Guild Wars 2

It’s a L2P issue then. You can’t always learn the best way to play a class just by screwing around with it for a while.

I play Mesmer and I had no issues with the problems you mentioned — I play Staff and GS. Had no problem tagging things really and killing. My actual problem with Mesmer is the slow run speed. Focus 4 wasn’t enough to get me around all the time unless I did a boon duration build, and no signet for movement speed sucked big time. I also sucked at clearing conditions, but this was offset somewhat just by being awesome at dodging and spamming clones.

Learning to play a class well and screwing around with it for a bit are two entirely different things. Especially when you’re used to a different playstyle (as a Necro), going a different class can be jarring and you can’t just pick it up and play and get the same results instantly. It needs some time and dedication to learn.

Before you balance downed state, why don’t you rebalance UP state first.

Guardians and Warriors — so powerful while walking, isn’t it fine to have them suck while on the ground?

Eles have the short end of the stick, give the Eles a bone sometimes by giving them the best downed state skill. It’s hard enough to stay standing as an Ele.

I’d like to believe the downed state skills are like that to balance out how terrible some of those classes are while standing.

You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Mesmers are already a very powerful class, and you want to give them a super clone generator on scepter, too?

You can already do AOE with iZerker and GS2. Someone mentioned you can also attach Sigil of Fire to your GS. That should be enough. People are saying Eles are spamming lightning everywhere — Mesmer’s GS2 is actually better than Ele’s chain lightning. It’s faster and it can be traited to hit the same number of targets, and gives might stacks to boot. Mesmer Staff 1 is almost the same with one less bounce and is about the same speed as Ele Chain Lightning — so if you don’t want to wait for cooldown of GS2 you can use Staff 1.

Whine whine whine, really do people not try to solve simple problems that have simple solutions?

It’s just the narrator, for crying out loud. Stop reading things into everything.

The “bad evil villain actually is a sympathetic just emo and misunderstood good person” is a nice cliche that I never get tired of. BUT….

I only like it when the bad evil villain is a “good” bad evil villain. Not a “lousy, lice-infested horrible” bad evil villain like Scarlet. When you have crap like Scarlet, the only solution is to mangle her horrible in game for our delight, and never speak of her again ever after.

If they pull the sympathetic bad guy thing on Scarlet in this reveal, I am going to rage so hard that I will not buy anything from the gemstore for a full month. A FULL MONTH. Can you believe that!! I am not gonna buy any gems for a full month!!!!

Stx.4857:

I wish they actually had a story like that planned out.

Its painfully obvious that they are making up this crappy character’s plotline as it goes.

This.

Fenrir.3609:

Ventrue.5731:

ElexOrieN.2130:

DPS = Warrior
Tank = Warrior/Guardian
Support = Guardian/Mesmer

We do have the trinity in this game it’s just that some people fail to realize it.

Agreed, we do have holy trinity

DPS = warrior (stuff dies fast)
TANK = warrior (stuff dies faster so you take less damage)
SUPPORT = warrior (whats better, healing for 2k? or making stuff die even faster so you don’t take 20k hit i nthe face)

In all seriousness though, trinity is a good thing cause it lets people define them selfs but this game just has broken mechanics and it would not work here.

I can find a role within a group and “define myself” just fine in a gameplay situation without the trinity.

The trinity is good for those that seem hopelessly lost without being pigeonholed and highly restricted.

GW2 is not a game where it’s nice to talk about “pigeon-holing” — few RPGs pigeon hole you into a skill set as much as GW2, because your skills are all built into your weapon. That’s some major pigeonholing there, far more than any trinity-based system I’ve seen.

Hekdragoon.1972:

Guardians everywhere, since they can more or less do the 3 roles

Having Trinity officially in the game would force a total revamp of the entire system, so Guardian as we know it today would be different.

I think having “no trinity” is the stupidest design choice Anet made among many bad choices, but that’s just me.

Ayrilana.1396:

The article stated that only one zone has been added and nobody visits it regularly. Well that’s partly false considering that karka queen is done numerous times each day and you have the node farmers. They also ignored that the majority of zones are just as empty as well unless there’s some world boss event going on.

I don’t think an expansion will really keep people busy. All of the “hardcore” players that are instantly bored after rushing through every new update will be bored within a month of the expansion’s release.

