Guild Wars 2

This is due to something called (loosely) IK weighting. There are invisible “skeleton” structures that define the animations of characters made up of many connecting segments like a real skeleton.

After a skeleton is made the model’s geometry is assigned a value of how much that particular area moves based on the skeleton movement underneath.

In this case it appears that a few stray areas of the geometry were weighted improperly causing a section of the neck to move unintended due to other parts of the skeleton structure moving.

It’s certainly fixable, but I doubt it’s overly high on their list at the moment. It is quite annoying to look at for sure though.

I didn’t notice any problems last night with it. Obivously people with stability will not be affected by it (if that’s what you meant – it not hitting people).

I did notice that our #3 still rarely works. My pet runs over to me and stands there staring at me. “Get up… why aren’t you getting up…?”

Comon Arenanet! You don’t “fix” an animation bug by nerfing a class! Fix the animation!!! This has gone on long enough, it’s time to revert it back the way it was until you get the animation fix!

To hell with the animation bug – just put it back the way it was. Fix the animation later!

This is the last usable weapon in sPvP for the ranger and you’re killing. Put it back the way it was, then buff the long-bow and fix the fact that people can “dodge” it’s attacks by moving.

apeik.7391:

we found that we should all reroll thief or warrior. /sigh

Not like fixing the longbow was ever an option.

I’m trying to be patient before I succumb to that conclusion myself.

I’m giving Arenanet the benefit of the doubt here that they did not intentionally nerf the only decent Ranger weapon just to “fix” an animation issue – SURELY they would have just FIXED THE ANIMATION…

JonPeters.5630:

I’ll take a look on live right now!

And what did you find?

Safari.3021:

I just want to put this to all those people talking about ranger weapon damage being far below that of other professions:

Your pet makes up more than the difference, other professions do not have a constant additional damage from their f1 skill, the lower damage from weapons is to compensate for this, and rightly so.

If you follow the plight of Rangers you will see that pets are very finiky. Especially their activate-able skill (F2). All pets have to stop moving in order to cast their move and therefore miss the majority of the time rendering their “utiliy” nearly useless.

Pets also run at default speed meaning simply moving will 100% negate their damage. Combined with the fact they stop moving to attack means the damage you get from pets is marginal at best.

Yeah, there’s no way this was purely to fix an animation bug. Fix the animation, not lower the speed.

Dante Dragonhand.2538:

Its all in your head, if you didnt read patch notes you wouldnt notice any difference. Yes I know this is a fact not an opinion, they didnt nerf it by enough to make it dramatically noticeable.

Way to not read any posts in the threads and then mass post your approval of this change in multiple threads…

Try reading the factual information that many are posting.

Terhix.4801:

(snip)
40ms on top of 400ms is obviously a 10% cast time increase, or a ~9.1% dps drop. It’s not strange at all that you do notice the difference, you’d have to be a vegetable not to.
(snip)

^ Exactly. Although my maths are not as precise as yours, here’s what I posted in a different thread whilst waiting for Devs to get back to us:

Ignoring the possible bug with QZ speed, this is still a really a crazy reduction to the shortbow. Although 40ms doesn’t seem like much, for a weapon that fires somewhere around (guessing) 2+ shots per second (I’ve read 2/sec as well, but I do not know exactly) this is a 10% nerf.

However, it get’s more drastic when you consider the main function of the shortbow. The shortbow is all about bleeds and conditions. Yes the auto-attack will bleed on hit, but unlike Warriors and Engineers, we have to be flanking the target.

Where this nerf hits hard is on the shortbow’s main function – behind with bleeds. Not only is our direct damage down 10% or so, but now we stack 10% less bleeding. For behind damage (the MAIN point of the shortbow) it’s actually a 20% (or more?) damage reduction!

Any update on this? I have not seen the Dev’s get back with answers.

Ignoring the possible bug with QZ speed, this is still a really a crazy reduction to the shortbow. Although 40ms doesn’t seem like much, for a weapon that fires somewhere around (guessing) 2+ shots per second (I’ve read 2/sec as well, but I do not know exactly) this is a 10% nerf.

However, it get’s more drastic when you consider the main function of the shortbow. The shortbow is all about bleeds and conditions. Yes the auto-attack will bleed on hit, but unlike Warriors and Engineers, we have to be flanking the target.

Where this nerf hits hard is on the shortbow’s main function – behind with bleeds. Not only is our direct damage down 10% or so, but now we stack 10% less bleeding. For behind damage (the MAIN point of the shortbow) it’s actually a 20% (or more?) damage reduction!

This is a crazy match-up (i’m on Darkhaven). I really hadn’t done much WvW until the last few days, and this shocked me upon entering.

