Guild Wars 2

I might be interested in joining a high-level team formation but I am probably not the type of player you’re looking for due to my IRL commitments (wife/kids, law school): can only practice fri/sat/(maybe sun?) during non-optimal hours. I can’t practice past 10:30pm EST (internet gets throttled at that time).

I would meet all of the fundamental requirements, age, passport, ts, etc.

Honestly I think I’m probably one of the few wild-cards in the competitive scene and people highly underestimate me. I’m often highly criticized for playing with the people I frequently play with (usually my wife and close friends) because for one, they’re not even rank 80 and secondly they run out-of-the-box weird builds that are definitely not meta. Why? They like to have fun with the builds they enjoy best and I haven’t been playing ultra competitively.

I think I’m underestimated because well-established teams and players see us in a tournament bracket and think easy-win but when I’m with players who let me do my thing my way and make reads and plays we often upset teams, especially on my stronger maps.

You can go back and look at past ToL/ToG performances for my pve guild seraphs of fortuna and see that in the past 3 we’ve made two 3rd place finishers and one 4th place finisher in the respective qualifying matches and we didn’t necessarily have the easiest brackets.

I think I am a very niched player, meaning if I am put with the right types of players I can make a huge difference, but if you put me with other equally good but strategically different players, it’s just a waste and you’re better off with any other thief.

If you’re looking for a versatile player or thief, that’s not me. I run my unique build and won’t try and defend its virtues. What I will say is that my performance in past tournaments speaks for itself. Look at the level of players on my teams in the past and look to see how far we went. In one tournament where we beat keeping it kosher we had a rank 18, a rank 42, and rank 44 with us… so yeah…

I mention I’ll be free to explore potential teams because the players I normally play with may not be able to participate in the next tournament.

**I refuse to deal with raging. Losing sucks but I am playing this game with the few hours of free time I do get from my other commitments and I refuse to listen to any form of within-team BM. Even without commitments I’m probably the most relaxed player in the competitive scene if you talk to people who actually play with me.

Also outside of tournament play you can look at my stats to see even without an actual team in TQ’s and Solos I’ve consistently been top 1-200 with a very strong win-rate. I’ve currently decayed this past week or so due to midterms (law school has a mandatory cut so they’re pretty important =\

#SuperSmashBrosHasABetterCompetitiveSceneAndSupportAndBalanceOoops

I haven’t done the math but generally looking at everyone’s predictions it looks like I had the edge in predictions.

ETA on prize distribution?

And if I didn’t win no worries, just wondering since skimming the answers looked like it.

SoLeciTO.3490:

hahahaha it is funny . . . because it makes me cry.

Most of the hype thieves moved to power rangers since they just roll to whatever is easiest to play.

Most of the dedicated thieves are sort of annoyed at the constant nerfs and bugs, specifically the steal nerf is impacting a lot of top tier thieves. The reveal from smoke screen and BP nerf for anyone who uses d/p is pretty annoying as well (on top of the many other nerfs of the past).

That being said, say all you want about NA not having good players but in the last NA qualifier there was a d/p thief in Evil Villains and Seraphs for their semifinals match to Qualify.

Lopez.7369:

Yeah. I remember just being completely underwhelmed by the dragon finisher when I first saw it. I’m a bit sad that when I get rank 80, I’ll lose my phoenix when I do /rank.

Post-patch and your /rank is whatever finisher you have equipped.

I’m not online to check 100% but I am pretty sure I tested it and it works like this now.

Some people carry their moms, others have to do their dishes mid-tourney.

dem 800 gems

Mmmmm

GoogleBrandon.5073:

Because ranks:

• Make you smarter than anyone else
• Are an indicator for player experience
• Makes you entitled to make biased claims and ignore everyone who is lower ranked
• Gives you knowledge about balancing
• And makes you better than anyone below you – those lowlife peasants…

I speak for trees bro and they say make a leaf…

Player GoogleBrandon.5073 [Brandon The Hammah]
Wins 889
Loses 811
Win percent 52.29%
Highest rank 330
Current rank 9000

inb4 they accidentally put skyham in tQ

I believe I read that players who purchased more than 1 commander tag initially would be refunded the 100g (extra) for each subsequent tag they purchased. I have yet to receive this refund—is their an NPC we are supposed to talk to or do I need to submit a ticket for this?

