Guild Wars 2

Did someone say “retaking all the map from the TC zerg?” – what zerg? – Might I direct you to this screenshot of today’s valiant defence of Stonemist keep:

Yes, you’re not imagining things, that’s the “undermanned” buff on my bar. There were literally no more than 12 of us (And we recalled ALL our forces to the keep), quite possibly less, vs what must’ve been at least 40 CD attackers (it was enough that the walls were carpeted end to end in ele and necro AoE). Look at that screenshot then look me in the eye and tell me that we’re were zerging – it’s physically impossible, we didn’t have enough in the zone to make a zerg :p

Not really I’ve long assumed that Asura warriors are likely specialists in weapon, bionics or power armour technologies, or just straight up soldiers if they specialise in rifles and I know some of my friends and guildies held the same opinion.

Most Asura are reliant on technology to do what they do.

Narcemus.1348:

Well, I mean there are hundreds of Saltspray dragons around, which Kuunavang appears to be similar to. And it makes no sense that Saltspray dragons are dragon minions, because there is at least 1 good Saltspray dragon that answers wishes.

And one of Kralkatorrik’s lieutenants (Glint) wrote the flameseeker prophecies that helped save the world from the titans, directly helped in the ascension of the prophecised chosen and later helped Destiny’s Edge set an ambush for her master and ultimately died in the process.

A good saltspray dragon would not be the first “good” dragon we’ve seen. Kuunavang herself wasn’t a bad-guy (bad-girl?), when you first encounter her she’s been corrupted but after helping her shake it off she helps in the assault on the palace. Nor does the existence of salt spray dragons rule out kuunavang being a lieutenant of an elder dragon either – dragons have tiers of minions and subordinates. For example the shatterers are lieutenants of Kralkatorrik and they in turn have their own smaller, draconic minions

The relationship between bubbles, kuuny and the saltsprays may be similar. Hell I’d put gold on kuuny making a return in GW2

A voting system is a nice dream but the sheer logistics of voting for a few people on a vast server? – How do we even get to know everyone to make an informed decision?

The paying for it system is equally bad of course. As someone correctly pointed out it’s easier to buy commander through mastery of PvE than WvW, which is counter intuitive. As a day trader I have enough gold to just go out and buy a commander book right now (I don’t plan to, I’m still new to WvW and I’d just be getting in the way calling myself that), someone in a previous guild of mine is soon to become a commander by harnessing the combined wealth of their guild even though they could scarcely command a team through AC story mode without having their hand held.

While WvW’rs who’ve done it for months often lack the funds to become a commander… perhaps use the WvW achievements as a basis for eligability

I think both sides need to take a step back and get some perspective.

Players on both sides come in many flavours. Some a small guild groups looking to pick stuff off as opportunists, some are just wandering in a confused mess. Others are chilling out defending keeps because it doesn’t seem like much effort, while others form into a big blob of loosely herded zerglings that kick down doors for the sake of flipping defences and easy karma.

At the same time some are well trained strike teams, others are highly co-ordinated armies. Some may be highly trained war machines, but shrouded under a fog of sheep that actually get in the way.

The thing to take home is you can’t judge an entire faction on one units behaviour.

For example my typical experience of the CD, is a mindless swarm typically 2/3 times our number who is easily broken and repelled even in open field combat and frequently forget to even bring siege to break the door down with. But, that’s exactly how some in this thread describe TC, which just lends me to conclude the “easily broken mindless swarm” is just the lowest common denominator of any server. Both sides must have their good commanders and decent players because if they didn’t neither side would ever get beyond huddling outside the stonemist outer walls like an army of crack dealers xD

So, try not to accuse either side of things on the basis of the actions of a few. There’s plenty of us on TC who look for a good fight, just as I’m absolutely certain there are players on CD who’d kick my kitten even if we had them outnumbered (I’m not exactly a god of PvP).

There’s a charr trader exporting whiskey to the Norn in a DE chain in the Norn starter zone.

“It’s tiny. Is this some kind’ve joke?”
“By the bear, it’s like drinking liquid fire! – Glorious!” (Or words to that effect)

As well as some passive dialogue you sometimes overhear amongst charr NPCs

“I once saw a human try some Charr Whiskey, he never did get his voice back”

So it’s certainly not forgotten. But whether or not you(r charr) go around sipping whiskey yourself though is up to you – go buy a bottle or twenty and stop being cheap

Between the charr heavy cultural armour, voiceovers and unique organ destroying brand od alcohol I can’t help but feel they’ve been channeling Krogans into GW2’s charr :p

I like this idea; as much as I make my money by 1 copper undercutting it IS cheesy. Having a minimum percent shift would help balance things a bit.

