only heard the line once.

2) PvP tournamnet (idk, maybe that makes a difference?): I captured the keep node and my character said something strange…something about defending a castle? It was weird…

Anyway, if anyone else has heard those lines, I’d love to know what she was saying!

Larynx.2453:

Useful tip: 8 people on a point does not make the point cap faster, nor does using shadow refuge on these 8 people.

LOL
Last night in hotjoin, a teammate and I were juuuuust about to capture a point when I misfired and put a shadow refuge smack-dab on top of us. I have no way of knowing if my buddy was aware of how shadow refuge works…but if he was, I just know he was cursing my name right then! It’s been a few hours; I can laugh about it now.