Perhaps, but that’s how “hardcore” players are, and they are the outliers and not the norm. A “real” expansion would have something like this:

• 3 new character classes
• an expansion story after killing Zhaitan that would add about 1/2 the length of the original Personal Story to the existing story
• new named exotics, Ascendeds and even Legendaries — maybe Legendary Armor
• A buttload of new skills
• half a dozen new areas on the map, including the Tengu empire beyond the gate

And if I’m lucky, we’d also get:

• A major change to the current skill and trait system, like letting you slot in weapon-specific skills into your weapons instead of having hard-coded weapons
• additional traitlines per class, along with increasing trait point cap to 100 or more
• New playable race – those tengu birdmen
• a story where Trehearne gets mauled by two she-bears

Give us an expansion like this, and we’d get tons of hours of gameplay content. Aside from buying the expansion, many players would likely also buy new character slots to play the new classes (hello! Gemstore sales!)

It would be great!

The only problem is — Anet has no time to do this, because they are too busy doing Living World. Imagine, if Anet had not been doing these kitten living world contents for the past year, we may have had an expansion like this by now.

The problem is that ANet has stated in many interviews in the past that while “They have not written off the possiblity of an expansion” they have said that they like Living World and want to focus on Living World, and that Living World for them does take the place of an expansion because they can do stuff like add new weapons or skills or classes with Living World if the time was ripe to do so. They also said that any balance issues can be fixed by doing those abominable trait revisions that they just love to do (but which just break stuff really for the most part).

I don’t have the link but pretty sure Anet’s dev leads have said at some point that Living World was a viable way to keep new content coming instead of a full expansion.

I wouldn’t hold my breath for a real expansion any time soon, ANet is too invested in the Living World story arc they’re currently doing right now to even begin to work on an expansion. I don’t buy this “there’s a team behind the scenes working on an expansion” rub.

Guild Wars is indeed one of the best looking MMOs in the history of gaming, if not the best. Makes stuff like WOW look like kiddy drawings.

Scarlet is my biggest beef with the story-telling, and you nailed it right on the head — she sounds like something a 10year old RPer would roll up.

And I do get the vibe that Sylvari are getting a little too much developer love. I mean, Trehearne? Than Scarlet? The Syvari feel like some Mary Sue’s personal pet garden.

How would this sound to new players and those who don’t have the time to continuously play the game 365 days a year?

ANet can create a “History Archive” in a city somewhere in the game. This library would contain the historical documents of all the living story content that has come and gone. When you “read” that content an instance is created that brings you back to that content as it was back in the day. This instance can be LFG’d and you could complete it the way you would have completed the original instance.

The rewards for completing could be chucked away — those exclusive skins will remain exclusive to the time they were introduced — but it would give players the option to at least experience the lore that had gone by through a much better way than watching old re-runs on YouTube. Maybe let them do the achievements, too.

For large scale content that requires a whole map — maybe a dedicated map instance could be set up for it that people go into (much like an overflow map)

This would at least make it much easier for newer players just getting into the game (we all want new players into the game, right?) to get ensconced in the lore, and lets returning players catch up and not feel disconnected.

It sounds fair enough to me and is a viable solution to some of the problems raised by “temporary” content.

Yeah, Scarlet doesn’t even make sense internally from ANet’s own lore perspective. A Silvari that graduates from all three Asuran colleges, worked with the inquest, and somehow manages to forge alliances with all the evil powers despite every single one of her plans getting destroyed and failing, and despite being a massive homicidal maniac without a shred of charisma? I mean seriously, lolwut.

Someone was smoking plantations of Suspension of Disbelief Weed when they wrote Scarlet up. Saying she is badly written doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of it.

They should make a “History Library” somewhere and through it you can read through the various content that happened in the past and is no longer available.

Reading on that content creates an instance (that is LFG-able) to the original content as it was when it first aired, minus the skins or whatever, so that we can at least have the option to catch up on what happened before.

To me, the “exclusive gear” you could only get during a living world story arc’s heyday makes sense, but removing parts of the game previously open doesn’t. Why can’t we go back to Cliffs? Why not just leave it open? We didn’t add its POIs and other areas to Been There, Done That, so surely it would be fine to leave it open as it is? It just seems like a very odd design choice and is sort of like stabbing yourself in the foot.

