Guild Wars 2

A good defense will net you a lot more rewards from the 3 min(?) defense ticks then the attackers will earn taking the objective. The trick is having a good defense.

I do not think people generally dislike defense, I think it is more about the fact that they are comfortable being with the zerg. The zerg can only be in one place, generally, so folks will be there and not risking PvP at a defense without 20+ people to hold hands with. If the zerg turns and goes to defend, then they will all be there having fun.

Xandax.1753:

I can only hope that world-members will report what they see from their own side and not turn a blind eye because they benefit from cheaters.

I think generally this is the case. The issue is of course that you are seldom there to see it, as they are cheating/exploiting the other servers, not their own.

Raific.4652:

Either way, fighting SF has been awesome. DB just has Off Hour (To us) warriors that neither NSP or SF can compare to so they are not as enjoyable to battle ATM.

Yea this match is pretty much NS vs SF with DB getting a bunch of free points when no one else is playing. Sucks for them.

Yea I found this change to be completely stupid. There now is officially no accountability at all for people exploiting, hacking, or just being alt-f4 trashcans.

All because 5 care bears somewhere couldn’t master the use of the block feature when they received unwanted tells.

I think overall I am pretty happy with the pace of the nerfs. I know folks dislike the constant patch after patch nerfing, but the alternative is like other games where you have these big balance patches that invariably over nerf and over buff, until the next balance patch and the next thing gets over nerfed or over buffed. To me the small incremental changes is a much better system.

Overall I havent really be that unhappy with any nerfs we have recieved, though I do think ANet is missing the mark on a number of changes. PW nerf instead of addressing haste, for example.

I also think ANet really needs to realize that abilities are used across a wide spectrum and that changes to an ability in one build may reach the desired effect, but then totally mess up other builds. The change to whirling axe for example. As a condition build my whirl axe damage is pathetic, I will take more damage using it then I will deliver. So if I steal from a warrior I have to burn it and run in a circle while I try and cancel it, so that I can get my steal back. Before I at least got evade out of it while I did some pathetic damage.

In my opinion they need to look at stat stacking and how it is impacting damage, rather then constantly nerfing ability damage that effects various builds that may not be doing much damage to start with, let alone after being nerfed by 50%.

My only real opinion is that I think they are missing the mark on nerfing ability damage. The issue is stat stacking on glass canon builds. Nerfing damage to the ability means that those with low damage attacks are penalized when their damage was not an issue in the first place.

Stiv.1820:

The culling issue aside, if you are a Ranger then you have exactly 0 chance vs a Thief because you are playing the worst profession in the game. Other classes have counters to the openers but you guys are just hosed. This will hopefully all change with today’s patch and Rangers will be as much of a threat as everyone else.

This is entirely not true. I have great fights with good rangers, the problem is that the vast majority of Rangers are zerging plinkers that have no concept of small group/solo pvp and panic as soon as there isnt a wall/people between them and their target. The ranger in the hands of a good player is just as challenging as any other class.

I think the entire commander system should be scrapped. Allow for anyone to form raids and let people that lead, lead via communication, which is the essential requirement for leading, imo.

The icon’s for the most part just confuse noobs. As someone that WvW’s a lot I know who is worth listening to, who is not, and respond accordingly. A lot of casual or new folks to WvW, or the people that simply have no ability to determine good from bad, do not have the experience to make that decision and suddenly you have various people following competing commanders that refuse to work together.

I think I have more commanders on block then I do gold spammers.

Rednik.3809:

Sooo… if you going with zerg/roam party and constantly score kills/take objectives, you get new shiny ranks, and if you defend, run supply lines and basically grant your server points, you get almost nothing? Such nice idea here…

I am not sure how you drew this correlation, why does one preclude the other? Why can running supplies and defending not count, most of those things count for karma now, its not like the system would be re-invented.

While I am not sure ranks would work in this game, I fail to see why leaderboards can not be included and they can include anything measurable, lots of fun things you can do:

Most commanders killed
Most healing done
Most wall/door repair
Most supplies used
Most kills
Most damage taken
<insert more>

Obed.7629:

I’m not convinced that timing your captures is all that good an idea. If you refrain from taking a camp because there is too much time left in the interval, then you are allowing your enemy to resupply and providing him the funds to reinforce his towers and keeps. Conversely, you are denying your own side the chance to replenish supplies.

I’ve seen improvements take over an hour to complete because of the lack of supplies.

See psirca’s response.

Sabull.5670:

Portaling people inside a keep is not a problem of the portal, thats a problem of the keep with some hole to hide in. If people loose their keeps like that, they just need to sweep it better.

The problem of course is that folks will use this as a cover to hide the fact that they exploited their way into the keep. That said the solution is not to nerf portals, but to fix the keeps/game so you cannot exploit your way into them.

