Guild Wars 2

No, what we are suggesting is that if you have a headache you should stop hitting yourself in the head with a hammer, rather than lobbying for the sale of hammers to be prohibited.

There’s nothing wrong with the system. There’s something wrong with how you’ve chosen to use it.

What is the point of a “leaderboard” that ends up with hundreds of people all in first place?

And sorry but there’s nothing wrong with the new dailies. They are there to give an extra reward to players who already play matches, and for them, they require no extra time whatsoever. If you don’t want to do them, don’t do them – stop asking for optional features to be removed just because you don’t like them.

Malediktus.9250:

Some people do want to complete everything thought.

The problem comes in with people who claim they want to complete everything but actually don’t – rather, they want Arenanet to be restricted from adding new things so they can claim to have completed everything, or they want limits put in to make it easier.

Malediktus.9250:

Long term achievements like the WvW or high PvP ones would finnaly be worth going for. Also it would mean more people could compete because everyone would reach the cap eventually if they keep doing some dailies.

It’s already pretty much impossible for a newer player like me to get on the AP grinderboard. Capping the number of points you can get per month would literally grandfather in only those currently there and make it impossible for anyone new to enter.

What you are asking for would be like setting a limit on how fast anyone is allowed to run in a race because you don’t want to exert yourself.

The real solution is to get rid of the grinderboard entirely. This will allow people who really care about achievements as achievements to continue doing them for their own sake, while encouraging the obsessive types to find something more productive to do either in-game or outside it.

The dailies provide a way for PvP players to get additional achievement points while participating in matches, their preferred method of gameplay. They do create some problems due to players who don’t really care about PvP coming into matches, but they also encourage some new folks to try the activity and maybe become PvP regulars.

They are new achievements and entirely optional, so anyone who doesn’t want to do them can simply ignore them. And there is no need to cap achievement points, in fact doing so would make the achievement “leaderboard” even more meaningless than it already is.

WickedOTen.3219:

ppl say this map its cheap..and it doesnt require skill, i would say its the exact opposite. this map forces you to know where you are at, what your surrounds are and whos entered and left the fight and what weapon and build they are using. you cannot be ignorant on this map like soo many other maps. you got a ham warrior coming at you bro!?!?! and your back isnt against a wall. Its safe to assume that hes got form of stability trait or skill and hes gonna try this best to make you kiss the sky. and if you both know what you’re doing then its business as usual and then what are ppl QQ about?

The problem is that in many cases you can’t do anything about being killed even if you do have a reasonable amount of skill and experience on the map.

I remember one time I was trying to take the hammer from the other team, who had a thief running it. We ran in and danced around, I got her half down. Then poof, she disappears. I go to near the entrance which seems like the safest place while I wait for the decloak.

She reappears, casts scorpion wire, I get yanked onto glass and down I go. The whole thing took less than a second, and there’s literally nothing I could have done unless I had been able to instinctively cast one of my very few, very short duration stability mantras.

This is the problem with Skyhammer: there are too many ways to get instant kills that cannot be avoided, and those ways depend too much on what class you are running.

You can be verbally abusive all you like but I have as much right to my opinion as you do yours, and the fact that in every post you call names doesn’t exactly bolster your position.

I don’t think Arenanet should impose limits on the number of AP per day for the same reason I don’t think they should remove these new dailies. More options are better than fewer. Extra ways to play and options for gaining AP should not be removed to placate a small number of people who want to have their cake and eat it too.

Being a “completionist” means completing everything. If you don’t want to complete everything, don’t be a completionist – I assure you that nobody really cares one way or the other. Arenanet shouldn’t restrict gameplay options for the sake of obsessive players who want to consider themselves “completionists” but don’t actually want to complete everything. I don’t want them reining in new activities and options when people like you start whining again every time something new is added that’s “too much work”.

Gordok.2146:

You know why most of the people on the board dont care about it?

Yes, I do: because they understand that they are responsible for their own decisions about what and how often to play, and that if new entirely optional daily achievements are added and they don’t want to pursue them, then by golly they can not pursue them!

I care about this because I sometimes get free APs from these new dailies, incidentally, while I PvP. I also care about them because I think that in general principle the company should not remove new, optional, additional rewards because of a small handful of people who can’t achieve any perspective on how to play.