I can understand stuff like Tower of Nightmares being gone forever, but surely new lands introduced should still be open.

Rebound.3409:

When i think about comparing GW2 to Game of Thrones all that comes to mind is….

…Hodor Hodor

I should note that it’s very obvious that the GW2 team (or whoever is leading it) wants to be Game of Thrones. One very obvious clue is the name of one of their old Living Story contents —- Flame and Frost.

If that isn’t a dead giveaway, I don’t know what is. GW2 team obvioulsy aspires to be like Game of Thrones/ Song of Fire and Ice.

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

Random incident one, random incident two, random incident three, none of which give any hints or clues as to why they are being preformed, who’s preforming them, and how they are connected… and then out of nowhere, they give us the villain responsible. I have taken the liberty of calling these incidents rising action, but that would only apply if their rise foreshadowed the conclusion. No matter how you look at it, this is a serious breach of story-craft, rising action should be like building blocks, each one giving a little more, drawing you closer to the truth, giving enough information for the reader to connect bits and form conjectures yet not enough to know for certain.

Let’s just call it as it is and stop pretending: Anet was clearly just doing random things at the start, and only lately ACTUALLY thought to let Scarlet take the fall for it.

That is a far more plausible explanation, and actually kinder to ANet than thinking that they willfully wanted to be that bad at foreshadowing and story-telling.

I don’t think “temporary” is the problem. It’s part of it, the other part is that we have to “grind” for an achievement — thus resulting to burnout. Whatever happens to the “we don’t make grindy games” promise Anet made?

If they want some rewards to be rare, that’s done by the content being temporary. It can’t be achieved again later, which makes its rewards rare. I think that’s fine. Temporary content is necessary; it doesn’t make sense for there to STILL be refugees from Flame and Frost today, just as it would make zero sens to still have the Tower of Nightmares still up and running next month.

If you want a “Deus ex machine” way to relive past content for future players the best way would be to have a “library archive” place where people can “read about” the history of Tyria and open an instance for that content to “relive it” (similar to how Marjory’s helper lets you redo the Tower of Nightmares).

That said I’m not so averse to not being able to see the old content anymore (and saying this as a new player who missed out in a lot of content).

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Super Riceman.8702:

Tremain.4623:

People hate Scarlet like they hate Joffrey.

But Joffrey did more than just show up every few weeks. And even though I hate him, its because he is a well developed villain not a poor attempt at a trope.

. . . well developed. Heh. I don’t think so. He’s a young man for whom nobody had the stones to discipline growing up so now he thinks he can get away with anything. A more well developed villain is Tywin, or Mance. Joeffery is just a little brat with a crown

Even so, people despise Joffery because his actions invoke our emotions, whereas people hate Scarlet because she fails to do so. In comparison, the hate for Joffery is far more akin to love; people love to hate him, love the way his actions twist the plot.

I find it interesting the actor for Joffery isn’t going to do anything else after that role, honestly. While Tara Strong will keep getting work

Also, I’d say Scarlet fails to do so simply because she hasn’t really tried. Which is really an issue with the whole last years’ worth of Living Story. With only a few exceptions it didn’t seem to be trying.

There is no try. There is only do.

Scarlet didn’t try. She could’ve, she should’ve, but she didnt.. That’s all that matters. That’s why she’s a fail.

We all know Anet has been trying to get more people into WvW, particularly trying to transition PVE players to WVW (or PVP) content. This would make a much better way to drive it and give it back to PVE Living World story content at the same time. It would be more meaningful, it would engage players more, and it would keep us far more vested in the results than just ticking an Achievement Point flag. As an added benefit, the NPC sponsoring a team would be a “hint” for players to try to figure out where Living World’s story is going next. How many theories would come up from players discussing why NPC A is asking us to take 1,000,000 supply, is she going to start a war somewhere? Why does NPC B want 1,000,000 people dead, is it because she needs the bodies for a risen army here? Why does NPC C want to defend Towers a total of 10,000 times, is there a place in the world being heavily assaulted right now and does it need a hand to repel enemies? There are so many possibilities and these hints would keep players guessing and wondering what is going to happen.

