Guild Wars 2

Someone hinted that some mobs have initial threat assessment. This probably applies as a threat multiplier to each player attacking it. You multiply the amount of damage or healing (always treated as crit by the mob: 2 x whatever healed) total and that is the total aggro you have on that mob.

Also there is one thing that people don’t take into account: Regen. Regen may seem like a subtle sort of healing you can get away with, but I think that it may apply the total amount of healing you can do initially on the monster’s aggro. So if you toss an Elixir H and it hits all 4 of your buddies, you just added 4 times the amount of healing aggro to you in one shot.

Another one that can be considered is removal of damaging conditions. If an intended damaging condition is removed, the remaining damage left on that condition could be added to your aggro as healing damage.

Just theorizing here. No guarantees.

All you need to be a real commander is the confidence of the people you lead. This confidence is usually given by repeated successes or knowledge of when to pull back/avoid massive groups of enemies.

Well, it also helps if you are on mumble, vent, or whatever voicechat server to get info and give it to your minio – er, fellow soldiers.

That’s my two cents.

The entire WvW objective rewards system is very strange. I’m not sure exactly how they planned on implementing this effectively.

There are plenty of things that should be rewarded, and Creslin listed plenty of them.

Hopefully they’ll fix this problem as it is very unnerving to see your efforts yield nothing in objective rewards.

I think a week match is perfect for WvW. It gives people who work different days of the week at different times (all across the world) to participate.

This lets people who work different schedules (night shift, day shift, compressed work weeks, and generally crazy schedules) play in the same fight.

To Thundar:

I am so sorry that you were camped by my fellow Yakkers.

I don’t want to be represented by those types of people, and hope that the guilds they represent put them in line or kick them out.

If this happens again, see if you can click on each one and take pictures of each highlighted one. This reveals their actual guildname.

I know it’s hard to do especially in a firefight, but that’s all you can do. If they are sitting right next to the entry portal, you should be able to stay on the other side of it and hit tab to target the nearest people. This should help too.

To all the Yakkers that do this sort of thing: Go kitten yourself and get the kitten off our server.

I would love to see the burning tick at the end of Flame Jet go up to 2s. It would be great to see this. Problem is, though, that burn does the most damage of any condition with the exception of maxed out bleeding (which has at most a 5 second duration on each charge to keep 1 person from stacking it to 25 easily).

Yes, even with 2000 cond damage you’re really only doing 500 a second. Not much considering that most people usually have 20-25k life. That takes almost minute to kill a player. With that minute they can easily go find someone to heal them or use healing skills to heal themselves.

The Flame Jet can easily be a condi demon because it hits multiple times a second and allows for many chances to proc condition on crit. If they ever get Sigils to work for Engineer kits, you can double bleed chances, increase burn durations, add might stacks, and make your FT a much meaner condi damage tool.

People also don’t notice that if you use Incendiary Ammo with Flame Jet you can make someone burn for a long amount of time. And with Incendiary Powder there’s another chance to proc a burn on crit.

Like someone else before said, it’s pretty easy to increase your burn duration. You can raise it by 50% without even getting armor bonuses. Up to 30% with Explosives, a bonus of 20% burn with Napalm Specialist, and eating food. This alone makes your burns last much longer and can make people leave fights much quicker.

But seriously. . . don’t focus just on burns. Increase overall condition duration. Like I said before, FT’s Flame Jet is much better as a proc-on-crit skill than a pure burn skill.

I like the idea of a corpse being put into a permanent map-view state. This would definitely prevent corpse-spying, which I hate in all PvP games.

You could have the mapview turn translucent when someone is actively rezzing you. If they stop rezzing you, then it goes back to an opaque mapview state.

It’s a hard thing to decide.

I don’t think walking side by side with a yak should reward you right now. At least not with money. Currently too many bots are still running around, and they would benefit from all the yak guarding. This leads to a poorer economy.

Would people be fine with getting defense rewards in only XP and karma? This might be a good alternative.

As a sidenote, the guarded caravan upgrade should also upgrade the yak, either providing him more armor/hp or maybe even making him invulnerable until the caravan guards are killed. This would make people want to upgrade the caravans.

