Guild Wars 2

Hey, everyone!

We are still recruiting and are always looking for interested parties. I’ve had a pretty busy past couple of weeks, but I really wanted to remind you all that if you’re interested, don’t hesitate to contact one of the officers! If the one you initially contact is busy, don’t worry about talking to one of the others! There is a reason I list them all, so make sure to take advantage of that!

Either way, missions start tomorrow. Looking forward to super happy funtimes with you all.

Phew, been a good weekend, but really busy. We’re still recruiting, and if you’re around SBI and are interested in the brand of wine we’re selling (It’s vintage!), give our officers a chat! They’re cool cats and we’d love to hear from you.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

What’s funny is…

1. We have a bunch of “what if we had to kill all the mobs / we should be forced to kill all the mobs” threads.

2. We have a bunch of threads complaining about how excruciating the Dredge fractal is.

None of the people who are responsible for #1 understand that the consequence is #2.

This is a pretty incredible realization, hah.

Babychoochoo.5690:

(…) Regardless, if I may ask, why is that a problem?

For the same reason ANet doesn’t let light armor classes use medium armor or heavy armor models: they want players to, at a glance, be able to identify a player model as some range of possible classes.

Tonight is bounties and rushes! And like always, we’re always welcoming new members who like the apples we’re selling! If anything in the OP sounds good to you, don’t hesitate to contact one of our officers to chat it over. We’d be happy to talk.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

A lot of these considerations, unfortunately, don’t make a lot of sense.

We should consider the following realities:

• A damaging condition in the Power line both hurts condition builds that want it and limits power builds that don’t want it
• Having it force power players to use LB to get the burn may have some validity in PvP, but drives this trait further into the mud for PvE where LB is inferior DPS to Dagger

Consider the following instead, Jon:

• Move Withering Precision from Curses to Spite Grandmaster
• Move Dhuumfire from Spite to Curses Grandmaster and DON’T change it
• Move Terror up to Grandmaster
• Drop Lingering Curses down to Master
• Move Weakening Shroud up to Master and DON’T change duration
• Move Spectral Attunement down to Adept

Withering Precision: Deal 15% more damage to foes suffering from Weakness.
Siphoned Power: Deal 10% more damage when you have over 90% HP or 90% Death Shroud.

This does the following things:

• Conditionmancers are forced to take either Terror or Dhuumfire, but they can’t have both
• Dhuumfire is a cover condition for other conditions and can have longer durations depending on condition duration investment, but fear doing damage is also very powerful. From this position, you could possibly even buff Dhuumfire to bring it into line with Terror since they occupy the same trait spot on a bar.
• Weakening Shroud is kept valuable with its new synergy with the new Withering Precision, which is now in the Power line
• Withering Precision goes to the Spite line and actually provides a dps boost comparable to Close to Death with different conditions, which actually helps PvE necros too
• New Siphoned Power has synergy with Death Shroud because you can activate it when health is over 90% and keep it there safely, and this trait significantly helps power Necros in both PvP and PvE to actually be worth packing over condition variants

I’m glad you’re happy with the way you look, so don’t take this to heart, but I find both the items and the combined armor set you’ve chosen hideous and they’re totally not worth the price tag (particularly considering the lack of proper dye control).

You can tell who plays PvE / WvW / PvP by how they arrange this list.

Might
Fury
Aegis
Vigor
Stability
Protection
Regeneration
Retaliation
Swiftness

Let’s be honest here: the mobs have obscenely low HP to compensate for having the downed state given to them. It doesn’t really make them harder or take longer, and because of the option to stomp them, it gives the player some play/counterplay options against the mobs (ie. Do I AOE the downed mob when his buddies run over to res? Or do I stomp to simply get rid of it?). This also gives stealth added value in PvE beyond just for skipping because you can stealth stomp (which is rather fun, I’ll admit). This sort of mechanic would be cool in dungeons for some variety, though I definitely agree that not everything should be like that.

That all said, it does kind of suck for condition users because when they get downed they lose all of their conditions. Conditions need a lot of love in PvE, but that’s a battle for another thread I’d say.

(Multi-post to fix the broken thread)

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I feel like I’m being sucked into the flamethrower guru thread all over again.

Sorry about that. I don’t much care for Guru, but I visit this site regularly.

zencow.3651:

Damage difference is so enormous and obvious most engi players default to grenades. I’ve never seen a PuG use FT even.

Shame, but I guess it is what it is. Thanks for letting me know what to expect when I eventually level my Engineer.

FT has a blind too, and packs a pretty high uptime fire field. Also, are those FT auto attacks per tick (since it ticks multiple hits)? My gut also says that with the 50% chance to cause vuln on a crit, that FT would maintain a much higher stack of vuln on targets than nades would (though this could be a wash since each nade throw chucks several grenades). Flamethrower also maintains a lot of might on its own assuming Juggernaut and has a +15% damage trait (I’m assuming your FT numbers have this, though). Is there any documentation of the dps differences of these in the current meta anywhere?