The “achievements leaderboard” is for people who like to waste countless hours grinding. If you want to do that, great. If you don’t, great. But it is unfair for others to have new rewards removed simply because you don’t like them.

Who says I’m not affected by it?

Someone doesn’t become a ‘troll’ just because they disagree with you.

Awe.1096:

In case of dailies, you miss one day and it will leave a scar on the completion list forever.

My entire point is that this is the problem: the idea that there’s some “completion list” that gets “scarred” because you miss a daily.

That’s not what daily activities are for. They are meant to be simple rewards for people who log in regularly. A few people have warped them into something they feel they “have” to do and now they are complaining that they can’t do them. They shouldn’t change or remove game features because of a small handful of people who use them in a strange manner and refuse to examine and change their self-destructive behavior.

I only suggest the leaderboard be removed because I think it contributes to the obsessive behavior and really serves no important functional purpose.

Nobody is judging how anyone plays.

What’s being judged is people deciding they want to pursue a “leaderboard” that only measures grinding and then complaining that it involves a lot of grinding.

There is no area of this game where you can’t get more or accomplish more or achieve more by spending more time. How much time you spend is your decision, and yours alone.

glaphen.5230:

That build is pointless for anything but trolling as I said.

Sorry, but I have a build fairly similar to that, and you have no idea what you’re talking about.

My build is even more defensive than that and I can remove guardians off captured points with it.

I’d be more enticed to buy them if I could preview the move. If that’s too difficult to do, offer a 1-time-use finisher for free (or a very small gem charge) so we can try them out.

Rym.1469:

If you want to carry team, take guardian. They’re always welcome

I will once I stop being able to fairly easily kill guardians holding points with my mesmer – and when guardians start being able to kill me when I hold points. Maybe they just aren’t that good at my level, I dunno, but I can’t remember the last one that soundly thrashed me and that doesn’t say ‘team carrier’ to me.

Right.

I had some success with a 30/20/0/20/0 build and also tinkered with a few variations. Definitely appreciate the condi clear and the extra healing. But for me, a PU/phantasm hybrid stays alive much longer, does only a little less damage, and is a lot less fussy.

There isn’t any easy way to compare, but if I want to go all-out offense I think my short CD 20/20/0/15/15 phantasm build is probably stronger and again has less fiddling required.

Mantras need tweaking.

“Fairly often, I see a post that says phantasm builds are “no skill” builds. It doesn’t feel that way to me when I play. I feel like I’m constantly moving, using every skill on all my weapons, managing which phantasms are up, swapping weapon sets as frequently as possible, dodging and using blocks or interrupts defensively, etc.”

That’s because you are.

Best advice I can give you is to ignore all of these comments. Play what you wish and ignore the negativity and judgmentalism from the peanut gallery.

What’s your build? Just curious.

PS Always play what you want and ignore all the judgmental elitists and those who claim a build is ‘useless’ for this or that without any relevant experience.

Well, in the interest of it being worth continuing to try different things I am experimenting with a mantra build again. So far so good in hotjoin, but well, it’s hotjoin.

I do miss my 30 points in Chaos and PU though. They are pretty addictive.

Two matches today, both 4v5s.

The debuffs need to be increased in duration, especially for repeat offenders.

Andrew.4506:

With the new dailies they’ve made it impossible for me to keep up with the 10+ hours/day players.

But that’s the thing – a meaningless leaderboard like the AP one will always be dominated by people who just put in a ton of hours. This change simply separates the ones who really like to waste time on pointless grinding from those who only liked to do it somewhat.

The problem is the leaderboard itself. Achievements should be something people do as a personal accomplishment, this competitiveness is what encourages all of this obsessive behavior.

Arenanet is not responsible for the inability of some people to make wise decisions about what is and is not important in life – or even in “gaming life”. But they should recognize that some gamers cannot manage their time and not encourage excessive gameplay with a leaderboard that only measures grinding.

Dawdler.8521:

And as I’ve said before in other threads that bring up mantra healing – stability mantra is critical to make other mantras work. Its the only stability a Mesmer has and it so happens that it last just about the time a channel last. In PvE its acceptable to skip it, in WvW its the one thing that make your mantra healing build a freakin tank.