MaximeP.7524:

What I see now is disconcerting, DB only attack NSP but leaves SF quiet … Would there be an alliance between the 2? Troubling situation … More they benefit from the fact that NSP is now less active to crush …

I really wish you people would find something else to cry about.

Last night I am inside SM, taking advantage of a wall breach to destroy siege and have some fun. While my server, SF, is crying in team chat about DB and NS double teaming us and whatever vast conspiracy they feel they needed to dream up, I am standing on the wall watching a huge fight between NS and DB in the SM courtyard.

Gisei.5749:

I’m still on the brink about the anonymity of WvW, but I really don’t want to deal with the MMO kittens that plague every game. As for now, I think I like it anonymous. Fix this oversight.

When the general playerbase has matured enough to handle it, then perhaps remove anonymity.

Or people could master the use of the block feature. How is blocking an enemy any different then blocking the many trolling stupids that clog our chat channels on every map?

The spying argument also holds no water, if they are that serious about spying why wouldn’t they just use voice chat?

In RIFT in order to talk to the enemy you had to log out, roll a character on the opposite faction, log in and then you could whisper them. I once killed this husband and wife pair, he rolled an alt and came to tell me how bad I was, you know the normal drivel. While pretending to be a Chinese gold farmer via whispers, I saw his wife sitting by herself in a quest hub. I ran in and killed her again. His reaction at that moment was likely the most entertaining point of my time with RIFT. I could likely have gotten him banned for what he spewed out, but it was so obviously an act of rage at an epic level that all I could do was laugh… for like two days.

BP can be account bound as soon as JP chests are account bound.

Skribulous.3521:

Isn’t the Invader set the best combination of stats for PvP and WvW?

Then again, I see what you’re getting at. Someone somewhere must really want a +Healing Power / + %Crit Damage / + Condition Damage set.

There is no best combination of stats in the game for anything. Play style, class, build, preference, all require variety regardless if you are PvEing or PvPing.

I would guess that the invader set is the least worn exotic set in PvP. Its far easier to get PvE gear and you get the stats you actually prefer.

Skribulous.3521:

Corvindi.5734:

Well I hope you do this in a way that lets us earn the same gear the dungeon runners will be getting, that will resolve a lot of issues over it.

…Besides the weapons are armor you can already get for Badges of Honor?

…yes because everyone should be happy with the same exact set of armor/weapon, regardless of class and build…

Radiodread.8469:

Did SF get an influx of transfers this week? Your active population is at least twice what you guys put on the feild the last two weeks.

We did get a couple new guilds I think. According to last nights EB chat some unicornlover guy is going to show us all kinds of strats once we are worthy.

I would say it is a combination of things. 1) we got some new folks 2) NSP seems to have lost some folks? 3) our fickle, fair weather PvE crowd doesn’t feel like they need to hide this week.

Zilm.8459:

SmokeyNYY.7841:

I also play a thief and zergs that actually know what they are doing will kill you within 30 seconds every single time.

Ok, how does a 5-10 man group counter this? Forget the zerg argument.

Stacking up won’t help when you have NPC’s and other targets in the cap area.

learn to count
learn to watch for swirls
learn to use CC
learn to tab target
learn to pay attention to combat and HUD text
learn to watch what the pets are doing

There is no question that you shouldn’t be able to stop a cap while stealthed. There is no question that rendering problems give a lot of people far more survivability then they should have regardless if that is stealth from thieves, mesmers or use of portal.

However there is also no question that a lot, maybe a vast majority, of people spend zero effort at trying to find solutions, learning other classes, heck most do not even learn their own class. The game coddles this kind of play to much, entire groups of people carried by the downed system.

I cant wait for thieves to be fixed so I can find out what everyone will QQ about next.

My money is on mesmers. Maybe the d/d ele, kill shot warrior, maybe some good old fashion 100b QQ, it could be anything! The suspense is almost unbearable!

ps. I dont think any of the above are issues

HabibLoew.2590:

I can’t say too much just yet, but we’re doing some work related to rewards and character progression in WvW even now. It will be a little while before we’re ready to talk about more details though. Rewards, progression, and incentives for play are hot topics around the office. We all care about this stuff and once we have some more details hammered out we’ll let you all know what we’re up to.

I think the concern is that while you all care about this stuff, you seem to care more about its implication in PvE, ie the new ascended gear. Forcing all the WvW crowd to grind PvE, assuming that is how it plays out given we know so little at this point, to stay competitive while we wait for you to get ready to talk about WvW progression might be one of those significant points of contention with the player base.

In short, better not wait to long to at least tell players what you have planed.

Kumu Honua.2751:

Or maybe not. What happened to the Dragonbrand night crew?

Seems alive and well.

The hardest hit I have ever taken has been from Kill Shot.

