Guild Wars 2

There’s a difference between the bad voice acting in cutscenes, and the things your character says in combat. I’m not going to defend the voice acting quality of the cutscenes. They is what they is.

Now the stuff you yell during combat, that’s a whole ‘nother story. Those are GUI substitutes. When your character says, "I’m bleeding!" it’s because he’s bleeding. When he goes, “I feel 6 feet tall!”, (one of my favs) you just got might. It’s one of those things ANet did to keep you looking at gameplay and not UI. Of course, it’s not a complete substitute for glancing at your buffs and debuffs, but if you learn to use those cues, you’ll be staying focused on the action much more. Yeah, they get a little old, but they’re incredibly useful.

SWTOR bored the hell out of me. It was too grindy in the WoW sense. It’s pvp wasn’t very engaging and resulted in a lot of hutball. It was not the MMO for me. So, after I had decided that it wasn’t the game for me, I did one of two things.

1) I continued to play the game occasionally, and spent a lot of time on their forums asking the devs to change the game and insulting their sensibilities.

OR

2) I found a different game to play.

You choose a response!

I know why I left. I played the kitten out of it for 3 months. Then, I took a break. Then, I missed WvW and came back. That’s the magic of no subs.

Let’s be honest. The lead up to this game made it sound like the second coming of christ… relative to MMO’s. How many people just knew it was “the next big thing” and decided to hop in and see what it was all about. How many people just thought that ANet was just building a better WoW? That’s what happened to my launch guild. A good chunk of the membership headed back to grindier pastures. Some people really want a regimented raid system of grind after grind. And that’s cool. It’s also exactly why I ditched WoW when I got to 60 and headed to GW. As stated above by someone else, the population is evening out now. The folks who are into this game are plentiful enough, and sticking around enough. Most of the folks who just wanna raid or whatever have taken off by now. Even DCUO has a robust community, it’s all about catering to YOUR specific crowd, and not pretending you need 10,000,000 subs to be a “real MMO”.

When I hear people complaining about how easy this game, my only response is to tell you to stop playing just the easy parts of the game. Outsmarting and outplaying other human being will always be a rewarding endeavor, whether you like small scale, personal spvp situations, or large-scale wvw situations, there’s something here to challenge your self with. The Shatterer gets old quick, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do.

And if that’s not your bag, no hard feelings. I hear Rift just went f2p.

Nevermind, I just found this. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/P-P-questions-new-guy-inside

If you played the original Guild Wars, Foefire would probably be the most iconic map, as it closely mirrors the standard GvG maps from that game. And Guild Wars was all about GvG.

That being said, thanks for all the pointers, but I still wanna know if P/P is viable. I see Body Shot got upped to 5 stacks of vulnerability, so that seems nice. Granted, tomorrow I’ll just respec and play around with it, but still I like outside perspective. That, and I wanna play with a non-stealth build.

W – forward
A/D – Strafe
S – Backup. For in-town, and whatnot. Sometimes I have a sammich in my right hand, kitten it.
Mousewheel Click – Dodge
R – Heal
Q – Ut 1
E – Ut 2
X – Ut 3
V – Elite
C – Target closest
Z – Steal (for alts that have more than 1 class skill, they get relegated to Shift+2-4)
F – F
Tab – Target next
Ctrl – VOIP

No need for turning keys, that’s what the mouse is for. This keeps everything withing reach. Granted, if I mained Mesmers or Engineers, I’d probably have to rethink the class skill buttons.

Good news on Withdraw, that was my go-to before!

I noticed the two parts of the #3 skill were split up, seems like a good idea.

What happened with Return? Is the range less than infinite now?

I’m just coming back after a 6 month absence (December would be the last time I logged in before yesterday). How have thieves fair in the interim? Is P/P still a waste of time?

I generally played a defensive build (0/0/30/25/15 S/D and SB), and mainly play WvW. Can anyone give me a brief on what I should know heading back in?

I had played since launch (earlier, if you count the two beta weekends I did), but bailed in December when my guild more or less crumbled. I was very competent, especially at WvW, but now I also have 6 months of updates to contend with, for what that’s worth.

I’m looking for a competent WvW guild, but not one that’s so hardcore I’ve got to discard my RL social life. I’m on Ehmry Bay atm, but am willing to move. I have access to any voice chat.

As an added perk, I work overnights in the Eastern timezone, which means I can be around for peak times, and early mornings after work.