That makes sense, but then that makes the claim of 6 condition removals every ~14 seconds even more unrealistic, because now I also have to coordinate the timing of recharging my heal mantra with recharging my stability mantra.

What do I use to prevent the stability mantra recharge from being interrupted? You get the idea.

Again, the problem with mantras for me is that they require too much investment to make them work well. If I can make them effective with a grandmaster trait and a utility slot that I devote for recharging them, great, but that’s a big chunk of build flexibility gone.

Interesting concept. It’s a pretty steep hill to argue that Blurred Inscription is better than PU in a defensive build, but I won’t knock it ‘til I’ve tried it.

My instincts tell me this will be much more viable in WvW than PvP. The skill level required to be effective in PvP on a char built around 1-second evades means you’d probably be even better on a more aggressive build.

Having been faced with this decision myself, the answer I came up with was: both. Playing a hybrid gives you most of the defensive benefits of a PU setup with much more offense and chase power to allow you to deal better with situations where it is needed.

Great advice, thanks.

In fact, one of the things I am working on is remaining more in control of combat. One reason I started PvP was that I would panic when attacked in WvW, and that’s much better now. But I still tend to play somewhat reactively, circling around and trying to toss a lot of attacks around without paying as much attention to the opponent as I should. I can see this is where experience comes in.. and I also have 3 or 4 classes I really don’t know at all and so can’t really counter from knowledge.

Coulter.2315:

Soloq is hotjoin with better rewards, if you want to work on your ranking on a leaderboard just do Teamq.

See I won’t do that on a new character, I don’t think it’s fair to my potential teammates.

But I do recognize that hotjoin isn’t really of much relevance to tournament play. I try for 5v5s but even there half the time it’s stupid zerging.

I’ll try the bunker warrior thing again. But I find 2 players can take me down pretty fast.. might just need practice.

Actually, it’s a perfectly fine addition to the game for everyone but those so obsessed with AP accumulation that they can’t have fun because of it.

Sorry, but you need to fix your computer or engage in activities where your computer problems don’t screw up matches for 9 other people.

Thanks for the replies.

Clint: I’ll read the thread again and try to pick up some tips.

Deimos: Tried something like that but found it very passive and didn’t do much damage. I could hold a point for a while but couldn’t take one. Again, most of that is likely my lack of experience. I will try it again.

Leeto: No, he didn’t. Blaming me for all my losses is just as irrational as me blaming my team for all my losses (which I don’t do). Sometimes we just lose because the other team was better, and I say “nice try guys” in team chat and move on. And telling someone to “never die” – while simultaneously telling me to run a zerker build, no less – is not advice, it’s sloganeering.

I always find it funny when people pretend that one player can carry an entire team. If this were true, I’d expect to find fairly regular occurrences where a team in a 4v5 wins anyway because 1 of those 4 is so uber he makes up for losing the 5th. Yet not only doesn’t this happen regularly to me, I’ve never been on a team that did it once. So while I’m sure some builds can carry more than others, I reject the suggestion that I personally can make up for a team of bad players.

Others: Thanks for the kind words, it’s possible the tide is turning so I will try to take the losses in stride and keep at it.

I haven’t tried using portal yet, I will have to tinker with that. I can see it being useful, though it does take a precious slot and has a long CD.

Dawdler.8521:

Yeah you’re absolutely right, its nowhere near 4 conditions in 20 seconds – when fully traited it remove 6 conditions every ~14 seconds.

Yeah, in the real world what they say about that is “looks good on paper”. The problem with it is it doesn’t take into account the need to find a time to charge the mantra when you won’t be interrupted, nor the loss of 3 seconds of being able to do much during that time. Tying condition removal to healing also means you can’t do one or the other at the optimal time.

I’m sure there are times and places where this works well, but it’s definitely not 6 conditions every 14 seconds unless you are in a pretty casual situation (in which case you don’t need it anyway). And personally, I can’t find too many builds where I really want to put 30 points into Domination and then use a grandmaster trait just to make mantras less awful to use. That’s pretty expensive.

Just tried it out in a hotjoin. Utterly and completely clueless, lol. I end up mostly flailing with the axe, I block with the shield and usually get bursted down fairly quickly. Whenever I swap to the bow I end up running backwards in circles spamming the bow without a great deal of effectiveness. Also not sure how to handle thieves, mesmers and other evasive/stealth types, nor when to activate my long-cooldown utilities.