• Take a look at Event data. How many players are killing the Shadow Behemoth every week? Are there any world bosses nobody does at all? Maybe an ignored World Boss is being allowed to gather his strength, so after several updates of being ignored, that World Boss becomes super powerful and launches a Living World army update to take over his map. Or maybe a World Boss got hunted to extinction; take him out in the next update and replace him with something new.

There are just so many ways to apply this principle of having player’s actions influence the story content. We are players, not television viewers. We want to be actively involved in the content we are doing. We want our actions and choices to make a difference. That’s what Role Playing is all about. We have the technology to make it happen. Anet has the meta data to know what is going on in the world. We can make things like this happen, but Anet has to want it and the playerbase has to want to do it as well.

I would love to see Guild Wars 2 evolve into this kind of interactive story, and it would definitely keep more players actively engaged and coming back for more month after month. I know Anet’s developers and writers can think of even more ways to do this than I did in the ten minutes it took me to write this post.

The main beef I have with Living Story is how it is all just sprung on us, without any real rhyme or reason. Oh, a giant tower came out of nowhere and we must go inside! The Krait and Nightmare court are best buddies now, why? I know that there are other griping about the same things, along with a host of other problems about how the story isn’t told properly, how characters aren’t well-developed, etc. On the other hand, Anet is trying to find ways to get people to be more engaged in the Living World content, (and in the PVP/WVW content) as this is crucial to their business model.

Well, I propose that, to help achieve these lofty goals, one way is to change the way Living Story content is generated. Right now, ANet is actively trying to write Living Story in the same way a Television story unfolds. This kinda works, and has worked well especially in solo RPG games like the best JRPGs of old. However, GW2 is an MMO, and has a completely different format, but most importantly has tools and advantages that no single player game has, most notably: a huge player base connected constantly while playing the game. Why not milk it for what it’s worth?

I propose: Let the actions of players inside the game directly influence where Living World story is going to go."

What does that mean? Well there is this wildly successful card game known as The Legend of the Five Rings. In this game, players take the role of the head of one of several clans trying to dominate the world. The fun part is, depending on what people have been putting in their decks and how they have been winning (or losing) in sanctioned tournaments, the next card expansion and the story that comes with it changes drastically.

For example, early on during one of the World Tournaments, a Lion Clan player won. In the succeeding lore and history, a warlord from the Lion Clan rose to become emperor and this was a central point of the game’s story for many years. But what about those now playing and winning world tournaments? One of the clans, the Scorpion Clan, lost (and badly) and became a fallen clan, their stronghold demolished and consigned to oblivion, its leaders becoming exiles struggling to survive. One clan, the Crab Clan, had a popular deck build that made use of demons and evil corrupt cards. In the next expansion, they became an evil corrupted clan, lost honor, and had corruption and demons built into their clan — all because so many players in sanctioned tournaments around the world were putting demons in their decks.

Why can’t we apply something like this to Gulid Wars 2? The above game managed to create a true, living breathing world with nothing but cardboard. We now have advanced computers with unlimited connectivity between players and the game creators, surely we can implement a similar system. I know the upcoming End of Scarlet story arc is already well planned out for the next several months, but why not apply some of the principles here to upcoming Living World content?

For example:

• Have several optional achievements. Depending on how many times these achievements are made, they will determine how an element later on occurs. As a quick example, look at the Aetherblades Boss Fractal. If you kill Horrick, an achievement flag is set. Now if say 1,000,000 players make this achievement, in the story lore next update Horrick will canonically be dead. You could even play with this in other ways, like for Scarlet, there may be an achievement to “spare Scarlet” or something. Done enough times by enough players, maybe in the end Scarlet doesn’t die but finds redemption.

• Create a choice during the Living World story that a player must make — similar to the choices we saw in Personal Story. The choice must be between two opposite things or results and must be clear to the player. Depending on how many players made a choice for A or B, this data would influence how you shape the next Living World story. Taking the Scarlet example earlier, if more players choose to kill than to spare or redeem her, that’s what we would see in the next Living World update.

• Tie up Living World and WvW even further. Living World achievements were introduced to WvW last season (and it had a big impact, though not necessarily good in many people’s eyes). Why not take the next step? You could have a certain NPC “Sponsor” a server or team. For instance, Scarlet sponsors the Red Team. At the start of each Reset Night, she lays out several objectives to achieve “Kill 1,000,000 players total from Marjory’s Blue Team!” or “Raze Stonemist to the ground 500 times for me this week!” or “Capture 5,000 supply camps for me to fund my campaign!” And if the players on the server are able to achieve these, this would translate to the next Living World content.