I also just realized that this is probably the wrong forum for this discussion, but I’d rather talk to you cats about it than the angries in the Engineer subforum.

Hey there Gruk:

I actually don’t really peruse this forum all too often, but you seem like a pretty good fit for [VZ]. The link to our post is in my signature, but suffice it to say that we’ve been around the block since release and have been on SBI the whole time, so we’re pretty vetted into the community. We’re not huge, but we’re primarily a PvE guild that runs dungeons (I do AC / CoF every day without fail, and more if I can be convinced into it). We’re good players, though we’re also casual, which means that we’re not going to cut out your legs if you mix up a few times, but if you’re willing to learn I think we’d definitely be able to help you out. That’s one of the nice things about being in the guild and it being pretty casual; we are basically immune to being let down (which sounds like it’s pretty important to you). We also use TS if that’s your sort of thing, so that can assist in the learning process (we don’t have to type!). It’s not a requirement though.

If that sort of thing sounds remotely interesting to you, you can contact me in-game via mail and I’d be happy to talk to you more when we’re both on at the same time. I will probably be home around daily reset tonight, and will be on for most of the night.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

New week and new fun stuff to be doing. Seems like it’ll be a pretty average week for us, but going to be fun regardless. Tomorrow we have challenges and puzzles, and Wednesday brings bounties and rushes. I don’t think we’ll be having any special super secret event this Thursday like the past couple of weeks, but who knows? Either way, if you like what the OP presents for a guild, don’t hesitate to let one of the officers know. We’d love to chat with you about it.

I’m actually curious now that it shows up here… How much worse is the FT ZerkerScholar Engineer than Nades ZerkerScholar, or is it a playstyle thing, or what? Engineer is the only class that I don’t have at 80, and FT sounds like it’d be a lot of fun, but it’d be a shame if it were that bad. Something about spamming grenades makes me not want to level my Engineer up at all, but I’d also of course want to be as close to optimal as possible.

I like what this does for PvP and WvW balance, but I don’t like how zero consideration is given to what this does for PvE.

I watched the Ranger stream today and Izzy talked about condition builds being viable in PvE and dungeons like that was really a thing. I am sure ANet plays GW2, so I am sure they have, at least on occasion, played a dungeon with non-ANet players. As such, I’m confident that you guys understand how bad condition builds are and how bad many classes are in general for PvE. Little to no consideration is being given here to balance in that vein in PvE, and that repeated disregard for an entire branch of the game is pretty unfortunate.

For instance, you keep talking about how Guardian power builds are “weak”. If you pay attention closely to dungeon runs, you’ll find that Guardians already do among the best raw power-based DPS of any class in the game right up there with Eles and Mesmers packing FGS. And here you are giving them a free bonus 5% damage in a trait that already gets used frequently in PvE? That makes them even more invaluable to runs. Where are the Necromancer power-build buffs for PvE? Make Close To Death (Spite XII) give +30% damage in PvE only, make Dhuumfire a 6s burn in PvE instead of a 4s Burn, make Siphoned Power (Spite 25) give 5 stacks of might instead of 1 and make its threshold 33%. Engineers in PvE actually see some love with that Modified Ammunition change, but it’d still be nice if they could get a bit more. Juggernaut could use some PvE love, among other things. The poor Thief is demolished by this patch in PvE, seeing as now it can’t layer stealth for initiative and it hasn’t gotten any positive dps or support buffs (it got nerfs instead actually) to compensate.

I really want to emphasize that while these changes are great for other formats, PvE is just being left behind and the dungeon meta is, quite frankly, disappointing at the moment. You guys (ANet) really need to put some thought into how this affects them and what you can do to improve the build and class diversity used there.

Seriously, it’d be nice to actually have a reason to use my Necromancer in a dungeon for once. You could flat increase the effect of condition damage in PvE by 50% and it still wouldn’t compare to most power-based builds.

People are just messing with you, stale.

Wethospu.6437:

Spam something like “KILLING EVERYTHING, LEAVE IF YOU WANT TO SKIP!!!!” few times on party chat before going in.

People are stupid. Speedruns also have the same issue.

This is the truest advice that can be given to the issue posed in the OP. People are dumb, tell them repeatedly what you want as they join, and get rid of them if they don’t listen. That’s all can be said.

Spork.2375:

What other skills go on full CD when interrupted?

There are a few Mesmer skills that do this, at least one being on offhand Sword, and a few others from assorted classes I can’t immediately recall.