I know it’s me, not the build, and I’m sure it will get better with practice, though if you’re in NA and wouldn’t mind showing me a few pointers that would be most appreciated.

Also.. I find the build rather immobile. Ever consider swapping in Warrior’s Sprint?

In other news, I finally seem to be having a bit more luck in the solo queue. My rank percentile is now over 50% for the first time, at least for now. (Though my win percentage is still a bit shy of that mark.)

Thanks clint. I just can’t seem to get into warrior but I’ll give it a go.

See, now I’m glad you posted that thread that got locked. Before that, I might have actually taken what you wrote there seriously.

I’m happy being a mediocre PvPer if being a good one makes me behave the way you do.

Thanks. Funny but I found I died more on a hambow than my mesmer. Guardian I am not sure of. Haven’t tried a spirit ranger.

I’m leveling an engi right now and enjoying it so I may try that next.

People with this attitude are why 99% of GW2 players avoid PvP. I’m serious.

I’ll definitely give them a try again when I go back to WvW. My experience is in PvP so far.

Rezz, your post is full of unrealistic, trite sloganeering.

I don’t buy into these BS notions that I should just pretend that losing is always my fault when it isn’t. I blame myself when I screw up; I blame my team when they act like morons. And 2/3 of the games I play, there’s a lot more of the latter than the former.

“Never die”? “Adapt to them”? Give me a break. I do adapt to my team behaving stupidly, such as when I’m on a team with players who do a ton of direct damage but they can’t be bothered to get the treb, so I go and get it. But most of the time we lose anyway because they don’t do anything effective in the meantime.

I had one game earlier where I was fighting two players on a point at once for long stretches of time without dying. We still lost. I’m not sure what more it is realistic to expect me to do.

I very often try to discuss tactics before the match. 95% of the time I get no response or the tactics are ignored.

I’m sure my whining is a turn-off for some, but this is the only outlet I have for what has become a very unsatisfying experience. At this point I am only still in PvP out of stubbornness and because I want to raise my rank higher. I always try my best – even when trailing 400-40 – but I cannot make up for 2 or 3 or 4 other people behaving foolishly (or not being present, for that matter.)

If there were a build I really could use to “carry” an entire team, I’d love to know what it is.

Thanks.

So my great adventures in PvP today included…

Losing something like 500-40 in a team queue match against a real team when I got paired with 3 thieves, 1 of whom quit in the middle of a match.

A solo queue loss where 2 or 3 of my team decided to keep running orbs when we couldn’t even hold 2 points consistently (and 1 only because I held it).

Another massive solo queue loss where I, as a mesmer with no direct damage, was forced to keep knocking out their treb (despite my asking for help) because they decided it would be more effective to all swarm mid and then stay there after the point was captured.

I was going to ask if it’s better at higher levels, but it doesn’t matter because I’ll never get there.

Enjoy the honeymoon while it lasts. That’s a post I might have made my first week too.

There’s a lot of good in GW2 PvP. But a lot of bad also. Do your best to enjoy the good more than suffer the bad.

pupupuly.8792:

I’m so eager to know these men who make this wonderful game when I pre-order the game.

After these 2 weeks these guy’s faces just make me PUKE

You expect the devs to correspond with you when you act like this?

You’re giving them a reason to lock this thread, not reply to it.

Okay, it doesn’t say anywhere in-game and I thought I read somewhere here that it was 1 condition/boon removed per attack, not 2. Obviously 2 is better.

Wiki says 3.6 with PH, is that wrong?

Good posts, Chaithe and Mrbig.

I think ultimately the only way to improve the situation is to create greater division between how things work in PvE/WvW and how they work in PvP. But I think Arenanet is, if anything, going in the other direction.

Mrbig.8019:

If this game has no reputation as a good PvP game is due to those reasons i mentioned before ( slow balance handling, gamebreaking bug left untouched for months, no rewards, no way to estabilish serious competition), not because playerss want to play “cooperatively and not competitively”.

And I disagree. Because when I have discussions with people outside the PvP community, I get a general negative response that has nothing to do with specifics of the PvP system.

Most people don’t like PvPing because it’s a much more difficult and aggressive form of gaming. And GW2 also has another option that vies for players who like inter-player combat in WvW, which is much more relaxed and has other benefits over PvP.