I’m pretty laid back, but take things seriously enough to get kitten done. I’m in my later 20’s, so I’m young enough to enjoy the finer points of MMO gaming, old enough to have college/high school BS well behind me.

Thanks, man. Just adding xp to WvW is probably worth the reinstall. Now I just have to go find an active guild.

So, the last time I logged in was probably in December. I had my Thief at 80 for some time, and was pretty much just playing WvW by the end. It had become apparent that good things were in the works (both for WvW and otherwise), but I didn’t feel like grinding fractals, and that’s all there was to do at the time. Now I hear WvW’s gotten some love, PvP might actually not be dead, and I guess PvE still gets mini-updates?

So, community, I think I’m back. What’s the state of the game? Did WvW love payoff? Are there really things to do in PvE? Does everyone still hate thieves? Is there MOAR KARKA?!

Tulisin.6945:

Klawlyt.6507:

BabelFish.7234:

Recently I’ve seen thiefs with 1 minute worth of stealth on themselves. To me that’s overpowered.

While I agree that stealth should work in WvW as it does in sPvP with regard to point capture, you didn’t see a thief with 1 minute of stealth stored up. It caps at 10 seconds. Granted, you can constantly be filling it to that cap, but you can’t just fill ’er up and go.

It most certainly does not cap at 10 seconds, pretty sure the cap is 30-60 seconds. Heck, shadow refuge will give >10 seconds by itself with no extra help and no stealth traits.

That said, permastealth is only actually useful for one thing: holding capture points while stealthed. Get rid of that mechanic to make it work like sPvP and permastealth is no longer an issue.

You can be stealthed for longer, but you can only have 10 sec in reserve. It’s like having an itty bitty gas tank you have to keep filling up. I think it was higher at launch, but I don’t remember by how much.

There’s no way this island is even a decade old. If you swim along the west side, you can touch the coast of Caledon forest, and see the inlet that leads to its bay/lake. There’s no portal, so you can’t zone between them, but look at the map. You’re literally touching a zone that’s been well populated for at least 25 years by a race defined by their curiosity.

At most, I’d go with the volcanic theory and say it happened a few months ago.

I think the Skritt’s reproductive cycle combined with their bizarre quasi-hive mind is most of the reasoning behind the asura contemplating skritt genocide. I don’t have a source, but iirc, before beta, the asura were going to be much more genocidal toward skritt, but they backed off on that trope for numerous, obvious reasons.

I’m a little surprised to hear asura have that kind of lifespan too. For some reason I always thought of them as living much longer than humans.

Let’s be honest, the norn are jovial, energetic drunks. They probably reproduce on a mootly basis, to put it lightly. Norn sex probably makes the scene from 300 look like a disney movie.

Changing gears slightly, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if asura had some sort of magical hydroponics system dating back to their subterranean days. Of course, they could be evolved from foragers and eat things like grubs. I have yet to hear any sort of reference to what the creepy little kittens eat. They do have pointy teeth though, so I’m betting they’re at least carnivorous if not omnivorous. Even if they are completely carnivorous and only eat (for example) grubs, they probably have a KFC style “farm” to attend to their needs as efficiently (and amorally) as possible. If you look at Ratta Sum in GW1 and compare it to what it is now, there’s very little doubt the asura have adapted to surface life spectacularly, so however they provide for their needs, it’s probably very high-magitek, and very efficient (and probably too disturbing to actually put in the game world).

BabelFish.7234:

Recently I’ve seen thiefs with 1 minute worth of stealth on themselves. To me that’s overpowered.

While I agree that stealth should work in WvW as it does in sPvP with regard to point capture, you didn’t see a thief with 1 minute of stealth stored up. It caps at 10 seconds. Granted, you can constantly be filling it to that cap, but you can’t just fill ’er up and go.

While I agree it needs fixed, I can’t imagine the devs saw the last 1000 posts and went “Hmmmmmmmmmm… culling. Maybe we should consider doing something about that” and then see this post and say, “Someone get Mike Ferguson on the phone, we gotta fix this kitten, pronto!”

If it gets to be too much, play some Planetside 2, and keep an eye out for the inevitable solution. ANet always said the beauty of no subs was that you could go off and play other games when you feel like it. Sounds like you feel like it. It’s ok, we’ll be here when you get back. No hard feelings.

I almost promise you it’ll be fixed before ESO’s launch. It’ll have to be.