Also, please correct me if I am getting my facts wrong.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IBs8gdyqICDGAS92-zbbXMDyBHTyNX8_ptIXV8Ueww8/pubhtml?gid=0&single=true

upon request I will put this in a bracket generator if that helps***

First Qualifier:

RO16: Hashtag Believe— Unnur Niuroumian— Ping Pong Posse— Nightshade in June— Europe and Asia— Nonverbal Persuasion— Team Mini Llama— DOOMBLADE GLADIATORS— Sharks with Lasers— LOTD— Team Starfleet Dental— Shinjuku Volts— Team Teamwork— We Built They Came— Dhuum’s Crusaders— Paws for Dramatic Effect

RO8: Hashtag Believe— Nightshade in June— Europe and Asia— Team Mini Llama— Sharks with Lasers— Shinjuku Volts— Team Teamwork— Paws for Dramatic Effect

RO4: Hashtag Believe— Europe and Asia— Sharks with Lasers— Team Teamwork

RO2: Hashtag Believe— Sharks with Lasers

3rd: Europe and Asia
4th: Team Teamwork

Second Qualifier:
RO16 winners: evil villains— Paradise— Starfleet Dental— Illicit Activity—Absolute Business— Diablos Revenge— Seraphs of Fortuna— Pantheon of Ultimate Gods— Cognitive Gaming— Banned For Exploits— 69 FPS— Before the Storm— Arkangeles— Ember Solace— Jyuken Club— I Radioactive I

RO8: Evil Villains— Illilicit Activity— Absolute Business— Seraphs of Fortuna— Cognitive Gaming— 69 FPS— Arkangeles— I Radioactive I

RO4: Evil Villains— Seraphs of Fortuna— 69 FPS— I Radioactive I

RO2: Evil Villains— I Radioactive I

3rd: 69 FPS
4th: Seraphs of Fortuna

The refreshing part about this is seeing so many familiar names. At face value it seems like a lot of the pve/wvw teams ended up not signing up though.

This should be a pretty interesting tournament. Hope to see shoutcasting like when you guys did the one tol2 Qualifier!

So glad to have full rosters for all teams available!

Except now my stomach hurts looking at the players in pool 2 >_<

This is exciting!

Backback get out of my pool ]:< No children allowed.

Looking forward to the event and the stream!

Also deathly curious to find out who is on the LUX Llamas team…. lol… some of these team names XD…

NOM.9712:

I just saw the warrior named Chronoside in the dueling server and apparently he did lose 20g to Lux. That isn’t the same Kronos Xnm (MLGKorno) though, and I will second that I’ve just about never seen him go down.

Yeah that’s entirely possible and I’m not meaning to involve myself in the issue regardless—the duel I was referring to happened a few weeks ago and I money match players almost every other day so I don’t remember specific names, let alone distinguish between similar ones; in all likelihood it was the ‘other’ guy since he (along w/ olrun) would be the only person to really know that the duel was 20g each (so I ambiguously referenced the 40g pot).

So yeah either way I am not intending to actively participate in the discussion ankitten ot trying to perpetuate any misinformation (which is why I am posting at all right now). At the end of the day the MLGKorno won the tournament and got dusk and based on the info provided it was unlikely that I dueled him. Congratulations on your win and maybe we’ll see you around the mists more.

That being said I think you can understand where the innocent misconception came from.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

I adminned a thief duel between Lux and Chronos. Lux won. Lux is not best dueler NA. Confirmed.

Mmmmm 40gold and yes, I am definitely not the best duelist.

First of all thanks for the work you guys are putting into this.

Second, out of curiosity how are you guys deciding the seeding? Completely random? Seeding only a couple teams per day or are you going to have some sort of method? I am just very curious as to how that aspect plays out—even a very general answer would suffice.