Imagine how auctions would play out if people brought the bidding down to 1 penny increments.

Illurim.6059:

Try the Asura weapon skin – looks cool. Useable in sPvP, but not sure if you can get the equivalent in PvE for non-Asura (haven’t looked into it).

Market square in the centre of the arrivals deck of Rata Sum, the tier 3 cutural weapons vendor (Peacemaker’s Greatsword, 63,000 karma).

Cultural weapons are accessible to all races, unlike armour which is specific to just one race

Ribos.8350:

But giant lasers are also cool, so shooting lasers from impractically-large swords is just about the coolest thing ever.

The other day I saw a human wielding a giant chainsaw. How crazy insane kitten is that – shooting lasers out of a flying chainsaw!

fixit.7189:

So I set up a pult in Bravost on the back wall little while ago during a siege and this mesmer kept sending serkers at me non stop. They went through the wall, hit me for 900 × 6 with that whirly ability, and then it explodes.

You’re pulling numbers out your kitten and confusing two different types of phantasm.

Berserkers perform a charge attack that strikes once reasonable damage; usually around 900-3000 depending on armour/crits etc. It then pauses and has a breather for the next 4-6 seconds before charging again. Berserkers have a cooldown of 25? 20? seconds. So you can’t just “keep sending them” there’s a decent gap.

Wardens are immobile phantasms that performing a whirling axe attack that strikes multiple times, if you move out the way they won’t try and chase you. But if you stand there and take it they will decimate you (6k+ damage plus frequently several stacks of bleeding). Wardens require LoS, and have a 25? 30? second cooldown.

It sounds like you were facing a mesmer equipped with a focus and a greatsword on a swap, so they were summoning two different kinds of phantasm and not only were you not trying to KILL them; you actually stood there on the mesmer equivalent of a DoT AoE field. wondering why you’re being murdered

FlashbackJon.9627:

I find it hard to believe an Asuran computer needs us to verify the area of a rectangle…

And yet someone was still complaining in map chat that it was “dumb they had us doing difficult maths questions”… anyone’d thought it was vector calculus. (“If a trebuchet is built on OL keep, with a 2 m s^-1 easterly wind blowing, and the projectile is fired at 45 degrees. What direction and how much launch velocity does the treb need to fire at to hit SM keep’s Northern wall?”)

Mesmer.

One of mesmer’s weapon swaps is pretty useless (sceptre) and there’s some borked traits in there… a lot of borked traits in fact.

But anyone who says Mesmer is underpowered or left hanging in the breeze due to those slight defects needs a huge backhanded slap, Mesmer are borderline OP in pretty much every situation*

• Notable exceptions: Attacking walls in WvW, tagging mobs in large PvE events.

- Signed, a Mesmer (maining the class since BWE3)

Supersun.4603:

What about rangers that don’t use the Longbow. Why should they have to carry one with them incase they need to rain down an AoE on the wall.

What about mesmer that don’t use the greatsword. Why should they have to carry one with them incase they need to rain iZerkers on the wall.

Your arguement is invalid.

I still find it bizarre we have all these classes like elementalist can freely attack the tops of fortifications with unremovable AoE’s. Yet mesmers have 1 indirect fire skill which is relatively weak and people want it removed.

You do realise if they “fix” berserker to behave like other clones, mesmers will have NO direct damage attacks that can hit people atop fortifications right?

Senik.6549:

Or a group of engineers:

snip

Heh, I made reference to that incident too on Tarnished Coast but just got the weirdest looks, I guess not everyone has heard of _that_incident :p

Sadly, as overly dramatic as the OP makes it sound this is EXACTLY what goes on in Orr.

There’s even a video on youtube explaining how to gather orichal’ fast in Orr and he explains it’s best to just ignore the mobs and train them about, even running over a couple of bystanders with his dozen-mob trains and leaving their corpse to rot as he does so.

I’ve seen it with my own eyes many times and even been on the receiving end (Though yet to ever die to a mob train, it can be inconvenient suddenly having 6-8 more mobs dropped on your head without warning as some OP warrior or guardian scuttles past you with all the attentiveness of a bot, undead gnawing on his ankle).