In the Estate of Decay quest (Level 75 in Waste Hollows area of Straits of Devastation region), there is a directive where you must enter the Kitah Manse.

I am in the reception hall where the Lord greets you, then leaves through a set of doors. I cannot get through the set of doors that the Lord and his nobles exits through. I have tried talking to all the servants left behind and have tried to open the door with both the right click and the F ‘Use’ command, but the doors will not open.

I see no other options. Is this a bug, and has anyone else noticed this problem?

I think that stealth is okay. They have stealth as a temporary ability, which is MUCH better than the permanent until revealed ability most other games have had.

Temporary stealth is perfectly fine. It’s just that, with the current problems of rendering, it is a very powerful skill.

Don’t touch stealth skills at all right now. If a thief is bouncing in and out of stealth constantly, then he’s doing what he should be doing.

Fix the rendering issue; don’t nerf the stealth skill.

Here, here, Spetrix!

I agree that this fight has been an awesome one. I have enjoyed running back and forth between supply depots and seeing plenty of resistance along the way. The fights were good, and I’m glad to see plenty of commanders (both official and nonofficial) working with each other to duke it out with the enemies.

Good game! Keep it up!

I don’t think caravan guards should be default, but I do think that when the dolyak gets guards its own HP should be upgraded so that you HAVE to kill the guards before you can kill the yak.

The guard upgrade is pretty effective and does make it harder for a party of 5 (which I usually run) to take out a lot of level 82 veteran guards and the souped up Supervisor.

The problem is that people who upgrade supply stations only try to upgrade them to provide caravan guards and increased supply sendout. This is a money loss if done by itself. If you plan on upgrading a supply station, keep your group there and upgrade it fully until it has roving guards and improved guards.

It’s a lot closer game than any of the others I’ve seen. I like the matchups I’ve been noticing. Everytime I get on, there’s an even balance of players, and we usually end up running back and forth over an area.

It’s been fun so far. I’m sure we’ll see the #1 contender again in coming weeks. Take care, guys!

Good game so far. The fight up at NSP BL was awesome last evening. SoR and YB were duking it out often across Victor’s Lodge.

GJ to all the YB players, and good fight to all SOR and NSP. I’ll be back sooner or later!

I have an idea: Why not reward folks who complete objectives/events with a badge of honor or two?

I play elixirman/Pyro, and I love the synergy between them and my pistols.

Sure, you don’t get sigil effects and stat bonus from your weapon, but you still have the skills associated with them if you choose to switch between them and your beloved grenades.

Some people prefer to stay in a kit for a long time. They find an affinity in them, and learn their characteristics and advantages/disadvantages to a T. I don’t mind that at all.

I, myself, hate the travel time and easy-to-avoid effects that grenades have. I respect their range (1500 is amazing, especially for assaults!), and I respect that once they hit they can do a LOT of damage. I just can’t play with them very well, and know that I’m better with my Elixir gun/FT.

I like kits. I like the ability to quickly shift in and out of them, and the short cooldown for this. I like the diversity of skills between them. A kit-using eng (2 skill-slots with kits) makes for a dangerous guy as he probably has 15 different attacks to use against an enemy, all available (more or less) within a second of each other. That’s not counting his toolbelt skills, his third utility skill, or his Elite.

From what I see is that the toolbelt skills themselves are considered to be in a completely separate category, while the effects (once activated) are grouped into their related groups.

This is why you don’t see elixir CDs affecting the toolbelt elixir skills (they are toolbelt skills at the moment, not elixir skills). But the effects these elixirs carry out are elixir in nature, so they get the increased duration, might-stacking, and condition removal your Alchemy traits can apply to them.

That example is applied to all other toolbelt skills. I don’t know how long it will take for the devs to implement them (if they do this at all), but it will probably take a lot of work.

If you want to affect your toolbelt skills, then you’ll have to trait into tools. Sucks, but that’s all you can do right now.

^ this too.

WvWvW rules and recommendations will mean absolutely NOTHING until they start charging for server transfers.