I play w/ slausty pretty often and he has a solid roster going. I highly recommend any of the top players who have yet to establish a team to consider applying. Great guys and wish I was teaming up with them for the tournament.

cmc’s ele is ok but if you want real talent have him play mesmer. One time I saw him moa the gate to get to the guild lord… and it worked…

trust me

Sounds good—we’ll give you a whirl this friday/saturday.

Still looking for some more players to roll with this weekend before we make our final submission for Tournament of Glory.

Thanks

On the topic of swapping professions, I exclusively play one class and spec all the time, for virtually the past 18 months… or at least since they nerfed haste.

I don’t think that was too my winrate advantage—there are MANY sky hammer games that I lost where I could have more easily made a difference had I gone engi or mesmer or swapped my thief spec to fit the map. I don’t enjoy playing that way and would rather lose than specifically try to counter comp. That’s not saying that sticking with one profession is bad, but there are distinct advantages that come with the ability to bring more options into any particular game. If we’re talking exclusively about carrying teams to win more, as opposed to enjoying the format in the way each of us prefers.

Identify the philosophy of your team-mates and react accordingly based on whatever class you are playing (although if you really want to boost your win rate you’d do your best to counter comp the enemy and bring the class that would most benefit your team).

There are many games where no matter what you do, you will lose by no fault of your own, and just disregard those games or at the very least consider if there was anything else you could have done to put your team in a better situation.

I almost never cap home pt. on my thief, but if at the start 4 people head towards mid… I’ll cap home, and then move accordingly. If you won home and won mid and 2 idiots decide to rush far… or better yet all 4 of them push far… you need to play smarter and do your best to re-enforce mid or home depending on how they split—if you’re lucky the enemy will send 4 to their home to 4v4 and you’ll be left with the only other competent player in the game to shut him down depending on where he pushes.

I think the worst thing you can do is engage in a negative form of communication in any way—especially blaming someone. Not only does it COMPLETELY destroy morale, but it throws everyone off their game and some players are going to be more hellbent on pvp’ing in the chat box than doing basic things to win.

If you lose a team fight, move on. If you see someone lose a 1v1 move on and focus on adapting to the ever-changing situation. If you call him out on losing 1v1 then he’s most likely going to either retaliate or play even worse. Just because he lost a 1v1 doesn’t mean the game is over, maybe he held the point neut for ~20 seconds before he lost—that’s more of a stale-mate if he went far and you’re not really behind in points because of that effort.

The time to debate movements, strategy and tactics is -after- the match via whispers. That’s not to say you shouldn’t communicate, because obviously communication can be vital. Small comments can make a big difference. For example if you lose mid on temple and people keep pushing it while they have a bunker guard play mid say something like “Play sides, let him afk mid.” and if someone argues with what you’ve said, don’t engage them just adapt. If all 4 of them blatantly ignore you, adapt. If they keep rushing mid then justify in your head: ok we have home, and the enemy has a guy sitting far and mid. My team is incessantly pushing mid even with a bunker established on point and I can’t change their minds…. so let’s push mid hard and see what their far pt camper does—if he does nothing, great we should win mid 4.5v4 (someone coming in and out of the main fight to make sure you’re not losing home… probably you since you can’t rely on other people).

etc etc etc

There’s obviously so many possible variations and rotations and I haven’t even scratched the surface, but it’s this sort of awareness and mental engagement that will give you the edge.

Honestly in many games 1 key fight early on can create a land-slide for the rest of the match, even if the teams are typically evenly matched. Helping win the initial mid fight is CRUCIAL—especially on some maps more so than others.

I’ll stop rambling now. GL

Looking to enter the ToG with 3 members from my previous team (we placed 3rd in the most recent ToL2 qualifier).

We are looking for players hovering in the 100-300 tQ range because anyone top 100 doesn’t like me.

we are not extremely strict on the rank requirement. Particularly we want people who tend to hover in that range but you don’t necessarily need to be in there all the time. It’s mostly just one function we will examine for experience purposes. We will also be looking at total games played, etc etc just to get a general idea of where you stand from an experience standpoint.