Pyroatheist.9031:

…it removes 2 conditions instead of 1…

Again I feel like I’m missing something… isn’t it one per “attack”?

Chaith.8256:

What makes you think that the BALANCE needs of casual players is different than the BALANCE needs of top players?

This thread, in which proposals are being made that top PvP players say would be good for the high-end competitive matches but that more casual players say would be disastrous at lower levels.

Chaith.8256:

You keep going on about the ‘needs’ of the top 100 players and how they’re to blame for the negative experience of casual players, because the top players’ needs are being prioritized over the others.

Didn’t say that.

Chaith.8256:

If you can actually provide a flaw in the suggestions where it would only balance the mechanic at a high skill level, but will leave it an unbalanced mess for casual players, then I’m sure the players in this thread will actually listen to you.

I already did (as did others). To reiterate, off the top of my head, the proposed changes to GS for mesmer would be a disaster, as would the massive nerf to thief initiative regen without restoring the traits that were already nerfed before the base rate was increased.

Chaith.8256:

I hope you understand where I am coming from, and I hope you understand why you shouldn’t oppose good game balance at all skill levels just because a known PvPer is suggesting them.

I don’t oppose them because a “known PVPer” is suggesting them. I oppose them because I think they are bad ideas. In response, I am being told these things are needed at the high levels of competition, which is why I believe there’s a difference.

Mrbig.8019:

If we’re in such balance hell, it’s due to their " requests", granted by aNet in the laziest/fastest way.

I certainly agree that some of the tweaks have been very poor, despite very specific feedback. But I also see a lot of disagreement among players about what balance changes would be best, so it’s pretty much ‘easier said than done’.

Mrbig.8019:

Regarding players not playing PvP, this is not wrong: a PvE player not interested in playing PvP should NEVER play PvP, because if he plays arenas for their rewards instead of playing it because he’s interested, he will simply use the fastest way to obtain them withoiut caring about other players ( skyhammer farming, afking in rated matches and all other obscene things we’ve seen in the recent past).

I agree. In particular, adding gold rewards and dailies without addressing the matchmaking problems was incredibly poor decision making.

Mrbig.8019:

In businesses, something that may be the best decision in the SHORT TIME may not be the best decision in the long run.

Keeping casuals as the main source of PvP economy surely is not the best decision anyway.

Right, but the problem is that this game doesn’t have a reputation as a serious PvP destination. Most players in GW2 don’t PvP because they want to play cooperatively, not competitively. And most of the people who do participate in PvP aren’t at the levels of some of the folks in this thread, and making balance changes that destroy their game experience just means the already tiny PvP population will dwindle further.

Arenanet is not a company of idiots. It’s just a lot easier to claim to have simple solutions to problems on a forum thread than it is to actually implement them.

Cool, thanks. That’s one more piece in the puzzle of why every time I try to get rid of the torch in my build, I end up coming back to it.

I understand the argument. I guess I just see an equally viable one, that what happens on the very high end affects only a tiny percentage of players and so it makes more sense from a business standpoint not to orient the game around them.

Especially a game like this one that is intended to be easy to pick up.

What you call “scrubs” Arenanet calls “paying customers”. The top 100 PvPers aren’t any more important to the bottom line than any other 100 players. I’m not saying their needs should be ignored, just not prioritized.

Specifically, making game balance decisions in a casual game that tick off 10,000+ players because of game balance issues that affect 100 players is bad management. Many of the proposed changes in this thread fall into that category.

Most GW2 players aren’t interested in PvP for reasons that have nothing to do with fine-tuning class balance at the highest levels.

Thanks!

Level 15 now. I tried the grenade kit and flamethrower kit and sorta liked both.

But I just found the bomb kit. Now we’re talking!

Romek.4201:

there are not much written guides – dont know why

As someone who writes guides for a living I’ll tell you: lots of work, and very little reward.

I’m confused. I thought the phantasmal mage would remove 1 condition when summoned if the torch is traited, just like The Prestige does. It removes more than one?

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Dispute my claim is your right, however not really reliable, as you never played GW1.

GW1 is irrelevant. Someone said GW2 should be balanced around the top levels of competition, and I’m still waiting for some rationale why.

Cool.

Not tempted to go s/s for the nasty torment?