As it is, people will shift over to a server for 24 hours to perform the following:

1) Supply draining
2) Spying
3) Counteracting a strategy over mapchat and teamchat with other recommendations and orders.
4) Being a rally decoy

Claiming also denotes a sort of obligatory defense to that particular building.

Your claim to a building shows that you and your guild:

1) are willing to defend that building;
2) are willing to assist in leading upgrades to a building;
3) are willing to assist in keeping supplies coming to the building; and, most importantly,
4) are willing to repair any damaged walls and gates on that building.

A guild occupying a building is the equivalent to an army occupying a friendly town or a fort. You are tasked with the upkeep of an area.

If you claim the area and don’t have the power to perform the aforementioned tasks, then you are failing not only you, but your guild and your server.

If that’s true, then it seems like a whole guild could get banned by ANet. Hopefully that guild realizes this and stops the stupidity going on in their ranks before they get hit hard with bans.

Hey, more news on the orbhackers out of YB. It might be character assasination. This brings into suspect other orbhackings as well.

YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC9ypMovDE4
Orbhacker’s Guild: Project Mayhem
Project Mayhem’s website: http://www.promayhem.com/

None of the honest players in YB condone the orbhacking, and we want people to know that there seems to be foul play coming from servers outside our W3.

Not the whole server’s fault, anyway. The member of a guild based out of another server stole this orb and placed it in the YB altar.

Here’s the video link someone from a player on one of our opposing servers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC9ypMovDE4

If you enlarge the video and look at the orbhacker that is targeted, you’ll notice that the guildtag says “Project Mayhem.” Project Mayhem is not a guild based out of YB but out of the Dragonbrand server.

Check their website: http://www.promayhem.com/

Definitions of “Siege:”

1. the act or process of surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help and supplies, for the purpose of lessening the resistance of the defenders and thereby making capture possible.

2. any prolonged or persistent effort to overcome resistance.

With these definitions, do you think that siege weapons would be stronger trying to defend inside of a keep or attacking a keep?

A siege weapon is designed to knock down the walls and gates of a fortified area. They are not built to defend anything.

If you see that your fort is being attacked by siege gear, the option isn’t just to try to build another piece of siege gear to combat it.

The best way to really ward off people attacking a fortified area (tower/keep/castle) is to go out and fight them. You have the limits of a stationary area, while they can weave in and out of your range to pick your health away. People in the fortification are there to defend it and wait for more people to come drive them away.

It takes a while to get a wall or a gate down, so CALL OUT on the Map AND Team to get people moving. When people hear this, don’t run to the keep. Instead, coordinate a group meet at a certain area and THEN charge the keep.

I’ve seen too many times where people run to a tower only to run inside. Don’t do this. You are limiting yourself to the point that you are more or less just fighting with an arm behind your back. Try to get a group (or more) together at the nearby sentry point (DO NOT take the sentry point over if it’s an enemy. Chances are that was a decoy to let them know people are coming).

Keep defenders, have someone keep calling out info. Let them know how many, what siege gear, what classes, gate/wall health, and nearby threats.

If you’re in the keep, group everyone into parties. This lets you focus fire on someone with the “call Target” command. One more dead means one less person attacking your keep. One more downed person means one more person coming within range that you can down or kill.

That’s it for now.

Alright, I want to build on this. If an orb is hacked, and there is confirmation, we should let a group take back the orb.

However, to show amnesty, I think that the castle that had the orb should be abandoned afterwards to let the server retake it. It’s not the WHOLE server’s fault that there’s a hacker on their side.

This lets the map reset back to a more to the game conditions before the orb hack. A whole server shouldn’t be penalized for one or two idiots. And if they admit that someone was unfairly hacking, there shouldn’t be such a severe penalty as that.

I wouldn’t doubt it that there are people in Yak’s Bend who hacks in WvW. There are people in EVERY server who does it.

I hope that this is sabotage from other servers as it’s pitiful that there would be folks in our server playing this way. I hate pieces of kitten like this.

I’m very annoyed that people still do this. I wish they would monitor these occurrences more often. It’s easy to tell when something like this happens. The time it takes to change hands, and the location. I just wish they had a referee for each W3. It would help out a lot!