@fixit: You can rain hell down on people on top of battlements like no other. Only this morning we needed take down some trebs on a battlement and we set up a special elementalist task force to do just that…

Incidentlly, Mesmer is one of the worst classes for attacking battlements and entrench positions for this same reason (serious lack of indirect fire)

It’s not about the features it’s about showing your dedication. When someone lays down 100g to bear a commander flag, they are hopefully doing so because they are dedicated to kicking kitten and taking names in WvW and mastering the art of war.

Imagine the chaos if commander was something easily attained by everyone or was desirable for some sort’ve buff so every man and his dog wants to be a commander

Maybe they don’t WANT to go back… i mean, whatever’s in the water must be pretty scarey for the whales to take their chances on land with the rest of us

Just play the yakkity sax when he comes on and it becomes a lot funnier

@MrMac did you even read the thread or ever play a mesmer?

You can have all the traits in the world and be the leetest player in existance. But it doesn’t make an ounce of difference if they’re on top of a wall raining AoE on you and you’re down below with no LoS. Very few classes are so completely disabled by standing on a tall object; and WvW has a LOT of tall objects

@Norse: Yeah it’s weird and doesn’t make any sense to me but the sheer number of guys I manage to down with iZerker is bewildering xD – either people are really glassy or don’t keep an eye on their health bar.

That seems like a reasonable suggestion without being too obtuse, and it even has a little bit of canon/lore in there* – however, are people really using portals THAT frequently, that 5 minutes would be sufficient?

* “I’ll do it, as I’m the most used to being teleported and thus least likely to regurgitate breakfast in front of the panel” – Asura player during synergetics story arc

It might also be good to exempt the mesmer themself from the rule as this impedes some of portals other legitimate PvE uses, it’s not like a lone mesmer is going to bring a army to it’s knees by themselves

If they fix LoS in general then sure, we could let berserker go. But right now, i can be staring a ranger in the face on top of a tower shooting at me, but somehow my magic laser beam can’t hit him.

Thankfully my “broken” berserker skill can (As well as feedback). If they “fix” berserker, a mesmer is about as much use in a tower assault as a wet noodle; it’s not like we can even conjure up some iDefenders or decoys to protect our buddies, because we need LoS to create ANY phantasm or clone.

@Parthis: This bug has been present since BWE3 and it’s pretty kitten critical. “Playing around bugs” is all well and good but if they want to seriously make GW2 into an e-sport they can’t really leave in such massive bugs for months on end and just tell people to “deal with it”

Is there anywhere that lists’s the economy’s vital statistics, entirely out of pure curiosity.

You know; average wealth, how server’s compare for relative wealth, what portion of the population commands 50% of the wealth, scale for the poor/rich divide etc.

If there isn’t, maybe John can let us in on it (pretty please? ), we had some basic statistics back at the end of BWE’s but that was pre launch when the economy hadn’t had time to get fully established and for many people the TP simply didn’t work (I had that problem).

No specific reason for wanting the information, I just can’t help thinking looking around the Rata Sum trade floor in tarnished coast with my regular trader friends pondering “I wonder how frequently this scene is repeated on other servers; are they busier, are they quieter, are they richer or poorer, which server has the most traders of all?”

it’s base 10

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m68x4vj0or1r7qbrco1_1280.png

Most of their “language” is simple letter substitution. The numbers, which are hard to see at this scale, are made up of multiple angled lines indicating the number (ie. 1 is a single strike through, 2 is a double slash, 3 is 3 lines arranged around a central point etc) . The largest number we’ve seen in that list is 9, which means we’re looking at a minimum of base 10

Obviously it’s just artistic license the substitution system, but the true nature of their language and mathematics is forever hidden :p

if we step back and ignore the semantics of “holy magic” and that stuff

Guardian playstyle is defined by their ability to protect allies, utilising barriers, preventing opponents landing their hits. If a guardian isn’t in close quarters, he isn’t guarding his buddies.

To me that means even if a guardian had a gun (Asura or charr guardians are usually tech orientated not holy magic users, using a gun seems more natural to them than a bow); it’d still only be appropriate if it were a shotgun-style skill set. Long range rifles exist to put as much distance as possible between attacker and victim, guardians exist to stand between attacker and victim.

