Guild Wars 2

These are all the armor and accessory stat combinations people have found: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Valkyrie#Prefixes

As others have said, getting some of them from PvE requires the use of karma and dungeon token vendors.

Test it in the mists how?

There’s a particular Necro trait that gives +400 toughness while channeling. This works for Dagger 2, Axe 2, and even Death Shroud 4. The only problem is that while I’ve noticed for the other situations, when it comes to stomps I never seem to be able to tell. It’s either too hectic (getting focused down by 10 enemies anyway) or too quiet (a duel).

If stomping does count as channeling, and it does activate this trait, there’s a particular stability granting trait I’ll be using nonstop in WvW…

Alright, I’m going to hop on now and see if people have given up yet.

Health siphoning is fun. Very fun. That’s why I’m still using it. But it honestly needs a buff or I haven’t figured out a proper trait combination. Eventually I’m going to try 30/0/0/20/20 and 20/0/0/20/30.

Also, because I forgot to report this as a bug. Earlier today a guy turned on LFG while in a PvE zone, then went into WvW. I found him, then added him to my party through the use of the LFG menu.

Problem: I’m on Stormbluff Isle, while he’s on Jade Quarry.

The way I see it, with a 300 man guild, isn’t your influence gain off the charts?

Knote.2904:

I would say it’s intended for healing power to not affect life steal, but since it does for Thief Venoms. =[

You shouldn’t have told me this. Now I’m more upset.

Someone on Reddit did all the tests. My Vampire Necromancer build might get thrown into the trash now.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10wgz2/how_healing_affects_necromancers/

And as I hope to test this out, I find no commanders on SBI Borderlands tonight. We’re getting kinda crushed now; we’re outmanned on at least two maps during primetime.

Hey guys, have you ever checked your achievements tab? Ever looked at the WvW section? Ever seen the multitude of titles you can get from WvW? That’s what I thought.

And I thought people already knew about the Invaders exotic sets that you can only get with karma and badges.

And you can only get a necessary item for crafting Legendaries by buying an item that costs 500 badges.

That enough for you?

Nothing stops you from using local chat. In fact, local chat also helps with keeping team chat uncluttered. As for “taking too long”, I resent anything like that. Anything worth saying is worth saying right. You know how annoying it is when someone says “enemy incoming!” in team chat with no indication as to where they are or how many are there? The time spent making sure people know where you are and get enough details is canceled out by properly using the chat channels to talk to people right next to you.

Edit: I have to stop typing angrily on mobile. The auto-correct is killing me. A perfect example right there.

It’s one of the reasons why Commanders themselves need to start reminding people to join their squad and use squad chat. As for seeing who’s in on the mini map, that’s something we probably have to wait a while for, considering some of the other bugs and issues on the chopping block. I want to see that PvP blog go up!

Yeah, Vexus. If you’re in stealth, it’s as if you’re not even there. The opposing team can even cap while you’re in stealth on the point. That’s the general expected mechanic in any game with both stealth and capture points.

Woah, I didn’t even know that. I’m adding that to the OP.

Yeah, the more I play, the more I realize a guild bank isn’t that necessary. Especially if you have active members. Since you can mail stuff to people even when they’re offline, it’s mostly for stuff like legendaries and expensive things you’re saving for a rainy day. Especially when you’re a bigger guild.

I do lead. A lot. I was just on as Bloody Smith. I’m still saving for a Commander’s Compendium though; unfortunately my small guild is obsessed with spending money for legendaries and maxing crafting for completionists sake at the moment.

Bah. In that case I hope someone brings this to ANet’s attention. I can see no reason why stealth should block captures in WvW when it doesn’t for PvP.

I’m rooting for you Fubuki. If I could get my small band of guild friends to ever start loving WvW, I’d consider moving.

Squad chat isn’t secure, but neither is our Teamspeak. As usual, all you can do is push through and try to out play them in the open field.

Server transfers are still live and free because they need us, the players, to organize ourselves if we want to maximize WvW potential. They can’t force us, though. They’re not doing a great job with incentives, however.

One thing they could do is only allow a transfer from a server if the server you’re transferring to has a lower WvW rank.

Whispers and Team chat are fine for commanders communicating. The latter lets the server know where the big groups are going, so small 5 man parties can figure out where they can be most effective off on their own.

As for the commander not knowing who is in his squad, that’s something that can be fixed. But you can always tell people to join your squad and to use squad chat. The more you encourage them, the more they do it. Part of the whole leadership thing.

And as I mentioned up above, the problem is when there are multiple commanders, and then team chat becomes an entire slog of constant babble, some useful, some useless.

Just tested it. 5 people attacking NPCs apparently doesn’t cause crossed swords. Was following around a group of 5, watched as the 5 attacked a camp. Didn’t see any crossed swords appear. Then I let out one attack. Orange crossed swords.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

milo.6942:

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

I would agree if the glass cannons damage was on longer CD. But when they are on very short or no CD like the current game is than we have a problem.