Specifically we’re looking for:
-Great ele who can win 1v1’s and doesn’t die fast in team fights
-Bicep Warrior who can win 1v1’s and doesn’t die fast in team fights
-TALENTED ENGI but not turrets since people will crucify us and probably ban us from all future tournaments if we run turrets again.

If you play anything squishy please don’t apply. I hate playing with thieves, mesmers or glassy anything. We have a general strategy and multiple glass goes against the plan. If you play a class or spec I haven’t mentioned but feel like you could contribute to team fights without becoming a major liability then please contact me via PM or in-game.

Two of us are in law school so practice times will be extremely LIMITED and scarce, but we fully expect anyone who joins us to actually log in and practice during the few times we do have time to practice (predominantly friday’s and saturdays and MAYBE a little on sundays).

Skype is a must—we’re tired of getting on TS and we won’t be using TS for the tournament. Skype is free and easy to download.

Like I said, we participated in the most recent ToL2 Qualifier and placed 3rd. Two of the teams we beat were in the top 150 at the time (one was exclusively top 75 or better). While we don’t have the time to dedicate as other teams do to adapting to the new changes, we are entering for fun and our goal is to get past the first couple rounds to hit some of the prizes.

Post for more info. Also I know a lot of people hate on me for the way I play, and after they saw me have our team run double turrets last tournament the hate has increased exponentially. To clarify, I didn’t -want- to run double turrets, but we literally had a rank 17 (…deer rank 17 not LB 17) so we had to compensate for his lack of exp in pvp and we ran something he could be effective at over night.

With the upcoming ToG we plan on running a -slightly- more balanced comp. I have this strategy in mind already but as long as you meet the aforementioned qualifications you’ll fit into the strategic plan.

We will be submitting our team ASAP and so tryouts will be MINIMAL (Friday will probably be the day of testing out to see if we work well) and then we’re sending in our roster to secure a spot.

To expedite the process I -WILL- need you to PM me your email that you use to log in to GW2. Grouch has told us that this is a REQUIREMENT to submit a team and we don’t want to be waiting to submit our team since registration has been open for a few days now.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Also, we’re a relaxed group of friends who have played together since beta. Jazz and I hop in the game to take a break from law school and have fun and my wife plays to have a good time as well. We’re probably the most relaxed PvP’ers in the competitive scene—while we don’t necessarily play ultra-competitively, we’ve floated at the top 200 range for quite a while in tQ and in solo Q we typically hover in the top 100 when we play and have all hit r1 a few times. We don’t rage and we expect the same from you—however, we do play to win and that’s always the goal when we PvP. We are simply just less hostile than others.

How rare? I play what some would consider traditional d/p but the modifications make the play style completely different, although the trait spread isn’t unusual.

I met this guy over a year ago when he represented thieves in the all-profession tournament. He’s been playing thief non-stop and I know he’s had more experience on both S/D and D/P than most thieves have had in any one of those specs.

I enjoyed playing with him the few times our paths crossed on the same team.

Hope you find a good team, Kinjax

They need to update pvp and SAB so we can be esports jumping puzzle

SAB
SAB
SAB
SAB

Glad to hear this coming from you, Morfeus, since obviously you’re practically in a good position to benefit the most from the current set up that they’ve announced.

I agree with you completely. I think a lot of very good players and teams are going to miss out on rewards for their game type simply because they are not winning these tournaments. I definitely agree that there should be more incentive to play and perform well on a daily basis. Thanks for sharing this with the community and I hope the devs listen.

Brigg.6189:

Anyone have replays to both sets?

http://www.twitch.tv/twitch/b/558319253

gameplay starts at about 7:40 mark

If you want EU vs CH then someone linked it in the 2nd post.

kirito.4138:

bring back skyhammer to teamq too.

China has skyhammer in tQ.

They also don’t have a solo Q.

I thought this was pretty high priority but based on everything I’ve read thus far about upcoming pvp changes, it sounds like this has not been mentioned at all. Even the rewards that were supposed to be tied to ladders and seasons hasn’t been mentioned—all we’ve heard are about prestige armor tied to tournament results (which it doesn’t sound like there will be that many).