I like the idea of having names hidden. It prevents stupid things like revenge kills.

I’ve seen too many idiots in other games barge through a group of enemy players to get to someone that’s been ganking him one on one. Usually it ends up in the rager dying, the fight growing unbalanced, and several facesittings.

Thank you, ANet, for not giving us this info.

I won’t defend them. I would love it if people like that would actually put efforts toward claiming keeps, forts, and towers (or at least taking over supply stations) instead of being a useless PITA and a waste of pop space.

I love the Elixir Gun!

If you combo this with the FT and pistols, you have 3 different conditions, 2 CCs, long and short range (especially if you choose the range increase trait in Firearms), an evade/damage, a heal/regen, and 2 blinds. And you still have a slot left for stun removal or extra condition removal.

I usually tag them into combat with my Elixir Gun from 1200 range (40% crit gives me a good chance for swiftness thanks to the Adept firearms trait), tag them with Elixir F to slow them down again, keep nailing’im with tranquilizer darts (THANK YOU, Anet for giving kits Auto-attack!), Fumigate as soon as I’m in range, Pistol Poison shot, Flamethrower shot, Lightning shot, Pop Incendiary rounds and hit them with a flame jet.

Daedalus.3954:

As a Commander I can tell you, at least on HoD, I get whispers from those not in my Squad (it fills up quick) with what their group is doing, where, with what, and an estimated ETA for support if needed. The Militia (aka Non-Alliance based personnel) on HoD is probably the most exceptional grouping of players in the game. With everyone working with Commanders from TA, and the few that aren’t we get work done. It’s all about communication and a real want to win attitude.

That being said, a Commander UI box would be AMAZING. As well the ability to SEE all of the people in my Squad on the Map regardless of how near/far from me they are would be awesome. However, if ANET has plans for something like that. I don’t see it in the near future. One can hope though. Soon enough…

This is what is needed for proper WvW play, but we need a /showcommander command that lets players know who their leaders are out there. That and perhaps show the commander icon beside their name anytime they post in any chat.

This looks like it was translated with Google. I’ll try to make it look better.

Splarv said:

“The second weapon slot of the engineer was removed to force players to use weapon kits. This is why a weapon kits are selectable skills. To make weapon kits better, engineers should have a second swappable virtual weapon slot devoted only to engineer kits. This will add more fun and convenience. Engineers can mix various forms of kits and class weapons (for example pistols and rifle at low levels, elixir gun and Flamethrower at high levels), improve them with sigils and benefit from the “on swap” sigils as well, and even mix weapons like pistol and grenades (which grenade is obviously a one-handed weapon). Even medkits could be one handed “virtual” weapon with bandage for right and elixir for left.

This may be because I want to be able to switch between the Elixir Gun and the Flamethrower by using the ` key without using the conventional weapon at all. "

I’m not trying to make him seem like an idiot. Just trying to be friendly and help others out.

If we don’t add a damage bonus or overcharge CD reduction on “Call Turret’s Target,” then we can make it a no CD skill that works in parallel with any other skill (Like Smoke Vent).

How does that sound?

Also, if we fix Tool Kit as a second weapon swap, it won’t really give us a big advantage. We’ll have a permanent melee weapon, but be able to use turrets (which aren’t really that powerful since they don’t scale with your abilities) in all three slots. The abilities I’ve listed seem equal to most other swappable weapons that other classes have. Mind you, I say “seem,” not “are.”

Tool Kit’s damage would never work as a healing type kit because it has too many damaging skills. That’s why I suggest it be a fixed weapon swap for us, if we are willing to lose “Throw Wrench,” that is.

I am wrong in saying that there is no healing skill ability that gives offensive advantage. The stim pack from our Med Kit provides Fury to whoever picks it up.

For Call Turret’s Target, I like the idea of lowering their cooldown that way. That or perhaps giving them a 10% or maybe 25% damage bonus for 4 – 6 seconds. Just enough for 1 rocket shot! If we do the latter, we can then keep Pry Bar having the dual effect of either lowering CD on a turret or giving an enemy Confusion.

