Guild Wars 2

It’s not like anyone can use quickness lightly. On the thief you get it at most, once every 48 seconds, you lose your endurance, and endurance regen stops until quickness wears off. Warriors get a 50% damage increase while quickness is active. Mesmers get a giant awesome elite of it, and it’s on (I believe) the longest cooldown in the game. If someone’s willing to dedicate that kind of resource for a quick kill (or rez), I see no problem.

EDIT: In summary, yeah, what Leiloni said.

I posted a few pages ago about the psychological implications of this thread merely existing, and I think it was pronounced. I’ve been running around my server all week telling everyone we got trolled, but I think most folks like having the excuse. “We didn’t lose cause we sucked, we lost cause THEY made us do it”. It did have a very discernible effect on morale. And while I don’t believe anything was firmly in place, I do believe just that rumor did some damage during the week from the other sides as well. How many 5 man groups just saw the first few posts of this thread and decided to hit EB instead of another target, just in case? We’ll never know, but we can’t pretend as though it had no effect. WvW is a game of lots of small things adding up to big effects. I would like that recognized.

That being said, by monday it seemed all morale had been sapped, and I started getting more frustrated with our own defeatism than any threat of an alliance. Hopefully we don’t get fooled again.

EDIT: I guess my whole point is, I don’t want to see each week become a game of who can extend a bogus alliance offer first. This week was no prob, and it worked great. It’s not really the way I’d like to see the game played regularly. Maybe once we’ve all clashed a bit more, but no one in the middle third of the bracket had even heard of us before this week, so I know a lot of players thought we were being kittenon for nothing.

I’m over the whole alliance thing. It very likely didn’t happen. If it did, good job, we got out politicked. What really drives me crazy is when we get called whiny, crazy conspiracy theorists for speculating about an alliance in the “Hey Maguuma, this is TC and we would like to start an alliance” thread.

Good game TC. Good game Mag. Seriously. But if you don’t want people accusing you of using underhanded tactics, try to to insinuate that you use underhanded tactics so loudly, whether it’s true or not.

My only counter is on the argument about repair cost. I don’t know how many people I’ve heard talk about how easy it is to make money in wvw, then turn around and complain about repair costs. I don’t find anything wrong with the added incentive not to die. Especially since even my most abysmal nights on wvw still yield a net gain.

EDIT: Though I’d like to note that I don’t feel my wvw experience is being ruined by, well… anything.
This isn’t a QQ, but start thinking more defensively. If you die, you have an X minute walk and and X silver repair bill. That’s about as close as you’re going to get to fearing death in a video game without playing Diablo style hardcore.

As for the other two issues, I like the mobs, bot-bait aside. My guild has actually lured veterans into supply camps to add to the confusion and give us an edge. I can’t argue about what you aid with the bots though. And as for looting, you’re exactly right.

Here’s what we’re all ignoring about Phantasms. Even with Phantasmal Haste, most phantasms take at least 5 seconds between attacks. This is a very long time in this game. If if you’re completely specced as an MMM, (minion master mesmer). If you use iBerserker, it can get off ~3 attacks before you can recast it. You’re not trading minutes of beautiful dps for a shatter, you’re trading the possibility of a couple more hits over a dozen seconds (again, a long time in GW2), for results NOW. That’s the real beauty of the class, is that level of management of your resources. Yes, if your build is purely based on making phantasms and letting them do a giant chunk of your dps, you’ve already resigned yourself to playing a minion master, and won’t get a great deal of utility out of destroying your minions. The problem I keep seeing is that no one ever builds for illusions in general. Everyone either wants all clones for shattering or all phantasms for sustained dps/effects. I’ve found playing with both to be the most satisfying so far. I drop a pile of clones, shatter them, then start summoning phantasms to see where the fights going to go. If my opponent is going after my phantasms, they get sacked pretty quickly and I move on to the next phase. If my opponent ignores them and focuses on me, I start evading and let the berserker and friends go crazy. Eventually it will become apparent when it’s time to shatter this batch and move on to another clone dump, or maybe just keep putting up phantasms.

The magic of shatters is the level of control over your resources it gives you, and I find the balance between sustaining what you’ve built vs cashing in for a quick bang to play very well. You just need to read the battle, and be prepared to change tactics on the fly. Whether you always shatter a pile of clones or always amass an army of phantasms, you’re making yourself predictable. Mix it up, it takes a bit more skill to track but it’s a blast! A big, purple, butterfly filled blast!

I think the thread is a bit more scathing than it needs to be, but I do agree. Even with just the stealth on cooldown, that still means you burn up half your stealth sliding down the hill. I never go anywhere in WvW without this trait, and I love it to death. (The only use I’ve found outside WvW is for jumping puzzle oopses)

Thanks man! I will say don’t give up on necro completely though. I’m a fairly competent thief in 1v1s, and I have a necro guildie that just stomps me religiously when we clash in random sPvP.

But anyway, you just won the Internet. Bring the finest meats and cheeses in all the land!