What day are the new matches starting? How long has this one been going on?

JonathanSharp.7094:

Short answer – no.

(snip) we feel it’s very important that you are on equal footing with your opponents when in sPvP. We want skill to be the single largest determinant in who wins in sPvP.

We may add more aesthetic choices down the road, and maybe the stats on the amulets can change, but overall we want to stay w/ the “no power grind” system that we have established.

And that’s why this game’s PvP is amazing.

Please don’t ever change this stance Arenanet!

OP, you are correct, this Elite skill is very poor for the most part in sPvP. (As other’s have stated, it’s excellent in PvE)

It’s a very hit or miss, amazing or terrible skill. Either you get someone who doesn’t know what it is, and they stand there swinging away like idiots for 20 seconds trying to reach you, or you get someone who within a blink of an eye is out of them. There rarely seems to be anything in-between.

They are too easily escape-able for an Elite that states they have to be destroyed first. Even on my Ranger, I’ve just simply walked out of them after getting trapped – did not destroy them or use any skills to get me out – just walked…

I’ve stopped using it in sPvP as it’s simply too unreliable, however I do still use it in PvE for dungeons that have large groups of melee.

That’s because it has a casting time. There’s no global cooldown really in the game, instead most skills have a casting time (and animation).

This is the same for most of the interrupt skills in the game, though some may be faster than others.

Usually a heal skill will take longer to cast than your Conc shot. It’s all about being able to quickly read what your opponent is doing, and sometimes anticipate their next move

I got mine in the Eternal Battleground personally, and it was when it was not controlled by my server. I just ran through as far away from any battles as I could and eventually snagged it, and then left.

Just remove your armor (you take armor damage in WvW) and run through staying as far away from any players or contested areas (marked on the map with swords icon).

Because too few people rez outside of tournaments? Most are just selfish and want kills, so they use stealth finishers and that is noticed.

Also, yes – both Mesmer & Thief (& Guardian) are required to win. Thesmerian Wars 2.

1: Memsers – way too much damage for the survivability they have. A silly condition speialization, allowing a player to kill himself while you run around healing.
2: Guardians – way too much survivability, whilst still using a skill that allow you to kill an enemy without you having to even attack said enemy.
3: Thief – way too much burst and spam. Saddened that they gave thieves the only non-cooldown system.

- No other classes needed but above 3 – they currently take up 3/4ths of groups… -

4: Warriors – high amounts of damage, decent survival depending on traits. 100-blades much too common still though.
5: Elementalists – I see insanely good Elementalists in sPvP all the time, I’m not sure why everyone ranks them so low.
6: Rangers – can be good, but lack un-imobilize (irony…) and despite the name are NOT the best ranged class. Pets have many issues that make them hard to rely on.
7: Engineer – can be very group-centric and helpful. Currently require the highest skill to master though and can be very tough to play.
8: Necromancer – (pre patch) can be annoying with fears, and have good survival, but are the least scary when facing in sPvP

Thesmerian Wars 2

Sean.1897:

It’s not going to be a fun day when all of these longbow sucks shortbow rules threads only result in the shortbow getting nerfed and the longbow still sucking.

:\

Agreed wholeheartedly.

Yeah, I just logged in to find an hour+ of last night’s work reset…

Steely Phil.3952:

Lol at the advice for warriors.

“Team up with another class that’s good at fighting Mesmer, then just 2 v1 him!”

That totally solves all my problems.

I know right? I love how most of the “tips” for mesmers on these forums are either 1) Gang up on him, or 2) Run Away.

The fact that something in the average of 8/10 of a tournament’s players consist of these 3 classes speaks volumes.

Elevated.9752:

Send in 4 mesmers and a theif, you win!

A match with 5 Guardians, 4 Mesmers, and a Thief? That sounds about what the matches I’ve been joining wind up being!

Thesmerian Wars 2!

This is more of an issue with the elemental enemy. When I use my (call the birds from the sky) warhorn move on my Ranger, the birds it calls are enormous attacking the ball-elemental enemies.

How about leaving the 4-min timer so that people who need to change gear before they enter, or wait for a crashed team-mate to restart can do that.

However, once the map is filled 5v5, the timer drops to 60 seconds, and when all select ready, it starts early.

This would at least prevent the full rooms from waiting up to 4 minutes when everyone is present, and still give a full team 1 minute to talk strategies.

Visualize.4319:

When I see a guardian or Mesmer I cringe at the ensuing stalemate or defeat, while not being able to budge them from a point. Everyday I see more and more people switching to these classes, more games filled with mostly 3 classes… I’ve switched as well… feels dirty but less grief.