DarksunG.9537:

Yargesh.4965:

Races scarlet has used and abused.

Norn I don’t know to me they have so far not been main puppets. What could the Sons of Sanir provide?

Once she infects the Norn story line with her lameness her fail will be complete!

What I don’t get is why people think that learning more about Scarlet will make her character better. If JarJar binks had Citizen Kane as a back story he’d still be JarJar Binks, getting his tongue stuck in things & saying “dellow felegates!”. So what if her back story makes sense? yes the backstory might be interesting, but she’ll be just as annoying, have the same cheesy b-horror-movie crazy dialog, look dumb & have a lore-trivializing power-level.

This exactly. Scarlet could have the most awesome reveal the next Living Story but shed still the same annoying badly written villain always been.

Nothing Anet can do will fix that at this point. I can’t wait to kill her so Anet can try to do something better in the next story arc..

What I’d like to see is a living story that as players actually influence, and not just play through passively spectators. Doo something the way L5R does things.

I’ve never been interested in Living Stories’ story. I only do it for the achievements and loot.

Story is not Guild Wars 2’ forte.

I can’t believe people are actually whining about this. I don’t give a rat’s kitten about skill, I want to be efficient in making gold and I will skip everything I can in order to achieve as much as I can, because grinding is kittened (ANet: “we don’t make grindy games”) yet I still need to make 800gold to buy my precursor. Anything I can do to make that faster is welcome.

As a commander and as an Ele, there are two kinds of Ele I use, Glass Staff and Water Staff.

I prefer having Glass Staff Eles; with them we can clear ACs that are killing our Zerg easily.

Most Other commanders I know prefer Cleric Water Staff Eles to water the gate, but I find clearing the siege with meteors is better. Most commanders don’t seem to know how to use zerker Eles, I think the popular book of commander tactics going around today was written before zerker staff Eles became popular.

Its still nice to have both, but rangers can also fill the waterbot role. So I definitely prefer zerker staff Ele.

This is a tier 1 problem. We never have this problem down here.

Phantom, your quarterback commander isn’t really a commander, he’s the strategist. But you do still put the tag up to assign waypoints right?

You can be a successful Pug Commander without using a survivable commander build. I use Glass Staff Ele to command and dish out a good deal of the damage to turn the tide. I even brag to my command that I’m a walking siege and they cheer when they see their commander showing some bravado.

Most importantly don’t forget to thank your team when you capture a keep or tough objective, or when you wipe the enemy. I don’t know about not taking risks… I wipe here and there but I also wipe the enemy, and I don’t lose people.

When in map chat ask for eyes on the towers and other points, and ask for someone to keep an eye in enemy Zergs. Normally there’s a good thief roamer or three around willing to scout for you.

Good point on running to karma train, that’s what most people are there for. If the enemy Zerg is tough, just karma train objectives. Keep your own siege and throw your own siege. Some people will throw for you, ask if you want them to do it for you, otherwise do it yourself. If you run out of siege you can ask and people will usually send you some by mail if you are out in enemy territory and can’t restock from the siege merchant.

Overall I’ve always had good experiences commanding pugs. I don’t have a wvw guild either, I am just there to help when tags are scarce and things need to get done. Remember that if you want your server to win, you need to keep the ppt up so flipping in the karma train is probably your most important task.

Mustafa.7684:

A legit question. After season 1 and the winter holiday’s Ehmry Bay seem to has lost many players to wvw as they are burned out of it. Just wondering if any of your servers are also experiencing this.

Its also to prove a point to my kittened friend (you know who you are)!!

Eredon Terrace never dies. If anything, we got stronger now after season 1. We definitely have more pop coming on today than we did last month.

I think people were inspired by our heroic efforts against insurmountable odds.

mahariel.4981:

Lupicus adapts.