…on a side note. My guardian charr already looks enough like a krogan without giving her a shotgun xD. “Krogan Charr charging!”

iWarlock’s damage scales based on the number of unique conditions on the target. In a big PvE boss fight it can easily do x1.5-x2 the damage of a iZerker due to the fact the boss has pretty much every condition under the sun on him.

Throw in that iWarlock is a ranged unit, it’s pretty easy to get 3 warlocks up and keep them up, at which point the Mesmer can top DPS for very little work, so I do understand why they did this. It isn’t conjecture either it’s long been recognised that while mesmer’s damage is slow to gain (and thus they perform badly in fast moving scenarios), in situations where they can build up their phantasms over the course of a minute or so their DPS can become a positive wrecking ball

My Mesmer, as frequently seen in the Rata Sum trading floor on Tarnished Coast is pimped out in:

Cultural (Tier 3) headgear, chestpiece, weapons
Acolyte (Exotic) pants, gloves
Lionguard (Karma) boots

Midnight Violet, Frosting, Silver Lead dyes

The dye set pretty much perfectly matches the tier 3 asuran cultural weapons

Sharp teeth don’t nessecarily indicate meat eatting. There’s some critters with sharp rasping teeth similar to asura’s that use them from shearing algae and lichen off rocky surfaces.

Given they are of subterranean origin this limits diet to other subterranean creatures, lichens and fungi though, so it is most likely they are carnivorous or omnivorous. The only thing we know for certain is modern asura can process oozes into food which are a subterranean species themselves…

At any rate modern Asura have long since mastered processed food :p

I wonder if it’s a trained reflex, from games like “that other MMO”.

In those games the reward is heavily backloaded. You’re told “here’s the awesome thing you should strive for” (end game, reward etc), “now here is a painful, frustrating grind you must endure to earn it” – and people’ve been conditioned like a good little skinner box mouse to do it, because that is what they’ve been told is “fun”.

Is it possible that skinner box games have had a profound long term effect on peoples perceptions of what a game is. It’d also explain the backlash and frustration seen when people don’t get big rewards for voluntarily enduring things in the game, apparently forgetting it was only ever voluntary.

(I personally found the clocktower to be genuinely fun, i even ran it several more times for my own amusement. But this obviously isn’t a shared position)

Do the skins even drop from the mad king’s chest I know the exotics can but have an exceptionally low drop rate, but if the skins could I’d be expecting to see the price drop;

Indeed, according to the trading post API, supply of the greatsaw skin is lower now than it was last week though there was a brief rise as of last night but it’s also been snapped up quickly, I presume people selling exotics used that money to buy greatsaws

@Neoma: No – mostly because it sets a precedent for people to try undo dead survivors whether it was legit or not.

Now hold on a minute; which is THE most complained about class by far in PvP?

The one that gets nerfs to it’s underwhelming DPS every patch and still people demand more nerfs…

Mesmer – one of the support classes.

Zoom distance as a game balance mechanic is borked anyway; asura players can’t zoom out nearly as far or even tilt their camera to face fully forward, whereas norn and charr players can zoom their camera a LOT further than even humans.

Allowing zoom out to a more significant distance would improve racial parity.

Inorite, there’s more content in this patch than there is in some GAMES

And here’s the scary bit… Arenanet before Halloween was like “Yup, we’ve got Halloween coming up; but we’re really excited about the big November content expansion”

…if THEY’RE describing it as big and exciting", the November patch might be colossal xD

Asura are like 40% head, so headgear is probably the only part anyone’ll notice :p (but they do notice, one of my guildies was laughing about it the other night when he noticed my T3 light headgear (zojja’s goggles) have little ear-pauldrons on it ;0

Leaping attacks are VERY finicky for all classes. Mesmer’s illsuory leap fails about 50% of the time too (Which is a nuisance because it’s sword’s only clone skill).

Of course I’ve given up any hope of anything getting fixed, it’s been how many months now since beta began, and these bugs were present even then

Warlord Jim.2870:

@Guanglai Kangyi.

I stopped reading when you said “guardians aren’t really a support class in the first place”

Would you care to re-read that? Are you still sure that you know how to play this class? Guardians have one of the strongest support capabilities out of any of the available classes.

But no class is dedicated support, and every class can be specced to yield significant party support in tandem with their offence.