Of course the path is easy, but that doesn’t make it worth it. I used to actually run this dungeon because kegway was hilarious and totally redeeming for how unenjoyable the rest of the dungeon is.

Play CoF first if you’re L80 and are new to dungeons. It has a few events that require players coordinate, but they’re still easy, and this gets you into the feel of doing this to prepare you for tougher instances in other dungeons. This will also get you the gear you need, which is berserker’s gear (+Pow/+Prec/+Crit). As soon as you can afford it, get yourself Scholar Runes and train yourself to dodge so that you can stay above 90% as much as possible. CoF also will teach you simple tactics like LoS, stacking, skipping, and so forth. These apply everywhere else in varying degrees, so they’re good skills to know.

Once you’ve done all that, branch out and try new things. Let people know ahead of time that you’re new to a dungeon, and don’t join experienced groups. Please read the LFG listing before joining. From there, practice and practice and you’ll get better and eventually become experienced yourself.

Good luck!

I buy my gems with real money and I still wouldn’t buy a single BL key with them. I understand the allure of gambling to some people, and if you’re paying to play the gamble boxes, then by all means, but I prefer to pay money for something I know I will get. To show ANet that, I bought a couple of those F&F skins they put up. Hopefully they do it more often so I can continue to speak with my wallet about what they should and should not do.

Some of the ideas in the OP aren’t bad. It might be cool if other types of skills were rewarded in the fight with GL. It would also be cool if he were a little more intelligent to boot and used his melee attacks more frequently if you’re in melee range and only used his projectile attacks on those players at range. I also think the #1 thing that could be done to cheaply buff him would be to make his projectiles unblockable (though this would require ANet fix the red circle bug that plagues his p2 AOE projectile launch).

Very successful Halloween Party!

We played a lot of fun minigames, and I paid out an obscene amount of gold to guild members who participated (and even more to those who won!). If there’s lots of interest, we may do something like it for Wintersday as well. Let’s face it, who doesn’t like free gold? Hah! That said, the week has been a lot of fun and we’ve made a lot of great friends and gathered a few great new guildies. We’re always looking for more, though, so if you’re in the area and like what the OP talks about, give us a shout-out! We’d love to chat with you about it if nothing else.

Cheers!

Tyler Chapman.1832:

(…) and it will always give a full cooldown when interrupted because its one of the best skills in the game.

It’s unacceptable that the players just have to “know” these things about a skill. There absolutely must be some tooltip notification on skills that go on full cooldown when interrupted. Since this behavior is intended by the devs, you need to put that on the skills themselves or no one will know what is intended and what isn’t.

This is priceless. I was laughing so hard at the office I actually had to explain to a coworker what made this so funny so he’d leave me alone. Oh man.

OP is a winner because it is called the Toxic Alliance. (lol)

Hey everyone!

Very successful guild events last week, and we also had our first guild party in SBI LA on last Thursday. I gave away over 50g to guild members who participated in the event, and we had a lot of fun, and as I can earn money, expect us to have more of those things!

This is a new week with lots of new stuff and fun times. Challenges and Puzzles are Tuesday as usual, Bounties and Rushes will be Wednesday, and we’ll be doing a Halloween party shindig on Thursday! Who knows what I’ll be giving away then!? We are always looking for newcomers, too, so if this sort of environment sounds like what you’re after, contact one of our guild officers and talk it over with them.

Cheers!

I can understand not reviving defeated players. Dead is dead and it can be a waste to res them. But that said, if a pro player makes a slight error in judgment and gets merely downed mid-fight and you cannot rally them due to the nature of the boss, not ressing them is only hurting your run’s time further.

We’re doing bounties and rushes tonight, instead of following the schedule in the OP! If you would like to join us for those, make sure to come tonight! We’re cooking up some kind of surprise for tomorrow (Who knows what it is!), so stay tuned to find out what that means!

I private message myself things to remember for later all of the time. Please don’t take it away!

Guild missions for the week start tonight! We have challenges followed by puzzles tonight, bounties tomorrow, and rushes Thursday! Let one of the officers know if you would like to participate and maybe get to know us better.

I’m not sure if this is intended, as I didn’t see a patch note on it or anything, but with the recent October 15th content patch, when I get interrupted when casting a spell, it puts the spell on full cooldown instead of that “3 second interrupted cooldown” that it used to get.

Some clarification as to whether or notthis is intended and, if not, some notification that it’s being tracked would be great. Cheers!

Yeah, I’m glad this is getting looked into. This has screwed me up so much since it was implemented, and I desperately want my “Nearest Enemy” targeting back! Thanks in advance to Evan and Dylan for their speedy work on a fix!

Every time you ask “Am I the only one that […]” the answer is always “No, you’re not”, and the resulting discussion has always already been had in other threads.