In phase 1 melee he uses scream, grub and kick attacks
In phase 1 ranged he just uses scream and grub attacks

In phase 2 melee he uses his AOE projectile blast, single shot lupine blast and swipe
In phase 2 ranged he uses his AOE projectile blast, single shot lupine blast and shadowstep

In Phase 3 melee he uses his life suck, AOE life drain, single shot lupine blast and spray
In Phase 3 ranged he uses his life suck, AOE life drain, single shot lupine blast, spray, bubble and shadowstep

I might have some of the ranged mechanics wrong because I never range, but I think I got it right.

He also doesn’t do these in a set rotation, though the general rule with some RNG exceptions is that he won’t repeat the same skill immediately after doing it once.

Lulu doesn’t adapt. Lupi just does things at random and changes mode when you hurt him.

If you want adapt, I’d like to see a boss that checks to see if his attack hit. If it doesn’t, he tries another attack. If it hits, he gets positive reinforcement to do that attack again. If bosses had AI like this, no player would ever finish a dungeon.

Imagine if Mai Trinn just told Horrick to release the cannons every second, because that’s whats most effective? Imagine if Lupi did projectiles in phase 2 while always walking closer to you? Our never survive. That’s what an adaptive AI would do.

Boss AI in gW2 isn’t like that, it’s the same as the AI back in Rockman 1 where Iceman jumps and shoots three icicles of different heights. Once you know the pattern, all you do is work with it and you win. That’s the kind of AI GW2 has; bosses are designed to be puzzles you figure out, once you do it’s easy to follow the pattern and beat them.

Phantom.8130:

this delves into a few problem areas with MMOs in general. the difference between a real challenge and an artificial challenge. mobs in PvE usually constitute an artificial challenge. that isn’t to say that PvE can’t be difficult, it usually is. however the difficulty is due to this artificial challenge. a real challenge revolves around approximately even terms. basically, both sides working within the same set of rules. before MMOs came out, NPC enemies in RPGs were built exactly the same as the player characters. the same rules and standards, the same abilities and spells. so if you fought a monster that was equal level to you, it would be a very difficult fight that you weren’t assured to win.

with MMOs, and most video games in general, that dynamic got tossed completely out the window. NPC mobs began operating under their own custom ruleset. they were given more HP and better damage.

That’s absolutely wrong. A decade before MMOs were invented games on the SNES like FInal Fantasy had monsters with 100x the health of a player.

Well sorry! Guess you need to clean up after the BG troll then.

But seems you don’t understand the feeling of fighting against hopeless odds. If you’ve been with BG since release, that means you have never seen how its like on other servers at rock bottom, right?

You admit you have a numbers advantage, even if it “that big.” That alone is already a big deal, when you are on a server that can’t even field 50 men on a single map, and are fighting multiple 60 men Zergs, it’s not just a matter of losing some towers and keeps.

I’m sorry if I trivialized your efforts, but at the same time there’s a level of difficulty down here at the bottom that you probably don’t understand. That’s fine through; some day I’d like to transfer over just to see what it’s like, but too invested in my server at the moment to do so.

This is something that’s been bothering me. I play all facets of GW2 — from fractals, dungeons, wvw, pvp, loving world, activities, jumping puzles, and just bumming around. About the only thing I don’t do is play the TP.

Why is it that of all game modes, WvW seems to be the most expensive (you spend on siege and quartermaster upgrades) but it offers next to zilch in return? Loot kinda sucks in wvw (chests have lousy contents, and even if I kill about 50 people a day that’s just 50 bags compared to a dungeon run where I can grab about 30 items of loot to salvage per run on top of the gold bonus).

Should there be more money in WvW, or is there a reason for this game mode being so impoverished?

Dungeon runs, no doubt. Everything Raptor Cheese said, though my best rotation would be:

ac1, ac3, cof1, cof2, hotw1

That should net you about ten gold a day.

Then spend the rest of your time in Frostgorge Sound.

Oh, if only wvw had such nice rewards I wouldn’t need to play anything else.

I’m bringing up this old touchy topic as I just recently started seriously going for my Legendary.

The amount of kitten you have to go through to get the mats for the gifts is annoying, but I’m not too concerned and I know I can do it within a month or two. I am already about 40% done with all the mats and requirements as of this writing.

I’m more concerned with the Precursor, which I am reading so many horror stories about. What’s the best way to get one? It seems I should just play normally and either it drops into my hands out of thin air or I reach the 800 gold I need to buy it off the TP… Whichever comes first.