Just curious if anyone knows anything that I’ve missed about this?

I’m only asking because it seems like a good way to reward players who consistently play pvp actively, but maybe there plans have changed? If they have changed I’d rather they just flat out say they’ve changed direction since some of us are looking forward to things like that.

Any info would be great. I am just curious.

All-stars is happening now?

Your personal list is the best.

The rest is ok.

kito.1827:

in the %-range a gain will be shown as down.

example: you go from top 95% down to top 96% and so on…

experienced it a while ago, never tend to ask why…
i may be wrong tho

This is exactly correct.

This will be fun to watch o:

Pretty sure it’s 20% of the full duration of the condi applied after modifiers. So I would say it is scenario A but I don’t have evidence.

Scholar because I open with a burst when I’m at above 90% and if I take damage I heal above 90% by the time my burst is ready again.

I guess it helps that I use smoke screen and often times mitigate tons of opening damage.

More of these please.

+1

ETA on Q4 brackets?

I think if you’re a competent pvp’er you can accurately gauge the following:

-Were your rotations good?
-Were your mechanics good?
-Did you capitalize on enemy deficits?
-Did you win the 1v1’s you should have won?
-Did you adequately support your team?
-At any point, were you the reason the enemy took an advantage?

I typically ask myself questions like that for self evaluation. Of course I go more specific, especially against stronger players. It comes not only down to what did I do well, but what did I do to thwart the other good players on the other team?

Rome.3192:

Lux.7169:

For example, thieves SB5 teleport is invisible when used with a normal weapon. However with the legendary SB the rainbow unicorn on SB5 is not invisible and so when in stealth makes it nigh impossible to sneak around with teleports when a rainbow unicorn is giving away your position.

Or the highly telegraphed D/P3 skill which is MUCH easier to dodge when using incinerator.

That’s an easy one to solve, isn’kitten Don’t use a legendary weapon.

Wow, this autocorrect is kitten.

Why wouldn’t I use it? I was pointing out the fact that people are so quick to yell NERF when they don’t even realize that there are often drawbacks to the things they are screaming ‘NERF!’ at. Perhaps if the OP had gone over the pros and cons toward the use of legendaries in pvp I would have been more amicable, but his shortsightedness and bias towards the topic prompted my harsh criticism. Oh, and maybe he could have waited more than 2 hours before demanding a reply?

You forgot to mention that legendary weapons are also HUGE handicaps.

For example, thieves SB5 teleport is invisible when used with a normal weapon. However with the legendary SB the rainbow unicorn on SB5 is not invisible and so when in stealth makes it nigh impossible to sneak around with teleports when a rainbow unicorn is giving away your position.

Or the highly telegraphed D/P3 skill which is MUCH easier to dodge when using incinerator.

I only know about the handicaps with thieves, I’m sure others have huge handicaps because of their legendaries as well.

First of all, while bunker guardians are typically starting at mid, they bring the most support to team fights and should rotate accordingly while having someone else keep an eye at mid if the fight takes the guardian elsewhere.

Guard for home pt defender is very out-dated. Mostly because in a prolonged 1v1 they will definitely lose, meaning someone has to rotate back to help them which makes the rest of the field a 3v4, which is obviously not good, especially when other classes can defend the point with less issues and a less dire need for support in 1v1s.

Another factor is a guardians low mobility. Home pt defenders don’t just sit at home all day and so they typically want some mobility to get to far or team fights. Even without mobility being an issue a bunker guard doesn’t have enough offensive pressure or CC to pressure far if someone is there, and if he goes mid, the enemy can catch him out of position and decap him fast, even if he realizes it and tries to run back.

Plus the nature of the class makes it hard, since he has to get reasonably close to use shouts and res or burst depending on spec. Whereas other classes like engi can just nade from ledges, offering a lot of pressure with a much lower risk of getting decapped.

For me a home pt defender is someone who is confident in their 1v1 capabilities and someone who has the field awareness to make smart and influential plays.

