Guild Wars 2

Thanks everyone! He’s there, and all now seems well.

I couldn’t see him earlier because there were a lot of players standing around, including several right on top of the little guy.

Another, more specific check showed him to be there. :-)

I can’t find Vorpp anywhere. When I use the communication device on one character, he says to meet him in Divinity’s reach, even though my character is already there.

I searched all around the waypoint at the Crown Pavilion. Vorpp is nowhere to be seen, and there’s no gold start indicator on the map to show his location like there was before.

If he’s there, he’s not visible to me.

I started the Vorpp sequence with one character, who has the soulbound communication device, but have been running the invasion events with different characters. After five such events, the crystals used to create the portal appeared in the inventory of a different character. They are also soulbound.

Now neither character can find Vorpp in Divinity’s Reach, and I’m stuck. I submitted as support ticket, but it advises me I shouldn’t expect any help.

What can I do?

This happened to me too, and I counted 13 times during the event that she spawned on and preferentially attacked me, even if others were attacking her while I tried to get away. Didn’t matter where I was or whether there was an event nearby, she would drop right on me with that nasty knockdown of hers. Down me 8 times and killed me twice.

I just want to know: Who at ArenaNet thinks subjecting a single player to this for 45 minutes is “fun”?

I dusted off one of my Engineers recently and this is still a problem.

It doesn’t matter what is going on, kits simply unequip themselves without any player input after about 5-6 minutes. This occurs predictably and repeatably on idle characters.

Also discussed here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/BUG-Kits-unequip-turret-ability-lost-after-X-minutes/first

Still bugged on Darkhaven.

In fact, I’ve never seen it not bugged.

They are definitely stronger than other mobs in the same level range. I think the difficulty scaling may be sporked for the Toy Ventari, Princess Dolls and Toy Soldiers.

My exposure to them has been in the starter zones with a new alt, and in those zones these things are just way out of proportion.

As others have mentioned, however, the Skritt are fine. Though they don’t grant XP on death, they drop good loot and are of suitable difficulty for players at their level.

So I’m thinking we may be seeing either some bugs or maladjustment in play here.

These boxes are absolutely murdering the starter areas and are a griefer’s wildest dream.

They should probably tone down the focus-firing, confusion-stacking ranged mobs a bit — at least in lower-level zones where brand new GW2 players see a present and think something nice is waiting inside.

Many players, including me, are accustomed to using the right mouse button for mouse turning. In GW2, Mouse 2 — the right mouse button for most mice — defaults to mouse turning, which is good, but is a “special” button that can’t be remapped to other functions, which is bad.

Problematically, Mouse 2 also serves the same function in the open world as double-clicking with Mouse 1, and this behavior cannot currently be disabled. The result is that attempts to mouse-turn while the cursor is over any clickable in-game object amounts to a double-click on that object.

The consequences are often confusing, such as inadvertent target switching in combat, or potentially fatal, such as unwittingly attacking large onscreen presences such as mosshearts when simply trying to navigate past them. Attempting to mouse-turn in crowded situations such as dynamic events or WvW zergs is akin to spinning a roulette wheel, and losing control of a character in such circumstances is frustrating, to put it mildly.

I strongly suspect a wide range of complaints about Guild Wars 2’s targeting system are actually related to this behavior, and that many players I’ve seen complain about the targeting both in-game and in the forums would benefit if the right mouse button could be reserved for mouse turning.

Thus I ask that ArenaNet consider allowing players to disable the right mouse button for anything but mouse turning in the open world interface. Right-click functionality could be retained for menus, the skill bar and the like, but the redundant double-click effect on world objects would be removed with this option.

Alternatively, please allow mouse turning and Mouse 2’s multiple functions to be reassigned to other buttons in the Control Options dialog.

Offering the ability to safely mouse-turn without risking unwanted consequences would make the game much more playable for me, and I’m pretty sure it would do the same for many other players.

Thanks for reading this.

Grinding Gears

After five years, two lifetime accounts and a hell of a lot of money spent, I left LOTRO for GW2. When I saw the MMO Manifesto, it was a religious experience. It was as if ArenaNet had read my mind and put it on video.

When I left LOTRO, I left behind many things I was glad to leave: node-jacking, kill-stealing, haggling for loot and all those other traditional MMO mechanics that make PVE nothing more than PVP by other means.

Among the things I was glad to leave behind was the legendary item gear grind. In LOTRO, legendary items can be upgraded and “grow with your character”. And once you hit the level cap, that’s basically true.

Until the level cap is raised, at which point the legendary items you worked so hard to upgrade become obsolete. Now you can start all over again — with a little help from the LOTRO store, if you like.

The addition of the Ascended tier and open-ended gear progression in Guild Wars 2 doesn’t closely resemble the LOTRO legendary item system. There is no raise in the level cap. Current items don’t become obsolete and are still as useful as ever.

They just become superseded by items that are better. And these items are also used to gate content (cough LOTRO radiance cough), but that’s another can of worms altogether.