Well yeah. Friday night resets are the closest thing to a fair fight most WvW matches see though. Even though I never make it to join, I take pride in when my server does well before it zonks out. I’ll be on around 7:30am EST, save some for me!

What about some sort of damage scaling for 5+X targets? That way your AoE’s effectiveness isn’t directly correlated to the number of people (and charr) you’re hitting. I know a couple other MMO’s have used this system (unfortunately, WoW comes to mind). I’m sure we could talk all night about how diluted a skill should be for however many people, but maybe it’s worth a shot. It could always be tweaked. Plus, DD might go down, but conditions would probably have to go off on everyone in the AoE… thus giving condi builds more viability in WvW.

Siege on the other hand, shouldn’t have any such cap.

Meh, if you’re willing to mostly be a supply mule, I’d say you can start at 10. Especially if the difference is an extra level 10and no player at all. Peetee’s right though, you won’t be anywhere near competitive till 30, but even then you’re at a disadvantage. It’s all a matter of degrees.

And remember, all the way through 79 you’ll have a “Gank Me” sign next to your “level”.

Gorefiend.9675:

Ebay – 6,172 +225
CD – 5,249 +255
Maguuma – 4,909 +215

Thanks not just for the update, but the accompanying optimism.

It might be slower than PvE, but you’re like me and not really into playing through the whole PvE game again yet, WvW will certainly be more entertaining.

Do your server a favor though, and try to save alt leveling for weekdays.

Might I get a score update? Stuck at work, as with every friday.

A boy, karka take breeding to a whole new level. Breeding is a martial art for them, for grenth’s sake.

You know what? We may have gotten answer to some of these questions had we studied them at all and not just wiped out every single one we come across. Ah well, they were creepy. They needed to die.

That’s fair. I just didn’t find the thread till after the sword phase had passed.

If we’re talking “best person who wields martial weapons in combat,” it’s still got to go to Shiro, even before he died. The problem is, in Tyria, an elementalist is just as much a warrior as a, well… warrior. So, do we factor in the Lich? What about Mursaat who destroy you with a sideways glance?

I’m also of the belief that MF has no place as a stat. That being said, since it is in the game, I like the sound of the elite. Maybe an elite signet that does the party-wide MF buff when it’s off cooldown. You’d probably have to preclude it from the signet trait in the crit line, though. I dunno what its active ability would be.

Ah! Good call. I forgot all about the whole Stormcaller thing. I know, it’s only the first 1/8 of Prophecies.

It’s not like pre-searing Ascalon city was well detailed. If the tiny area you could walk around was actually, literally all of Ascalon, then it was by no means was one of Tyria’s (the continent (I’m so glad we don’t have a continent called Earth)) 3 greatest cities. Just as LA back then and DR now have all sorts of little filler buildings all over, I assume there was much more to Ascalon than what we saw.

While I do believe Shiro was using “daggers” (and my Sin had a pair!), I believe you could also use one as a sword. What’s funny is, I don’t think the sword version was as big as Shiro’s own daggers on his model.

So, let’s say the Karka aren’t Bubbles’ minions. That means they were either forced out as has been posited, or they were just doing some sort of thing that animals do (migration or somesuch). The fact of the matter is, Tyria’s response was we need to find these kitteners, and they need to DIE. We participated in mowing down their habitat and invading their nests to off an ancient karka, possibly THE ancient karka. With a name like ancient, it would probably be unreasonable to assume the thing was less than a couple centuries old, and we outright destroyed it. The priory or the asura might have objected at some point and tried to study it, but no. The lionguard opted for extinction, or as close as they could get.

“We’re safe now? Hell no! We’re gonna hunt them sumkittenes down and END them!”

Not trying to get all PETA on the thread, I’m just wondering if this dawned on anyone else yet. It’s like in the Metroid games, where the vast majority of the enemies are just plants and animals planting and animaling around.

Of course if it drops loot, Grenth wanted it to die.

My Ascalonian necro ended up in the Jade Sea and became a Luxon proper. My Assassin lived most of his days in Kaineng city, then retired to Kryta’s beautiful shores, where his descendants passed a Fiery Dragon Sword down through the ages eventually to my thief. My Ranger returned to Ascalon, and is likely still there. He’s just a little less alive these days. No one knows what became of my Ritualist, some say he headed for the mists and never returned, some say he spent the rest of his days communing with the spirits in the Crystal Desert…

Is the great northern wall thingumie visible? I hadn’t thought to look until now (while I’m at work). It could be a clue, assuming the map orientation in the fractal matters at all. If it’s to the south, the battle could be one leading up to the searing. If it’s north and close by, this could be Ascalon City. If it’s not there at all, the battle could be far to the south of the wall and be one of the last villages to fall during or shortly after the searing.