Silentshoes.1805:

Good stuff, Lux. It’s a good answer to people on the forums who brag how simple this game is.

Us elders need to share our experience with these young kids. They don’t know about our r60+ club.

Some of this is really interesting. One thing I want to know is the win% of the first team to cap mid.

I’ll be tipping in game when I get home.

yeah 5guage covered a lot of important facets.

I’ll just emphasize/elaborate a little more on things I find particularly important, especially since most of my matches are solo or yolo Q.

Taking into account that you’re running a medi guard for home pt here are some tips, and all advice is, of course, situational and may not always be optimal, but its up to you to make those decisions in-game.

-Before the match starts analyze the enemy comp—do they have anyone who can stealth to sneak decaps?
-Do they have anyone notorious for going for decaps?
-Do they have strong mobility?

Now once you’ve analyzed them keep the stealthed classes in mind. If they have 1 thief it’s very easy to keep tabs on him because the other team—solo Q o rnot—will most likely be relying on him to decap and generally won’t pressure far otherwise, unless they wipe you at mid.

So after you cap home, where is the thief? No one else really matters. Is he at the mid fight? Is he downed? Dead?

-If he’s at the mid fight, great, go pressure mid scoping him out. Medi eats thieves for breakfast and make it your job to shut him down, res allies and cleave as much as possible.

—>In this situation the only realistic person to decap you is far pt. So on your way to hunt the thief try and establish where far pt went. Is he coming mid? Crossing to home? Staying far?

Let’s examine the generic and likely paths.

1) Far pt stays far, gg you win mid, 5v4 and secure 2 points. You will rotate home to see how the enemy rotates and repeat your opening rotation.

2) Far pt goes mid. You have 2 good options. A) Stay mid to help win the 5v5. B ) Get the advantage mid (1 kill or a couple downed bodies) and make sure your team looks stable enough to secure victory from there and procceed to decap far if the thief is dead/down or begin rotating home. As a medi guard I would only recommend going far if you have no one realistically better to decap. This is a point of contention since many would make strong arguments that you shouldn’t pressure far if you have home and won a 5v5 mid. I believe if you time it right it you have a good amount of time to decap, and begin running home. Also, it slows the pace at which you win mid, meaning people will be bleeding out, dying at even further times apart which will create an imbalance in their respawns so they don’t immediately regroup to push as a team.

3) Enemy far pt will run to your home pt. Now you have 3 likely decisions to make:
a) burst with everything in 5-10seconds mid, then run to decap far.
b) run back home to 1v1 him
c) stay mid if your team is just STRUGGLING to survive the 5v4 because if you leave and your team loses the 5-1v4 then you’re in a horrible position. It’s better (in my opinion) to win the 5v4 and lose home/far and then have the option to rotate 3-4 people home fast to win it back.

I put abc in this last scenario in the generic, likely response that I would want my home pt to react.

Now for some elaboration on general tactics. After you cap home, regardless of where you go, see how aggressive the other team is. Your primary focus in the game is to be USEFUL, and not necessarily using home to limit yourself. If you trade home for far and from there can be useful, more power to you.

Some teams won’t even bother checking your home because they’ll assume someone’s watching it like a hawk. I think it’s fairly rare that you’ll find an ultra agressive decapper that can successfully sneak away many times. However, if you do encounter this, and it’s so bad that it’s hurting your team, there are very very rare situations where you have home pt defender pretty much “puppy-dog” camp home and you make that decision at your discretion and ignore whatever anyone else says to you.

However, you must realize, as long as deaths are not an issue, every second you are alone at home pt, your team is theoretically outnumbered somewhere else. Don’t be the reason your team loses an outnumbered fight. It doesn’t mean that you should be in THAT fight, but understand that the trade-off should outweigh the cost of you not being there.

It sounds like you genuinely want to learn, and are rightfully frustrated by this. I appreciate how genuine you are approaching the subject, since many people are often too frustrated to seek a sincere reply.

I like your attitude so if you ever want to play and talk more about it on Skype/TS let me know.