I’d like to comment on the whole situation here. First off, I don’t know about you all, but my timestamp on the OP just says ‘2 days ago’, so I can’t confirm or disconfirm anything. What is in very little dispute is that the thread was started within very little time of the game actually starting (relative to a week long match). I know I was online by 9:30 EDT friday, and the thread had already been made and replied to several times.

Do I honestly believe that either server managed to get the memo out to every wvw-er out there? No. As many have alluded to, it’s very hard to get a zerg organized. However, it would surprise me very little if most of the major players (guild leaders, people with commander books, the randoms who actually try to cajole the zerg) do at least check the forums for server rankings, the que time charts, and maybe even this sort of thing.

I’m not going to say that TC and Mag haven’t fought. But the honest truth is that just the rumor of an alliance can be a big deal. WvW is nothing if not the example of many small things that add up to one big thing. Each person can only carry 10 supply, yet trebs get built, and gate get repaired. Each 15 minute tick is insignificant compared the the score that can be accrued in a week, but we live and die 15 minutes at a time.

Was there an absolute alliance in place? No. But each time someone in charge of their 2 man team, 5 man group, guild, or zerg has made a decision this weekend, the idea of the alliance has been in their minds. The uncertainty of whether or not we should attack a potential team mates’ camp has been there. Sometimes, the determination to disprove such an alliance has been there.

Maybe the rumor of the alliance hasn’t spread far and wide on TC or Mag, but it’s been on everyone’s lips (keyboards?) on EB, and that alone is detracting from enjoyment and feeding our “victim complex.” Is this a petition to change anything at all about this week? Absolutely not. But I would like everyone to at least think for a moment about how this premature alliance offer has affected the game thus far. Now we have to try to sort out if/how much the deck was stacked against us, and TC has to at least wonder how much of their lead they really earned.

Before you flame me for “crying” just try to see it from our perspective. This is the first week Ehmry Bay has made it out of the bottom third on the server rankings and less than 3 hours into the matchup (perhaps even before (perhaps!)) two old war buddies are already publicly declaring intent to join forces to smack us down ‘just in case’, regardless of the truth of it.

All I’m getting at, is at least try to get decent feel for how the match is going before politicking too hard. I’m glad we’re getting a good fight. There’s been nary a second of WvW I haven’t enjoyed this weekend, but let’s try to keep things in perspective.

The name says it all. Bring everyone who is less than level 80 up to level 79 (or hell, even 80, since the framework is already there) and give them a set of the same four maps. Then give the 80’s their own four maps. You could weight everything at half value on each map, or if the numbers bear out, perhaps a skewed split. This would alleviate que times, and further open the game to casuals.

I do understand that this literally involves doubling the amount of resources being deployed to WvW, so I don’t know if it’s a feasible solution, but I don’t feel it’s one that hasn’t really been discussed. Thoughts?

I know I’ve heard my thief mention something about Grenth when entering the downed state, I dunno if that’s because I picked Grenth, or just because death is imminent though.

My only real complaint isn’t that you need split-second reaction time to dodge the 1-shots, my problem is that you’re looking for incoming fire against the backdrop of a giant fire creature. Not that I have a decent suggestion to fix it. It is a fire elemental after all. Difficult content is 100% a good thing in my opinion, even in the early zones. Let everyone know what they’re getting into right out of the gate.

I could swear I took on the asura starting boss somewhere else in the world with my human. Somewhere above level 60, iirc. He had different mechanics though, he did a lot of firing at the black line and mostly left the melee folks alone.

Ehmry Bay pretty much snoozed through the 1 day match-ups, but we’re coming back now. I haven’t hopped on yet tonight, but we were an awfully destructive force last night from server reset until I hopped off around 6am. Check my stream if you’d like proof.

I think we’re forgetting to factor in the dragons elsewhere. Elona has Joko problems, and Cantha has it ever-loving massive bureaucracy, but how do we know they don’t also have dragon problems? Factions has a Glint-like minidragon (Khunavaang or somesuch), they could be having the same problems Tyria (the continent) are having. Bubbles, the infamous Deep Sea Dragon, could simply be one of Elona’s dragons cruising around.

I liked it. It wasn’t nearly as goofy as I had feared. It only really alludes to your desire to join once. I put it on par with basically any other in the game I’ve seen.

It does raise the question though, where in Tyria does one acquire a Russian accent?

So now we need to balance classes for PvE, WvW, sPvP and jumping puzzles? I’m not saying infiltrator’s wouldn’t be nice, butkitten aren’t there bigger fish to fry?

What about the idea of guild infrastructure? Purchase 20-25 man warband capability within your guild, then make the formation of a warband a permission, just like promotion and MOTD. I only suggest this because anet seems resistant to just letting people form raids, which I think would be the easiest solution.

Yeah, without it, we would be unquestionably the most OP class for 1v1’s at least.

Lot’s of good stuff on here so far. One thing I can’t emphasize enough though is using the poison on you SB for cc. I know it sounds absurd, but it’s a big circle with a lot of particle effects that lasts a few seconds. Toss 2 or 3 of these down and people MOVE. I’m not even specced for condition, damage, and I don’t want to be. The poison cloud does wonders for breaking enemy front lines, keeping them off the front of their keep, or getting people to think twice about passing through a bottleneck. It’s cheep, fast, and has no cooldown (except for your own init reserves).