Alrighty. I take back my idea to change Prybar. I would rather sacrifice Box of Nails with an ability to control your turrets than change Pry Bar right now.

I dunno. I think the problem is if an elixir doesn’t affect someone, then you might not get the discharge. Which is a completely BS thing, in my opinion.

How about we lower the damage of Prybar and give it the ability to cripple instead of confusion? Will that work?

PotatoOverdose said:

“Personally, for 1v1’s I like having rocket turret. I know there’s a huge crowd out there that say “turret’s are garbage” and they’re right, mostly. But keeping rocket turret as a crutch for the eventual 1v1 is quite nice. Drop it, and use explosive rocket immediately. Even if I get cc’d, the turret (which is immune to all form off cc) will still launch its aoe burn/knockdown. Twice in 4 seconds. All told those 2 rockets (which almost never miss in a 1v1) do 2400 direct damage and 2200 burning damage, but more importantly give me control of the situation. Even if the target goes stealthy, the second explosive rocket will still hit them. At that point I’m free to do whatever I want.”

I don’t down turrets as much as others. I love the utility of some turrets.

Net Turret, to me, is by far the most useful of all the turrets with the ability to drop two nets out one after another (Toolbelt skill, THEN drop the Net Turret). Not to mention the overcharge is effective!

Thumper turret is useful for its overcharge, which I’m willing to drop near the gate of a tower/keep I intend to defend before I run into it.

Bleed has been confirmed to stack ticks of damage, not increase the damage of each tick.

It has not been confirmed, however, whether players with lower condition damage affect your ticks or if there is an internal tick damage that distinguishes each player’s tick amount.

In order to make toolkit a healing skill, it would have to have absolutely NO damage or damage boosting skills. Toolkit breaks that requirement outright. If someone gets under the desk of a dev, we MIGHT be able to have them choose this set as a “2nd weapon” swap. Maybe? Please?

I recommend the following changes of the OP’s ideas:

Keep the toolbelt skill as “Throw Wrench”

Slot 1- Smack/Whack/Thwack:
No engineer self healing skill, and only Thwack hitting up to 3 opponents. This brings in line with most other auto-attack third strikes that other classes have.

Slot 2 – Call Turrets’ Target:
This gives the engineer the ability to have all turrets aim and keep their aim at an enemy has has his focus on. This will let you control the attention of the turrets. However, you’ll have to do this for each target. The negative is you might have to refocus several times if you want your net turret to do different things.

Slot 3 – Prybar:
Keep current damage level and confusion ability vs players. I like the reduce overcharge C/D idea.

Slot 4 – Gear Shield:
Good as is. A push away sounds like a good idea since it does absolutely nothing else.

Slot 5 – Magnet:
Let this also affect a targetted turret, which makes it VERY mean for setups. Pull your FT Turret or Thumper Turret and activate their overcharge.

I don’t mind that toolbelt skills damage drops when you put on a kit. They’re more or less meant to be used all the time, whether you have a kit on or not. They’re our “surprise!” attack or effect that noone expects, more effective when you don’t have a kit equipped makes them more surprising.

If they give us our weapon’s attribute bonuses and sigils, I’d be happy. People may say that it’s too much for us, but keep in mind that warriors and guardians both have the ability to do major damage with normal weapon multistrikes (greatsword is a very good example) and those still get sigil bonuses and proc chances.

If you want steady regen that scales with any healing bonus that you have, then your best best is probably the alchemy Master trait that gives you constant regen when you have a kit equipped.

This way you don’t have to keep a turret out and you can slot your healing Elixir or healing kit (which will give you regen, yes).

Actually, this can be helpful with a in and out range build such as the Rifle/kit or Elixir Gun/any. The negative, you’re using up a major trait slot in Alchemy, which all major trait slots are precious!

I dunno. Turning into a raging tornado and keeping an enemy player from getting up is pretty hilarious if you ask me.

The mutant is . . . meh. If you spec in power he becomes a beast with his attacks.