Speaking only from personal experience using a 100b warrior sometimes,
100b has like 8 second recharge, but it’s useless without kd + frenzy. It roots me and they can just walk out of it, so the “recharge” for my spike is closer to 45 seconds for a traited frenzy. This is about the same recharge of anti-spike skills (such as elixer s on my engineer). I’m not saying your complaint doesn’t have any merit, just that it seems the devs have considered these kinds of situations. We’ll see what kind of balance changes they make in the future.

Problem is that this is not a 1v1 game. You don’t need frenzy if others give it to you. You don’t need kd if others do it for you. And you can hit with 100b with out frenzy or kb if you set up your team correctly.

So while the solo set up CD might be longer, the group set up CD is much shorter.

Also, the sustain just has to be caught once for the Burst to own him. While the sustain has to take time to kill a burst.

And speaking as a Necro. Burst should almost never die to a Necro. We have very limited means of keeping you in a fight. If a burst wanted to run away from a Necro they can do so most of the time.

But as you just said, it’s not a 1v1 game. Just as multiple people have ways to help CC to setup for a burst, there are multiple ways on all classes to help the teammate CC’d to get away from the burst, usually by CC’ing the guy that does the burst.

And it isn’t easy to give other people quickness. There’s just Time Warp. An Elite skill with a long cooldown.

Look, this game is different than others. Remember that. It’s not just that they blew up the holy trinity, but that they also replaced it with their own balance.

Balanced/Sustain builds need stun breakers and CC to beat burst builds. Once bursts use up their CC or quickness skills, they’re boned. This also makes balanced builds great for team fights. As many of you have already noticed, Condition builds give great sustain, often need to slot utilities to help in team fights anyway, and are always a boon to your side during a big battle. They fit into this. Balanced/Sustain builds are often the ones that come in with decent damage and a lot of damage mitigation through conditions and stuns. Most Mesmers, believe or not, are playing this way.

Burst builds need to beat Bunker builds in any control point based game. Don’t look at just RPGs. FPS games like TF2 make a good example. When they turtle up, you send a flanking class to take them out or severely cripple them, like Sniper, Spy, Scout, etc. Burst builds are the ones that try to focus on 1v1s. That’s what Thief does right now, although I think they might have one too many escape mechanisms.

Defense/Support builds focus on survivability. These are your frontline fighters that try to take the brunt of the CC and burst. And then they only get back up again because their teammates come and pressure the opponents off of them. That’s why it often takes two balanced builds or a burst build to take them out. Or, again from other games, you need a flanker to come in and either kill them or severely cripple them. Otherwise you find yourself needing to retreat as their help comes in, which will now demolish you.

And during all of this, despite these advantages, the better player can still win. It’s more of a soft circle of balance than a hard counter system. Balanced/Sustain builds are currently the hardest builds in the game to properly make and use (outside of Mesmers, I think) so that’s why they’re not doing their job very well at the moment. But one thing they were able to help right away was defensive builds having a way too easy time against burst builds, especially in a control point based game.

Warrior, man. Guardian probably has more survival right now, but I like a lot of Warrior abilities. Unfortunately, most people using Bull Rush/Frenzy/Hundred Blades are giving us a bad name.

Seriously people, stop complaining. He’s playing Pistol/Dagger, meaning that his only real damage is from 1, and from stealthing and then using the stealth 1 skill. Do you even know how thieves play?

And then I think about most ranged classes. Most classes with a ranged weapon have to use their auto-attack for damage, maybe one or two other skills for damage, and the rest are utility. And you usually have to trait to make the rest do decent damage too, or they’re just there to make numbers pop up in different ways.

The only criteria I know for sure is that it takes at least 6 players. If 6 players on one team (more than a party, essentially) all get into combat around the same place at the same time, crossed swords appear. It’s one of the many ways ANet balanced WvW around 5 man teams. If you want to sneak around with more than 5 people, you have to pick who gets into combat and who stays away if you want to go unnoticed.

What I don’t know is if 3 people from one team attack 3 people from another team. The times where I’ve been in that situation I’ve been too busy fighting to check the map. But I am pretty sure that if two 5 man teams clash, crossed swords appear.

The stealth blocking capture is probably a bug. I’m pretty sure the mechanics for capture are supposed to the same as they are in sPvP, and there it works correctly.

I honestly feel like it’s something that ANet wants the players to police themselves. And if we did do it ourselves, we’d be better for it.

Today, on SBI borderlands, about 3 hours ago, there were seven SBI commanders. And from what I can tell not one of them used squad chat.