I think folks need to wait and see what the changes are before QQing up a storm about it. Hopefully they fix the rendering issue before nerfing too much as I do feel that plays greatly into the problems with the thief class. Far to much survivability provided by stealth atm

Glad to see you post something besides a QQ, good video.

Its more or less broken, guild ownership should be based on who pays for the most for upgrades, not whoever claims it first.

Looking forward to new foes (Dragonbrand) heading back home so I can game again tomorrow, yay!

I am all for more rewards, soon as Anet fixes it so that most matches are not won by large population imbalances and off hour population coverage. Seems pretty meaningless to feel good about, or celebrate, most (not all) of the wins.

Scootabuser.4915:

He told me himself that glass cannon builds countered him. I used to play a glass cannon thief but found this much more fun and much less situational. Also, 360 + 62s is the damage before I start stacking might from stealth dodging and venoms. My crit chance and damage comes to 34% and 50% making me do double damage 1/3 of the time.

I do think your right however, I’m just not getting the damage I need to take down the tankier/heal enemies quickly.

I sorta get your gear choice if your going to swap between p/d and dd, but you really seem to just stick with p/d, which your gear imo isnt that great for. Your hits are only doing slightly more damage then mine, though granted you will crit more, but my ticks are 50 higher then yours, and I have 5k more health. Given we only use a few attacks that crit, I am not sure it is worth it. Now if you are going to be switching to d/d a lot, then yea it makes a lot more sense to have a balanced gear-set.

Its the new fotm ele build. Running into it a fair bit. Has very high regen, which counters a condition build pretty well, plus a fair amount of DPS. Given that you use d/d as your swap, why didnt you set up the burst and use d/d to finish?

While I find the action of alt-f4, or however they want to do it, to be a pathetic exploit I really do not care that much. The moment they do it, they lose the fight, now they are not only a loser, they are an exploiter to go with it, and they need to load two zones to come back to where they would be if they just died and released. In the mean time I will have moved on and killed someone else.

I do not think it is about repair costs, just people being pathetic because they can.

Brutality.3540:

I’m very pleased by SF’s performance yesterday.

I went to the home borderland for awhile and highlighted why I cannot ever be a commander. The overwhelming desire to drive to everyone’s home and strangle them for not paying attention or listening would be too much for me to handle.

Not sure why, but our home borderland seems to have the most clueless, slow moving, chat ignoring people on our server. SF isn’t often a tactical war machine, but the other zones are never nearly as bad as our home borderland . Average response to enemy at the gates within the time it took to take the objective, maybe 5. After awhile I just have to leave them to it.

To command there you need to be very stoic or use drugs liberally, imo.

crewthief.8649:

There was a ton of QQ about Mesmers at launch man, where you been? We were adjusted…several times. The Phantasm build was nerfed, and it needed to be. I’m still playing the profession and will continue to, I appreciate the concept. And I do feel that there are a couple of other things that could use toning down. Moa Morph should have a shorter duration, maybe 5 seconds instead of 10, and Portal needs to be adjusted for sPvP.

Compared to what thieves have been getting since launch, mesmer is not even in the same league. The QQ train has to go somewhere, do you think all these bads will just suddenly figure out the game and enjoy it for what it is? Nope, in my opinion it will be heading straight for mesmer.

That isn’t to say that thieves do not need tweaks, we do just like every class needs some tweaks, but if you look at this forum and read every thread, most of it is uninformed drivel from people that have zero clue what they are talking about and if all the suggestions were implemented you might as well just make us another players pet. Lot’s of stupid thieves with stupid views as well, just in case you think I believe that somehow most of our forum wont be on that same QQ train.

Kurow.6973:

According to you, backstab takes no skill right now. You must be high. Backstab takes the most skill to execute its full potential amongst all the available skills in the game right now.

An in moving combat backstab takes timing and skill, but that is not how it is most often applied so why pretend it is?

crewthief.8649:

You’re relying on an overpowered profession to carry you in PvP, and you aren’t helping yourself improve any. I’d reiterate WHY it’s overpowered, but that would get me absolutely nowhere with you, so I won’t bother. When the nerfhammer is leveled…you aren’t gonna know what to do. Then YOU’LL be on this board spamming QQ threads.

You might be careful what you enjoy, because imo mesmers are thieves with permanent thieves guild and the moment the QQ train shifts from theives, it will be an over night express heading for mesmers. The only reason mesmers are not cried about as much in regards to the rendering issue is because most people are so confused about which is the real you, they haven’t noticed your not there.

The issue with thief survivability is that currently it is not working as intended due to the rendering problems. Glass cannon builds have much more survivability then they should as a result. The rendering problems are the biggest issue with thieves, imo. It needs fixing ASAP before they go on a continued nerfing spree to fix what isnt necessarily broken. I say necessarily because it might be or it might not, we have no idea how the profession would play if people were actually revealed coming out of stealth.