That said, I find it utterly absurd that I need to spend 600, maybe 800 gold to get a precursor. I can probably grind that amount in six months or so, though.

Is there any news about precursor crafting? It’s ridiculous that Anet has known about this problem for about a year now judging from old topics I’ve read about this issue. You’d think a solution would have come up by now. Can’t Anet just do a 1000 Badge of Honor, 1000 pvp glory token, 1000 shard of zaitan and 1000 fractal relic recipe to dump in the mystic toilet for a precursor? That kind of effort seems legendary enough for me, covers all the game modes to show your mastery, to replace the unending tedium of grinding for 800 gold.

I know people who want to transfer to Blackgate. I think they are fools, for the reasons the TC mentioned, and then some.

I mean, map completion? Seriously? You can do wvw maps easy even on Bottom tier servers, I know I did.

You can guest to Bg if ever you are lonely in pve on your own server; it was actually harder to finish malchor’s leap than it was to do Eternal Battlegrounds, thankfully guesting saved the day.

Wvw is also more fun when you’re not from an overwhelming advantage. Fun is when you are fighting a challenge, not when you are winning by face rolling. That’s amusing, but only for a little while, then it gets boring.

And yeah, queues? Never heard of ’em.

Wish they were like the pact victory token claim stub you get for clearing story mode.

nexxe.7081:

Shadey Dancer.2907:

As has already been pointed out these types of threads pop up occasionally, as people only want the easy option. Its exactly the same as the thirst slayer achievement topic that surfaces from time to time, ’ ohhh booo hooo, I dont want to press the mouse button 100, 000 times, how can i do it the easy way’—-simple answer is, you cant, work for it!

The problem is, that you’re trying to justify an inconvenience, by saying it’s challenging. On the contray. There is nothing challenging about waiting, literally for months, for a chance at getting a POI.

A lot of fanboys in here are forgetting, that it was easier during the first few months, before they changed WvW into a ranking system. Now it’s much harder, because the matches are way more balanced, and it comes down to a chance of RNG, and not skill.

I just did my map completion this month. Oh it’s so hard, right? I’m also on Eredon Terrace, which is a low pop bottom rank server in wvw. I got the POIs and Vistas anyway. I even became a commander and led people to Stone Mist myself, taking things into my own hands and not just “waiting.” There are also websites and android apps that tell you when your world captures a specific keep or tower, so if you are really having trouble those will tell you exactly when to go to WVW.

It may have been easier during the first few months, but its STILL easy to do today, even In The worst of conditions (low pop server)

Yeah, twice the skills, longer cooldowns, slower attunement swapping cooldown with twice the number to choose from, smallest health pool, lowest armor, slow auto attacks, and yes needing to press more things to achieve the same result as other classes.

That pretty much covers it.

Being an Ele player makes me want to brag and become elitist, to be honest. Eletism at its finest.

If you intend to pug, you need to max damage as that is what people expect in dungeon runs.

Or you could put in the LFG text “casual run” or “fun run” if you want a balanced build.

You can do balanced builds too in secret and hope nobody notices or cares. Just make sure you don’t join LFG groups looking for “speed” or “level 80 only” or something of the sort. Those groups are expecting fast, efficient runs.

As for me. I’ve been running full zerk Glass Staff Ele for the longest time in dungeons, fractals and wvw. I don’t change gear and only respec traits when I want to experiment or try something different. For all intents and purposes, Full Zerk works great for me in all formats of the game. But not solo roaming.

From her annoying voice, laugh and face, to how Mai Trin Boss Fractale comes out like 80% of the time I run Fractals, to how she is getting the super developer’s love treatment that only used to be the domain of Trehearne.

I hate a Scarlett, I hate Trehearne, I am thinking I may be a Sylvari racist.

My deepest desire is to thrust a big, rust-encrusted tetanus-ridden blade into each of their hearts, and when I do I get the Title “Vegan Hater” and receive two Incinerators, one each to burn their vile corpses, as a reward.

Then D/D Eles wielding twin Incinerators will once again dominate Tyrian. Huzzah!

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I can only dream.

I have been running full zerk Ele for a long time in wvw and kill dozens of enemies before I ever die. I’m not a walking corpse,, the enemy is.