Truth be told, glass cannons aren’t optimal in dungeons. Unless you’re the dodge/interrupt master, (and if that’s the case you should switch from Shadow Arts to Acrobatics) you’re going to want some defense. Glass cannons tend to spend a lot of time on the floor in dungeons.

Then of course there’s the question of P/P’s usefulness in the first place…

I’m not saying WvW doesn’t need a little love, but ANet has something like 9 separate live teams, so I don’t think this particular jumping puzzle pulled much if anything from WvW progress.

Another top notch jumping puzzle. Thank you, ANet, keep ’em coming! Platforming will never die!

While I’m not crazy about the emphasis on one-time events in principle, it was really cool trailblazing across the new zone. I’m looking forward to future new zones getting a pioneering phase at launch.

Yes, there were some technical issues, but from the creative side, ANet has been anything but disappointing. Hopefully each event just gets smoother and smoother. Thanks Anet! Also, kittens.

Yes, there are skins that are not usable by thieves. They’re called Light Armor and Heavy Armor.

Is you a troll?

I’m stiiiiiiiiiiill at work.
Is anybody out there to hook me up with a score update?

That’s why it’s lost!

I’m thinking it’ll be available in phase II, you can’t get to it atm.

No! God no! We’re trying to convince people we’re not OP. Making us the only class that can bypass walls won’t help in the least.

Now, siege related wall climbing I could go for. Be they simple cheap ladders, or big expensive rolling towers, that would make things interesting.

Zilm.8459:

Ok, I’m older and when we were growing up there were winners and there were losers. You didn’t get an award for being there, or just showing up, or just being in the area with a pulse.

You won or you lost. You learned from your mistakes and improved. You worked harder. You tried harder. You organized better.

You win or you lose. That was the American philosophy. Now everyone wants something, even when they lose.

Ok dude, you wanna talk RL socioeconimic philosophies, I am more than willing to do that elsewhere. I think we were talking about a video game.

This, I feel, is a valid concern. Because our server (as I’m certain with every server) has many very dedicated guilds with many dedicated players who don’t give up just because you’re not winning by sunday night. Unfortunately, all but the biggest guilds just can’t win a war on their own. The most effective guilds are not just the ones that organize internally, but the ones who work with the pugs and randoms as well. Even if the entirety of the most dedicated 25 man guild played 12 hours a day 7 days a week, they still wouldn’t be able to make up the point difference alone. Every server lives and dies by its pugs just as much as by its organized guilds.

The pugs are who need incentivised. WvW has always been touted a being casual friendly, and the fact is, that most casuals won’t fight a hopeless looking uphill battle for its own sake. Do I need motivated to keep fighting on wednesday night when we’re going to clearly lose? No, but lots do. I would love to see some sort of mechanic that made even a hopeless match up more inviting for casuals. While I can’t think of any sort of spectacular way to do this, it’s not a bad idea. I don’t think the OP is worried about catering to “losers”. I would say he’s worried about catering to those who only hop on for an hour here and there, and who could swing a battle if only they felt that their in game time was best spent in WvW.

And for the record, the USA is one of the least economically mobile of industrialized nations, but you keep clinging to that exceptionalist raft.

Tulisin.6945:

The problem with how many view the downed state is that they just compartmentalize it as separate from how the game “should” work. They say the “downed state caused X, which wouldn’t normally happen if GW2 was any other respectable game.”

In reality, you have to integrate the presence of the downed state with your entire view on how GW2 works. It is a part of GW2 and the game is built around it.

This. Thisthisthisthisthis.

The downed state is part of a game that has changed so many other functions from “standard issue MMOs” (read: WoW clones). The downed state is fun and exciting, and the only thing it hurts is fragile egos. It’s part of the game, and it’s an interesting alternative to old-fashioned healers.

Do some classes have better downed state than others? Yes. Do some classes have better CC than others? Yes. Do some classes have better condition damage than others? Yes. Do some classes have better condition removal then others? Yes. You can see where I’m going with this.