While I agree with pvp in a jump puzzle, I enjoy it when it is there, and I hope it never stops, the entire idea that you are denying them access to BP is just stupid. Why do you feel the need to justify with a for-the-realm excuse? BP’s are so cheap, who cares? You probably have more impact killing them, causing them to repair more, then they save in BPs from the chest.

Personally I think using siege in the puzzle is weaksauce and is pretty much only done by hand holding zerglets that find terrain and numbers is not enough of an advantage. I wouldn’t be upset if they removed siege from the puzzle areas, but either way it’s still fun and hand holding zerglets with siege pose less of an issue then a couple skilled mesmers.

Getting 500 badges should require pvp, not just pve some puzzle every day till you have them. I have to go farm PvE for the majority of mats for a legendary, you having to farm just 500 badges and run around the map for map completion seems like a lot less effort for you, then me.

Plutonium.1308:

That’s the curse of the winning server, all the bots transfer to you and take up wvw spots. We report and report.. but it doesn’t seem to do much.

There are a lot less bots this last week then before, so I would guess that either our pairing isn’t worth their time, or Anet banned a bunch.

AsteriskCGY.5931:

And now NSP sitting at jumping puzzle too? Just sitting there, killing everyone. At 3:40 in the morning.

Does anyone here freaking sleep? Is there a single time of day I can get ANYTHING done?

Or just screw it, transfer servers, and then whine on your map channel all day?

Seriously, you need to transfer servers as SF is clearly not providing what you need. We have never had an off hour population, ever, so if you need that, then I strongly recommend find a server that does.

Puzzles get camped, it happens, we do it to.

There is no double team, it just works out that way some times.

People alt-f4, they still lost the fight so they can enjoy loading two zones to get back. Until it is fixed, there will always be someone that feels a need to exploit, why worry about it.

Did I address all of your recent posts? Can you dry the tears up and just enjoy the game, transfer to where you can enjoy the game, or at the very least sit in a corner and cry quietly to yourself?

I am fine with them being account bound, as soon as they make the puzzles account locked.

I will be honest, I have no idea what your point is supposed to be.

@Os guild: thanks for helping us take Redbriar from EB.

Gotta love a guild that exploits together.

So easy to counter in that spot, pretty stupid setup. Wonder how many you could kill by fearing them off the back side.

While the upcoming thief nerf might help with the burst, the issue largely is rendering. Until rendering is fixed, so called glass cannon builds, have a built in buffer of survivability that they shouldn’t have. This is a game wide problem, thieves just gain more benefit from it.

As Ruien indicated axe warriors are a beast, I have even run into a couple GS warriors that seem to take the weapon to a different level then the vast majority. Typically I find hammer warriors easy as the attacks are pretty slow, but every once in awhile you get someone that also takes it to that next level of play. Warriors seems fine to me as a thief, just far, far to many GS flailers in the ranks due to its low skill cap. Same as heartseeker with thieves.

Losing is a part of learning. You seem to think you are master of all and the game is entirely at fault for being owned, let’s assume you are correct. How often is this kind of death happening? I will assume that like myself it happens rarely. Being insta gibbed either by a thief or 100b, most often because I screwed up, doesn’t ruin the 1000 fights I have before the next time it happens.

I find it pretty cheesy, as a thief. You shouldn’t be able to block cap or cap, while stealthed, pretty easy fix.

I almost never do this, but the other night I trolled a guild group after one of their members force logged on me about 10 mins earlier. I figure if they want to be exploiters, I can be a troller.

Given they removed the ability for thieves and elementalists to get into 4 of the water keeps using their granted abilities, both classes that couldn’t port anyone else in, I would say getting in using terrain would be considered not working as intended and will be fixed. Mesmer bypassing walls whenever they like would be game breaking, imo and such abuse will likely lead to portal nerf before geometry fix, just like orb removal.

Radiodread.8469:

Yeah, I personally design my entire characters around the large group battles for WvW. Only kittenes are in WvW soley for the 1v1s. Wrong venue.

I think WvW is a venue for all forms of play and when you discount that portion of your own player base, you are under utilizing an important resource. Solo or small groups are far more efficient, understand the dynamics of their classes and the other classes they face, and are much more willing to focus on a task at hand then a zerg is.

Everyone get’s to play how they like, the only kittens are those that think their way is better.

If you are condition build in dungeon I assume you are using caltrops. If not, you should be, imo.

I am a cond spec thief for PvP, but for PvE I switch out to sword/pistol, using mostly power/tough/vitality armor, though I will switch in bezerker gear depending on dungeon and boss.

I think everyone, except Anet, agrees the problem with PW was the quickness and that quickness, regardless of class, is OP and needs adjustment.