Engineers with an elixir gun can heal and strip conditions off their allies while piling conditions onto their foes., elementalists can heal and protect their allies and create amazing combo fields.

Mesmers chaos storm puts protection AND aegis onto allies in it’s AoE with a cooldown of a mere ~30 seconds – a trick guardians usually like to claim is unique to them and them alone, nevermind the fantastic array of reflects and conditions/boon removers and decoys.

Thieves can spec so that they constantly put weakness onto all nearby enemies drasticlly mitigating enemy damage; due to the initiative system thieves also make some of the best combat medics as they can dump their init and go heal someone without “losing” their sustained DPS or shroud them in shadow refuge.

Even the humble warrior can be a huge boost to the party specced right… so, no. I’d argue guardian might feel like a support class if you’ve never played anything else, but the reality is guardian is no more or less supporty than any other class.

BloodySunBoy.9318:

Ryuujin that video proves that people are just finding any excuse for being bad and not being able to do it. I’ve done it several times as asura with no difficulty.

Ditto. I was helping teach my guildmates the puzzle last night (2 norn and a charr, lol), my own character is an asura mesmer, and I finished it 6 or 7 times before they finally got it down.

You don’t NEED to see where you are landing, speed games like this are all about looking where you are going to be in 5 or 6 seconds time and planning ahead. if you don’t your probably won’t make it fast enough anyway

They don’t have halloween versions of EVERY weapon, but EVERY class has at least 1 halloween weapon. Engineers only have 3 choices of weapon, 2 of which have halloween skins. It’s hardly their fault if you want to be an awkward person and equip two of the single weapon that doesn’t have a skin

OP: This video proves you are wrong. /end thread
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eCzRcwXJE8

There’s several armour pieces of that do, dwayna’s gloves (HoM set) too, which is a shame because those gloves look AWESOME.

I’ve reported them routinely since BWE2 and they like basiclly EVERYTHING on my asura mesmer, remains unfixed.

One does not walk into the lair of the lunatic king on the expectation that your physical, mental and structural integrity be preserved

The completion time is essentially fixed though due to the fact at 3 stages the next step unfolds on a timer. Notably after the dive onto the chest platform, the next line of cogs doesn't shatter out of the structure til the mist has almost taken the platform, and again the final jump only occurs at a fixed point in time, when the mist is about to claim the tower.

When i last went into LA, the lion statue didn’t behave like normal – normally permanent terrain props don’t have any loading time ie they’re never culled.

But the lion prop WAS culled, which revealled a deep indentation in the floor underneath it. The indent was ugly and not intended to be seen, but it implies that there may be some kind’ve “hole” prop like a vortex or hole that will suck the lion into it, or a crater where it explodes.

That’s my interpretation of it anyway as someone who’s got level design experience.

The slippers are basically identical to the level 70-79 exotic set, they will clip too.

I can’t help but wonder how this generation would react to the old school nintendo games, which were just one giant jumping puzzle and you had only a limited number of attempts before you had to start over from the beginning.

Even if not everyone CAN finish it, I think they should keep it the way it is and do similar stuff in future, just so there remain a few GENUINE challenges out there instead of the game being a complete tourist resort…

…“Tour the mad king’s clocktower, everyone gets a free soveigner!”

If you think that’s bad, Mesmer have two SKILLS with the same name. Talk about confusing…

Sword #1: Mind stab – Attack target for weak damage, remove a boon.
Greatsword #3: Mind stab – Blade erupts from the ground dealling AoE damage

just to add a little to this discussion, I’ve played 3 classes now, each of which at some point has taken inexplicable nerfs (Engineer, Mesmer and Guardian) – none have ever recieved any kind’ve feedback from Arenanet as to why they made the nerfs

Indeed, the fact they tried explain why they nerfed GS’s symbol is more than I’ve ever seen said on a topic. Mesmer gets nerfed virtually every patch with nought but a word on why (And before you say “but mesmer needs nerfs” I should point out the skills they have been nerfing on mesmer arn’t the skills that need nerfing indeed, some of them actually need a buff and nobody used them anyway (Even fewer now))

So, don’t take their silence as meaning they’re ignoring you, but don’t get your hopes up they’ll fix anything, half of mesmer’s skills and trait lines have been busted since BWE2 and they havn’t recieved any changes, don’t count on guardian’s GS symbol getting looked at for at least 6 months either