1. Not everyone is on the TS3 server. Some people are playing with friends and are using voice chat to keep them alive. That’s why we have a chat window.
2. Being part of a squad instantly means that all the other squad icons disappear. It helps avoid clutter.
3. Squad chat is not shared. It’s private The only ones that can see squad chat are the people in your squad. It’s essentially a bigger party chat system. Do not turn this off.
4. Being a Commander gives you special rally point commands. Don’t have time to say something? You can place a dot on the map for people to attack or defend, and only people in your squad can see it.
5. Squad chat is in gold. This makes it stand out. This helps you quickly put out an order for people around you that won’t get swamped from the other people in team and map chat, which have similar colors. It allows people in the squad to quickly say that there’s danger that will be specific to your group and will stand out even more than local chat. Especially useful if your squad is trebbing and someone is scouting the wall strength.
6. Currently broken, but if you hit ‘m’ to open the map, find a commander icon, and click on it, you can instantly join a squad.
7. A quote:

TevinC.1472:

You can see who is in your squad by typing /squadinfo, it also shows how much supply they have.

Don’t tell me my fellow commanders didnt know that?

• In addition, because this is broken for convenience and grouping up sake, the best thing a great thing for squad commanders to do is to respawn at main waypoint, send out a message in team chat as to what your intentions are, and wait a few minutes for people to run over to you, right-click, and join your squad. Every time you respawn you repeat what your current intentions are, and wait for your earlier group to respawn as well so they don’t get picked off as stragglers trying to run across the map after you. There are a lot of people, soloists and pairs, ganking in WvW right now. Especially Thieves and Warriors.

Please. If you’re going to lead people, do it properly and responsibly. Team chat should primarily be used to call out an upcoming attack, either one that you’re planning or one that you see the enemy planning.

Edit: I just got off from playing again, and apparently joining squads from the map menu is in fact working.

Edit2: /squadinfo

It’s intended. Just go into the PvP mists, check the vendor that gives accessories, and see the kind of stat point distributions that are there.

I have to wonder, with ArenaNet doing the best they can to lower queue times on a map by increasing population limits, do the maps need to be redone? As it is now, extremely quick zergs are very powerful and can get across a map in a few minutes. If you can’t coordinate a counter zerg force fast enough, then the only option is to play ring around the rosie as you try to quickly recap the stuff that they just took from you. And if they decide to do another loop…

Basically, logistics are needed as a balancing factor. The maps are so small and quick to get around that it’s better to group up much of the time instead of having a number of five man teams giving coverage across the map and skirmishing everywhere. I notice this on SBI where it feels like the winning strategy in T1 matches is having 100% uptime on an offensive zerg. That zerg can then come back to defend as necessary, but they can be back out across the entire map in under 5 minutes.

It feels like a case where ANet is a victim of their own success. And it’s part of the reason why everyone is clamoring for better large group management outside of Commander Squads. With the way it is, instead of 5 man’s running most things, it’s 15+ man’s much of the time.

I can tell you right now, he’s one if those that probably feels like Phantasms shouldn’t be shattered.

If you’re playing range, instead of just kiting, try to find more knockbacks? For example, on days where I’m playing Longbow Warrior and there is more than one S/P thief around, I swap out my stun breaker for Stomp.

Nope. We’re still waiting, last I checked.

I bet Engineer will be next too. People are figuring out burst builds, chain CC builds, constant boon builds, and learning how to combine at least two of them well.

Ok, this is weird to read. Are you guys paying enough attention? When you’re hit by a knockdown, etc. you flop. If you’re hit by a pure stun, you can usually tell by the sound of the hit, the projectile that came at you, or the animation of the person who got right up on you and hit you. Mesmer pistol stun? You can hear it! Thief pistol whip? Hasn’t it been spammed enough for you to remember what it looks like? Oh hey, it’s a lightning field. I shouldn’t have to stop and think if I got immobilized if there’s a purple haze across my screen.

Another thing, especially if you have color viewing problems or disabled stuff like screen shake: Stars or whatever circle your head when you’re stunned. If you glance at your status bar, you’ll see the big purple swirly stun symbol that purposefully looks very different from any other status symbol in the game. Finally, did your auto attack just go on cool down? That means you’re stunned bro.

Squad Chat, Squad Chat, Squad Chat. I pray for the day people start using it. Whenever my small guild gets on, we make it a point to use the squad chat if we join a particular squad.

It would suggest that that might be one of the options they’re currently considering.

If you actually join a commander’s squad, then all commander symbols on the map besides the one you joined will disappear… Even if the commander you joined leaves the map.

Last night, on Henge Borderlands, SBI and JQ pushed HoD off of all encampments by the end of prime time. They owned nothing in their own Borderlands.

Time is running out, but the match isn’t over yet. Let’s just beat HoD already. Both of us.

You just can’t only support. Just like how the DPS people shouldn’t only be DPS; shouldn’t always be glass-cannoning it up, you shouldn’t only be pure support. You’ve gotta mix it up a bit more.