No, grinding for Ascended tier items is not mandatory. Neither are Exotics, or Rares, Masterworks, Fine or Common items. Heck just grab a boulder off the ground, run around naked and go nuts.

But just as reaching the level cap means no more worrying about having to replace lower-level gear, acquiring Exotic gear used to mean no more worrying about replacing it for a higher tier. It was the best you could get. Stat-enhancing infusions for Ascended gear potentially extend the process indefinitely, by design.

This is the beginning of a new “gear treadmill” that feels eerily similar to what legendary items have become in LOTRO: gear that is as good as it gets, until better gear comes along and the new carrot is moved a little farther away than the old one.

No amount of semantic gymnastics can change the obvious. We know what we’re seeing, and it’s a stunning abandonment of some core principles that were selling points for the game. It’s not a minor thing, and implications that players are overreacting are direct insults to the people who pay the bills.

We know what we bought. We know what we paid for.

I appreciate the desire to offer different players different ways to enjoy the game, and don’t want to discourage that. But I’ve seen this slippery slope before in LOTRO, and don’t want to see it again.

Guild Wars 2 is hands-down the best game I’ve ever played. Period.

Please don’t discard or erode the principles that make it the best, because after playing GW2 and seeing how awesome an MMO can truly be, there’s nowhere else I can go if it devolves into just another WoW wannabe.

If there’s one thing the rampant confusion in this thread proves beyond all doubt, it’s that ArenaNet is doing a poor job of keeping its player base adequately informed about significant changes to the game.

Clear, unambiguous communication is their responsibility, and I pray they get batter at it.

I haven’t seen any further disconnects since my last post, about 7 hours ago, so it seems like whatever the issue was, it’s probably resolved — and probably wasn’t even in ArenaNet’s purview.

Happened just now. Lost pings to GuildWars2.com, but not to Google. Something is afoot, methinks.

Now to log in and see if that Warg ate me while I was away :p

I’ve only seen one incident since my post, and barring further problems, don’t intend to isolate this further, since I’d need to see more problems to identify the source.

Based on what I’ve seen so far, however, I suspect (but haven’t positively identified) an AT&T leg in California that may have been what was giving me trouble.

Good luck on your end, and I’ll be keeping my fingers (and preferably not wires) crossed on this end.

Starting this morning at about 2:30AM PDT, and at no time prior, I’m seeing periodic spurious disconnects from the game accompanied by a “The game client lost its connection to the server” message.

In the past two hours, they have occurred about nine times (and counting), as close together as a few minutes, and as far apart as about 30 minutes or more. They occur whether I am active or idle in-game, and are not automatic logouts due to inactivity.

To isolate the problem, I began pinging my ISP, Google and GuildWars2.com. My pings to my ISP and Google during these disconnects are loss-free, but pings to GuildWars2.com show gaps that look like this:

Reply from 64.25.40.16: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=114
Reply from 64.25.40.16: bytes=32 time=58ms TTL=114
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 64.25.40.16: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=114
Reply from 64.25.40.16: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=114

Because my connection to my ISP and Google remains uninterrupted during these outages, the problem seems to be either at ArenaNet’s datacenter or somewhere near it on the Internet.

Has anyone else experienced this problem, or seen any word as to what the cause may be?

If only there was a way to make the Thief profession more unnecessarily elaborate and cumbersome to play…

Kits Unequipping Themselves

Kits periodically unequip themselves with no input from the player. This happens whether in combat, idle or moving across the landscape.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/BUG-Kits-unequip-turret-ability-lost-after-X-minutes/first#post418370

I can’t really speak to the other issues, but I’m also seeing kits spontaneously unequip themselves, whether sitting idle, in combat, or simply running across the landscape.

I haven’t specifically timed it, but six minutes seems about right. I’m not seeing this on the list of bugs, but it’s definitely a bug.

I am positive they should have at least fixed some of the dozens of bugs infecting this profession along with the nerfs, if not before them.

If you’re standing around waiting for your phantasms to attack, there are probably better ways to spend that time.

Considering you can have three of them out at all times during longer fights, and that you are also capable of doing respectable damage with a good weapon choice, it’s amazing they do as much damage as they do.

So yes, they have a fairly long cooldown between attacks, but stacked on top of everything else such as clone bombing and (my personal favorite) wading through crowds of mobs cutting a swath of ruin with my swords, Mesmers can really rock the house.

I’ve seen the GS2 clone not spawning issue, and wonder what’s up with that.

I don’t tend to use GS3 because it’s such a tiny AoE and does less damage than the autoattack at range, making other choices like dropping a clone a better use of the time and effort I would spend targeting with that tiny reticule (and missing moving targets more often than not anyway).

The rest of the skills are solid, though, and GS5 is amazing for DE tagging. Granted, it does work against your iBeserker’s AoE, but if they’re close enough to use GS5, it’s probably best to use it anyway.

Or break out the dual swords for the shwing-shwing.

There is nothing wrong with the class design. The main problem has to do with bugs in traits and skills.