Other than that, yeah scouting is vital. Grab some stealths and mobility options, and get some eyes on your target for your guild. Avoid the roads, don’t use flashy looking weapons. (Sorry, Fiery Dragon Sword)

I think the thing people most overlook when disparaging PP is its survivability options. In WvW I mainly use SB, but keep PP on hand for a couple reasons. First is single target damage. There’s very little dissent about how poorly the SB is at single target, and when targets start getting called, I stop aoeing for a moment.
On the other hand, it does make a pretty sweet part of a defensive setup. When you have an interrupt and a blind on your hotbar, you are always moving 25% faster than just about everyone, you drop aoe cripples when you dodge, and you have at least 1 stealth skill ready, you can bounce around a skirmish for quite some time. And that’s with fairly minimal vit/tuff armor, which means you can still build for crits or conditions, or whatever floats your boat.

No, PP is not the most suited weapon to burning targets down in a flash, but believe it or not, there are other ways to build your thief.

Let me be the kinder, gentler response. You don’t like how thief plays. That’s cool, there are 7 other classes, I hope one suits you. I like the idea of engineers, but after playing a thief, I found them kind of clunky. No hard feelings, just not the class for me.

What about crowd control options? I play a thief, I can’t cc anywhere near as well as a guardian. Should we take guardians’ myriad cc options away? Should i get comparable cc options to what guardians have? Or do different classes have different strengths and weaknesses that define each class as essentially different. I’m not saying there isn’t a bit of balancing to be done (yes, engineers could use a little downed love), but i think downed state survivability is just another factoring in deciding the class that’s right for you. Most (all?) classes can even spec for more survivability when entering the downed state, or better rezing options.

WvW is persistent… for x number of weeks at a time. If you want 100% persistence, you’ll be up against the same 2 severs forever. Having matches and resetting the maps actually is a function of keeping the game competitive. The idea is that within any given match it is 100% persistent, which is exactly the case.

As for casual vs harcore, it really is both. It allows casuals to enjoy, and it allows hardcores to be super effective. They never said casuals would be able to dominate, they said casuals could contribute and have fun. If you want a game that favors the truly dedicated and the casual equally, you’re going to need to play a game of pure chance, like something dice related.

That being said, none of that applies to the OP’s suggestion. While I’m not in favor of weighted times or taking steps to reduce the number of people playing at a time, some steps to seem to be taken to even out the servers. I do know that anet is practically begging people to switch servers and even out the population, which I think would be the most effective way to deal with it. Unfortunately, while people can switch servers at will, guilds can’t take their infrastructure with them from server to server, and I think that is what’s slowing server migration. If anet would allow guilds to wholesale move servers (just for a while, while the game is still settling in) I think that would go much farther toward easing imbalance.

Remember, a level 2 carries the same amount of supply as a level 80. But yeah, 7’s a pretty good idea at least. Just be prepared to play in a group (which you should be doing 97% of the time anyway), and you’ll be fine.

I’m in the less-is-more camp too, Fiery Dragon Sword not withstanding. Hat and shoulders off, unflashy gear (soon to be replaced with guild armor though). WoW and their ridiculous armor (shoulders in particular) just drove me insane. We’re thieves, sticking out is antithical to what we do.

While most everything that needs to be said has been said, I have one thing to add. If instead of steal, the thief skill was just “3 more initiative on a ~40 cooldown”, I would still be in love with it. Add a shadowstep and many very sweet (and the occasionally disappointing) 1 shots, plus all those things I didn’t spec for (poison, stealth, etc), and I really see nothing to complain about except the miniscule amount of effort one must put into learning the ins and outs of this magnificent skill.

Also, I’m actually quite glad the thief gimmick is 1 button. I did my keybinds based on that, and now have to teach myself how to use others for shattering on my alt. I don’t even wanna think about attunement juggling yet.

Wait, wait, wait… are we complaining because GUILDS are WARRING? Man, if I would have known that GUILDS were going to go to WAR, and engage in all the strategy, politicking, and treachery that go with, I probably would have never purchased this misleadingly titled game.

I don’t think “accessible to casuals” and “hardcore players will excel” are mutually exclusive concepts. Of course the most organized and resource-rich groups are going to do better at WvW. Any attempt to stop this from happening will utterly ruin the game. That doesn’t mean casuals can’t hop in and enjoy. Zergs have their place, if nothing else than to distract enemy attention from the folks on the map who are applying a bit more strategy to their WvW time. WvW manages to both provide a good time to those who just want to log in and romp, and a for those who want to join the foreign legion. If you’re really serious about winning and competing, there’s a good chance you’ll take steps to excel, like join a guild, or read about the game in your off-time, or just play more. When that happens, you start drifting more and more toward the label “hardcore.” If that never happens and you still had a good time, well then, the casual crowd has been catered to.
It’s no different from sPvP, except in that WvW plays out with everyone running around together, and the sPvPers get secluded little matches that keep the 8v8 casuals and the 5v5 hardcores separate.