Plush Griffon is the best. That is all.

I really enjoy the clocktower, but the thing that gets me is that it is the exact same every time. You can get it down to a science, and I know that at least for myself I can succeed every try without fail because of it. I think future added JPs, especially those linked to celebrations, should have elements of randomness added to keep it interesting. And I mean pure randomness, not like “randomly one of three constant paths” like with the Wintersday JP. That sort of an element would be really awesome. (An example might be a floor panel setup that always randomizes which panels appear and which don’t, but always does so in a way that a chasm is crossable)

HALLOWEEN IS STILL AWESOME AND GOING ON!

On the flip side, we’ve gotten some really awesome people in the guild this past week, and we’re always looking for more! The guild has missions Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday according to the schedule in the OP, and we’ve been doing lots of other things as well. If what we offer as a guild interests you, please don’t hesitate to contact myself or one of my officers! We’d love to hear from you.

That’s great to know. Thanks for the information.

The only time I bring my Necro is when I am showing people how to play a Necro or I am just dying to play it because I enjoy the way it plays, and I always make it a point to let the group know that I will be hurting team dps a bit by bringing my Necro and only bring it if they’re okay with that. That said, layering fields in an intelligent way is the number one thing I teach my friends (who are all dirty casuals, bless their hearts) who want to learn how to play a Necro. It is critical that you watch it as carefully as you can. Still, in spite of that, sometimes it’s hard to predict when your S/D Ele is dropping their 4 or when a Warrior is going to swap to a LB and F1. Sometimes mistakes happen, and make no mistake: When I see “Area Blindness” in the Dredge fractal, I die a little inside (even more so if I am the Necro).

I’m sort of glad this was resurrected because I’ve been really curious about Ranger runes. I see Dub toting them as being a really good option, but I’ve never seen any real reason why besides “PARTY MEMBERS ARE SLAVES” stuff (which is totally awesome lol). Ignoring using them on a Ranger where your pet dead or alive counts, what triggers the #6 bonus on the Ranger rune? Does it always apply like some people are suggesting, or do only minions / glyph summons trigger it? When above 90% HP Scholar is obviously superior, I’m just curious about the merits of the Ranger rune in other cases.

Also, in the case of using it on a Ranger where you always get the #6 bonus, how much do you have to be above 90% in a fight for Scholar to retain superiority for overall damage?

I am also suffering from this problem. Please fix ASAP.

At current prices it costs 134g to buy it if you buy all of the CC on the TP. More than anything this is an attempt by ANet to pull a lot of the CC off the TP and dwindle the supply so it becomes more valuable.

My anecdotal evidence is that I get about 1 weapon every 5 runs or so. I have lucky streaks where I get 3 weapons back-to-back, but I also have unlucky streaks where I go ~10 L48 dailies without getting a single weapon (not that statistically unlikely, really). It’s the nature of RNG, and it sucks, but it is what it is. If you want a fractal weapon skin, it’s what you deal with to get them.

I’m still trying to get a focus, scepter, and speargun after nearly a year.

Dub.1273:

…

This is pretty incredible, haha. The audacity of some people!

HALLOWEEN, WHEE!

Also, tonight is guild bounties, and lots of other fun stuff that we’re going to come up with and do. Probably a bunch of dungeons and other such goodies are in store. Give us a shout if you’re interested in the guild! We’re always looking for cool people who like to talk!

Stormbluff Isle does Teq for kills every reset. Other decently populated coordinated servers do the same thing. I say it’s been pretty successful and fun for those involved.

OH BOY, HALLOWEEN!

We’re all really excited for the return of Halloween, so come join us if you’re looking for a guild of friends who also happen to be really awesome players! We’re really looking for players that are like us in that regard, and the more talkative you are, the better! Give us a holler if you’re curious.

Ah, it has been a fun weekend so far. Lots of dungeons and good times had. If you’re looking for a casual guild who still runs top content all of the time and you want to learn it at your own pace, then give us a shout and we can chat about whether or not you’re a good fit for the guild. We hope to hear from you.

Phew it’s been a fun week!

We did guild missions as usual, but tried a run at Balthazar on Wednesday. Unfortunately, the escort to the temple of betrayal is harder with more people, so alas it was not successful. Still, was lots of fun organizing the guild together for something like that, so maybe we’ll do other temples in the future (because they are actually doable with larger groups). Anyway, if you’re interested in the fun associated with any of this and making some friends, please don’t hesitate to let one of the officers know!

We’re really looking for talkative, fun, and relaxed people who are willing to learn tough content and play really well. I know that’s a tough billet to fill, but really all we ask for is that you try and be willing to listen.

Hoping to hear from you!

Doing challenges and puzzles tonight in an hour! Let one of the officers who are online know if you’d like to tag along!