Using the lowest DPS weapons available to the class, then complaining about low DPS, is making a problem where there doesn’t need to be one. You keep bringing up the Guardian. Would you use Mace and Shield, then complain about low DPS, when you could be using the Greatsword instead? Makes as much sense.

The underlying problem common to all these threads — and they are legion — is that players expect the class to conform to their expectations, rather than learning the class as designed. As long as you do that, you will be miserable and it won’t be fun.

I know it gets said again and again, but since the same complaint comes up again and again, it’s still true. If you want to be successful as a Mesmer, learn how to play a Mesmer. Not a Ranger. Not a Guardian.

Proposing to redesign the class because you don’t understand it isn’t a solution, and it’s not going to happen anyway, because the developers put a great deal of thought into this class, and it’s very powerful once unlocked.

I know this sounds harsh, but that’s the way it is. And the reason I can say all this with confidence is because I used to feel exactly the same way about this class as you do now, right down to the urgent need for a redesign.

I think it’s a rite of passage, and hope maybe someday you can look back on this phase with a chuckle, the way I do when I remember how I threw up my own hands in defeat — before coming back, starting with a fresh approach, studying the way the class is designed, discarding my self-imposed constraints and realizing it’s far and away the best class I’ve ever played in any MMO.

YMMV, of course.

Definitely a bug, and presumably going to be fixed down the road.

I’m also seeing the slower illusions (my iSwordsman needs to hit the gym all of a sudden) and the weapons lingering after dissipation.

So far I’m not seeing Illusionary Leap fail to spawn a clone within its proper range, but it does look like we’re seeing some sort of regression here.

“Don’t nerf this!” = “I think this is strong enough to nerf.”

It seems ArenaNet doesn’t have a problem with portals being used strategically, but apparently there are ways to exploit a bug in the implementation that they do want to fix.

I’m not seeing cause for a lot of fanfare here.

A timeless poem for the ages, an explanation for my unusually jolly Indiscriminate Slayer deed and a cautionary tale for combat strategy involving dodge clones.

Here’s hoping our lyrical sorrows will fade with the passage of time — and a bug fix.

Definitely iWarden, though my iSwordsman does a decent job against most objects while I attend to other matters.

Condition damage against objects would be a welcome change, though.

I was wondering what the deal was with this. I thought I was inadvertently targeting them on the critters somehow.

I suppose they should fix it, because I generally have greater need for clones than killing bunnies, but it’s a fun enough bug that I probably won’t complaint too loudly about it.

Clones are used to distract enemies and take damage that would otherwise hit you. As mentioned, they can be traited to do damage later, and at lvl 65 I can actually kill single mobs with just a few clones (not quickly, but not that bad, either).

However, the majority of damage will usually be coming from you, followed by your phantasms (or the other way around, depending on your weapon and build), with the clones far behind either — though their condition-stacking, shatters and AoE damage on dissipation can be appreciable with the right traits.

iSwordsman, because I roll with swords and he does too. I always open with him, and from as far as 1200 out, he always makes a lasting impression and grabs aggro beautifully. By the time I run up, drop a leap clone and dodge-roll in behind a mob (or mobs), he’s usually almost dead, but has taken a lot off his target and bought me enough time to finish things off with Blurred Frenzy.

I love sending him out to destroy objects and other things while I attend to other matters.

For ranged, I use the staff, and that’s almost always against bosses with AoE spam, because I almost always use my swords for everything else. When I’m doing that, I love the iWarlock, because when I get three of those bad boys going on a condition-stacked DE boss, I am guaranteed gold even if I came in late.

Solid performers both. I have no complaints.

I think illusions are a wonderful focus for a class. It’s also really fun rolling with other Mesmers when we wear the same armor skins with the same dyes.

Hilarity ensues.

At lvl 65, I’m enjoying the Cabalist armor style in darker tones:

I used to be in favor of this idea, but as I’ve played the class more, I’m against it.

The nature of illusions is that they are targeted skills. Being able to assign them to three different targets is extremely handy, and something no other profession can do.

In early levels, where cooldowns are longer, it can be frustrating, but in later levels, especially when illusions start having AoE-on-death effects, having even phantasms die has its advantages, especially in zerg situations.

YMMV, of course. But I think this is one part of the class that isn’t broken.

I think the butterflies are more of a lavender color, really. And I think they’re great.

The motif is perfect for an illusionist class — though I’m never against options for anyone who wants them, if there’s a practical way to implement them.

Considering how big ArenaNet’s to-do list is, however, especially for the Mesmer (fewer broken traits would be nice), along with the obvious popularity of the butterflies, I wouldn’t suggest anyone hold their breath waiting for a change.

I don’t use the scepter, but I love sword/sword. With Blade Training and Celerity, the cooldown on the iSwordsman is 9 seconds, which means they are almost always available during solo PVE roams, and easy to crank out in longer fights.

Granted they are squishy, but they take nice bites and their evasive leaps work reasonably well.

YMMV, but sword/sword is my default, with staff for backup/ranged, and I couldn’t be happier.