And before you jump all over me for playing a thief, which, admittedly does have one of the better downed states, I also play an engineer, and I don’t think anyone’s jealous of their downed state.

I can’t say I’ve had much on the way of lag or DC problems. I whole heartedly agree culling NEEEEEEEEEEEEEDS fixed (so people get of thieves’s backs, and we’re not OP due to a technical problem).
I believe I read somewhere that guesting will soon be up, which means server transfers should stop being a problem soon (let’s hope!).
Turtleing is annoying, but it can be overcome. Yes, it’s kind of a cheese tactic, but it’s not unstoppable. And before the accusations fly, no my guild does not turtle.

I like a lot of the guild options you mentioned, but I don’t think the PvP infusions would be a good idea. Part of what I love about GW2 is that there is no “PvP stat”. Why MMO devs ever thought that pvp needed a dedicated stat is beyond me, but it’s one more trend I was glad to see ANet buck. Part of the beauty of GW2 is the simplicity of its stat system, let’s not complicate things.

Not flaming, just my thoughts on the matter.

Raffie.7865:

So if your on the loosing server best thing to do is attack them, when they attack you do ALT+F4… it saves tons of coins on the repair bill.\

For a buff for the loosing server I think double HP’s would be nice.

Please don’t encourage Alt+F4ing. Badges come slowly enough as it is.

@Chilly I’m not familiar with that, but it does sound interesting.

@Obsidian Yeah, it’s a nerdy lore thing. I don’t need these types of justifications, but these are the kind of things that cross my mind during loading screens and long runs. And I’ll be honest, while high fantasy isn’t usually my thing, Tyria is quite a world, and easy to get immersed in. It’s got so much of its own character and flavor, and it manages to break from the whole Tolkien/DnD stereotypes in interesting ways.
So yeah, while running supply back and forth in preparation for the next zerg, I wonder stuff like if I shoot magic bullets, and if growing up in the alleys if Divinity’s Reach, I managed to somehow attend Thief School.

Ooh! Another chance to push my Magic Ammo Theory!

I’m still of the opinion that anyone with a capital P Profession (all PC’s and many NPCs) doesn’t bother with ammo (be it bullets or arrows) because all classes are magical to some extent. Much like the Mesmer offhand pistol is obviously firing a magical projectile and not something physical, I think everyone is firing projections of their own will (or whatever magic is in Tyria). This explains how a Thief can crank out 5 shots from a flintlock over the course of 1 second, or how a ranger Barrage is possible from only 1 bow.

Farmer Joe still needs his black powder and a ramrod to go hunting, and siege engines still need real ammo, but real Heroes don’t need this, they just need something to project their own potential through. Hence, Rangers stick with bows because it fits their traditions and beliefs better. Maybe in another 250 years, rangers’ magic will adapt to rifles too, but being naturalists, they haven’t jumped on the industrial revolution yet, and continue projecting their magic through the old ways. More cosmopolitan Professions have incorporated firearms to varying degrees, without necessarily discarding bows.

Just my two cents.

It’s certainly viable. It’s not optimal, but if you’re just plowing through DE’s and hearts go for it. If you’re built for continuous initiative generation and use Haste with the aforementioned Deadpool skill, you’ll do fine.

This is the ONLY feature of WoW that I do wish this game had. Fishing was a nice diversion.

I just wish we could have this conversation without calling folks whiners. The fact of the matter is this (but in metaphoric terms). ANet had a sign outside their store that said “We’ve Got Doughnuts”. Now, they’ve changed to bagels. The problem is, they’ve spent over a year telling everyone about how great the doughnuts are going to be. Sure, lots of people will say, “Well, bagels are good too.” Lot’s of people are going to say, “Sweet! I like bagels better anyway!” It doesn’t mean the people who showed up for the doughnuts are wrong to be dissapointed. Some of us got sick of bagels elsewhere and came here for the doughnuts.

So for now, I’m going to eat my bagel, but with a cautious eye to what’s going to hit the table next.

It’s pointless in that fun for its own sake is pointless. Which is to say video games are pointless. Perhaps a job is in order? I’m going back to WvW now.

Nothing new to add. Just wanted to be one more voice expressing displeasure. You know, in case they’re counting. I was so happy to hear I could leave pve behind after 80 and just go play WvW (that would be the much touted “Way I Want To Play”tm). Now, the door to gear grind has been opened. Just a bit, but it has been opened. Can WvW get some love?