There seems likes there is a cooldown on Incendiary Powder’s proc, but the problem is even with a 50% crit, you have at best an 18% chance per shot to proc it.

If you see it 1 out of every 5, then you are doing good. You SHOULD see it better with FT. That’s where people are noticing this internal cooldown and are mentioning it.

Following ProstoBob’s idea, if you go into firearms you can get a much more reliable swiftness boost with the Adept major trait “Infused Precision.” You’ll have, most likely, a 1 second delay between the end of the swiftness and a beginning if you want constant swiftness in combat.

Oh, you almost always crit on critters, so you could have fun speeding yourself up by killing critters along the way.

. . . Not like there needs to be a reason to kill them . . . other than to boost your kitten by seeing 50k oneshots on poor, defenseless creature. . .

Speaking of Elites. I usually switch between the Supply crate and my Charr Warband call. It’s fun to see two extra people jump out and start wailing away on your enemy!

There are some items that let you enter a downed state with higher health than normal. There’s a food that does that, though I can’t remember the name. Combine that with elixir R, and a person can probably get back up very quick.

I’ve actually been playing with Elixir Gun and pistol/shield with increased range on a conditions build lately.

Since the Elixir gun has longe range capacity, you can surprise a player with Elixir F, slowling them down (the swiftness buff seems to have a very limited range – 600 – 900, I think), and go back to bleeding and weakening them with your Tranquilizer dart. Get up close, Fumigate then Pistol Poison shot, Acid Bomb and turn around to Elixir F them again.

After the Acid Bomb and Elixir F, swap to your Pistol/shield and use Magnetic Shield to reflect any projectiles they might toss at you. If they run, then Captain America them with your Static Shield → Throw Shield.

AndrewWaltfeld said:

“In PvP fights – I intentionally use them to move enemies into kill zones for my teammates as people tend to fear the grenades more (for whatever dumb reason) than my teammates. Often they will do whatever they can to dodge the grenades and usually end up landing smack dab into my parties AoE’s without realizing it.”

That is one thing I forgot to mention for WvW. Grenades are very good for guiding folks toward other players attacks. Thanks for reminding me. Yes, there are good things about WvW grenades.

Mif said:

“I used to love grenades until I realised how pigeon-holed we are into using them.”

I disagree with that. There are other kits and abilities out there, and a good player learns to use them either in a 1v1 fight or to synergize the abilities and kits with other players. This is an MMO, not a single player game.

Grenades are very easily avoidable due to their travel time and clear AOE designation, and I don’t recommend them for single PvP. Group PvP is useful as long as their attention is not focused on you.

If played, the first shot should always be the frost grenades as the initial surprise of grenades is all it really has.

Grenades are very effective for surprise, able to turn the tide of a fight if the enemy’s attention is focused elsewhere. The problem is, once the surprise is gone and their attention is focused on you (especially if they get within melee range), grenades cease to be effective. If you stand still and toss grenades, you will get owned. Tossing them at your feet may cause a lot of damage to a melee class, but a ranged user can easily avoid your shots while dealing auto-damage and more to you. If they focus their attention on you, then switch to something other than grenades.

Fastcast seems effective, but I would argue against it unless you are confident in your aim. Take some time in the mists against the moving robots. But this will not help you as much as a live player. Without dueling, training with live players is hard. If you have a friend in another server and your servers meet in WvW, then you could train with each other in a remote part of the world. Or you could see which servers one of you have in WvW and switch over to them to practice this.

Grenades are VERY effective in PvE, but in PvP they are predictable and only useful in group fights when opponents are distracted.

The reason condition seems weak is that everyone has an ability to remove conditions. Don’t fret on this. Apply your conditions and keep applying them, while dodging and avoiding damage as much as possible. They can’t remove every condition all the time.

Grenades are powerful (especially if you get the Grandmaster major trait in Explosives), but they have their downsides. One, enemies can see the AOE of grenades as soon as you start to toss them. Two, their travel time allows for easy avoidance (especially if you toss them from their max traited range of 1500). Three, in WvW (because if its wide open spaces) you will probably hit an experienced player with 1 grenade most of the time instead of 2 or 3.