As for switching to water for piercing shards, I’d rather not because that’s time away from fire attunement where I could actually be doing damage with lava font and fire ball. If you’re running lightning hammer you could do this, but if you’re doing fire staff it’s not gonna work.

Celestial gear is nice, I’ll try that someday if I ever get the mats and crafting to make it. First though I need to make a bifrost.

I wish I didn’t need 250,000 kills to get “Ultimate Dominator”. Man, it’s gonna take me years to get that title.

Saporian.7193:

Just stating the facts. I see that the community is still hostile and as fragile as glass.

You’re not so hostile and fragile yourself.

Try checking the tone of your initial post and tell me you didn’t deserve that kind of scathing reply.

I’ve often felt this, was in pvp the other day and dropped in one hit, and it wasn’t a thief backstabbing. Doesn’t happen all the time, the times it happens I’m like, wow! Then the guy who did it says he has a rune combination that lets him do it.

Of course he won’t tell the combi.

I ran into this kind of explanation as well regarding the invincible warrior in wvw who says she gets mad regen from a certain combi of runes.

I have looked high and dry for any hint of this legendary combination, but never see it anywhere on the web. I can only conclude its a hack and not a rune combination.

What is this I don’t even.

Kaos.9162:

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that some people balk at the concept of having to do WvW, and then don’t even try. Worst case scenario, you wait until your server changes colors. Now that they changed how the matchups work, it’s pretty rare for one server to be red two months in a row like it used to be. As other people have said, as long as you don’t try to do it all at once like you might with a PvE map, it’s really not so bad.

The real bottom line here is that PVE players are so afraid of PvP that they don’t want to touch it with a ten foot pole.

Seriously people, the problem is that you even bother to distinguish between pve and pvp players. I’m not a pve or pvp player. I’m a Gamer. I do everything in a game at least once if I like the game. I try new modes. I expand my horizons. I’m not stuck in this “PVP vs PVE rut”.

why shouldn’t it require you to get wvw maps? i mean do you have any clue how many more badges of honor pure pve players(achievement points are often drastically higher on pve players) get over pure wvw players? it’s seriously exponential what the difference is because of the fact that achievement chests give 300+ badges of honor. (the drop rate of badges of honor in wvw is so negligible you’d think unicef would be doing a commercial to raise awareness) and how does that even make sense?
before you go and say that they’re not connected; how many wvw players do you know that have 100% map completion? i know maybe a few.

I’m gonna argue on this point, though. Pure wvw get far more badges of honor than pve players.

I passed 300 badges of honor in a week of playing wvw. I have amassed probably 4000 already by now from playing for about a month of wvw. I spent a lot of it already on ascended gear, gift of battle and armor for looks.

The one real issue I have with wvw is what a big money sink it is. You make almost no gold doing wvw and it costs quite a bit to keep those omega siege golems coming and upgrading your keep. I still have to do dungeons (a game mode I get bored with) just to make money.

Wreave.2138:

MokahTGS.7850:

I don’t understand why people feel that they should be given something that they don’t deserve. 100% Completion is just that…completion. Asking for the WvW parts to be taken out is the same as asking for vista to be taken out.

The problem (as has been quite clearly stated already), is that WvW doesn’t belong in a PvE achievement. The issue is that it doesn’t belong in the meta. And if that weren’t obvious enough, ANet has said that already (see the quotes from Colin in my OP). Colin is quite clear — the requirement is there to force players into the WvW part of the game in the hopes that some of those players will stick. And he’s willing to replace it (in other words, the requirement doesn’t naturally belong in the achievement)-- if there’s some other thing that will achieve the same goal.

The requirement simply isn’t about completion. It’s about converting PvE players to PvP players.

But the thing about humans, is that a lot of don’t being pushed into doing stuff we don’t want to do. Some of us in fact in fact get really kittened off about that. And a kittened off customer is just not good for business. And that’s something that Anet should be paying a lot more attention to.

Again, Map completion isn’t a PVE achievement. It’s a GW2 Map exploring achievement. Your entire argument falls apart on this false assumption you make.

As for Anet kittening customers off… You need to take a look at yourself if something as insignificant as this is kittening you off. Chances are, it isn’t even a big deal, because if it were, you’d have stopped playing already. Since you’re still here, it means you are actually ok with the game, more okay than not okay, and all you are doing now is some self-entitlement whining.