Yep, feel the same (except for the last part, I will not give swap just to be competitive)

When we’re waiting for a tournament to start, we bet on how many Mesmers, Guardians, and Thieves we’ll be facing.

sPvP is getting so silly how many Mesmers and Guardians there are now. (Thieves and Warriors a close 2nd).

Did the previous patch break this again!?

Last night I noticed I was back to spamming my pet skill to get it to go off. It was working fine as of a few days ago! What happened?

Ugh, yep. Played a tournament match last night, still no chest as of this morning.

You don’t remove pet buffs on swap, you retain the cooldown status of the moves when swapping back. So if a pet has a 30s cooldown for his move, when you swap pets twice (away, and back to the first pet), it’ll still be on cooldown minus the time it took to swap pets.

I’m sure this is what will be done eventually, it was probably just easier to put a cooldown on pet swaps while they dealt with more critical issues.

WatchTheShow.7203:

Not to be picky or anything, but on the models, the hawk texture itself is extremely similar to the juvenille eagle texture. So much that if you renamed your juvenille hawk to “juvenille eagle” no one would notice.

Is there even a difference between the eagle and hawk model/texture? The other day when I compared the 2 in-game, I couldn’t even tell a difference.

Mesmer is my most hated class to PvP against due to Confusion.

If I don’t notice I have a few stacks I kill myself very quickly, which is infuriating. Playing a ranger, my build doesn’t have much room for condition removals (and I hate our heal that has it due to me needing to move around so much)

It’s gotten to where I double guess my self so much that I spend half the match staring at my condition area waiting to see it, and wind up getting killed by direct damage instead.

Retaliation and Confusion are the single most frustrating thing in PvP for me. A skill where you can beat your opponent without doing anything? Crazy.

Lately I’ve resorted to a stupid (but effective) tank-style build which I can toe-to-toe with Mesmers, but I dislike using it as it’s not my personal playstyle.

My small guild is in this same boat. We want to move to one of the 3 newer servers and help spread the population, small though we are.

However, influence and upgrades are server dependent. Which means influence earned on server 1, stays on server 1 and is only usable on server 1. Technically you can have guild members on multiple servers each earning their own pool of influence and upgrades for that server.

I really hate this, and I hope that Arenanet lets guilds temporarily transfer their upgrades/influence so we can help even the populations.

At the very least I’d like to see them refund us the amount of influence we earned on the first server so we can queue up a ton of upgrades on the new one – better than nothing!

The hearts are really more of a guide for where to be, and what level that surrounding area is. Doing just those will only give you a small amount of XP. Dynamic events are the main method, but if you only do those 2 things you will still be behind. The game is all about exploring, and they reward you for it.

Here’s my list of XP outlets in the game:

• Renowned Hearts - The heart quests, really meant to show you where to go. These are only a fraction of your leveling XP.
• Dynamic Events - Dynamic Events are the meat and potatoes of the questing. These are the replacement to traditional quest you get from NPCs. They happen on their own throughout the world and you can particiapte if you like, or keep walking. These start on their own without your interaction and are a good portion of your leveling XP.
• Triggered Dynamic Events - Explore everywhere, the game rewards random exploration, chances are that cave over there will start an event when you get close! Listen for NPCs talking about stuff – they are often referring to events, or secrets.
• Points of Interest/Vistas - Grab these around the world, you get XP for them, and finishing an entire zone’s collectibles will give you great rewards.
• Story Line - Do your story line when you’re an appropriate level for it.
• Gathering - Get the 3 gathering tools from a vendor and loot all plants/trees/ores you see as you get lots of XP from that!
• Crafting - Crafting gives XP as you create stuff, and a good amount too. Approximately 1 level for every 4 PvE levels (if you craft throughout leveling)
• Daily Achievement - If you check your achievements tab you’ll see that there’s a list of objectives for a daily goal. Completing this will give you a chest with XP, Money, and maybe an item. Repeatable each day.
• WvW - The World Vs. World PvP can be accessed even at level 1. Everything you do there counts towards your PvE character. You’ll get XP, Karma, Gold, even Items!

I highly agree. No matter how many builds I test I keep going back to survival-skill ones in sPvP. The rest are just not attractive enough for me to give a hoot.

On top of that, the long-bow is so terrible now that there’s no reason to go anything but shortbow + survival skills.

Ah ok, I thought you meant the pig had a combo field skill I didn’t know about.

Stench combo field?

Vox Hollow.2736:

Have you tried Warthog? His ranged combo fields makes him an awesome buddy if you’re using a Longbow.

I don’t see a combo field listed for the Warthog…

ryokoalways.3450:

Anyone can pick up the item. You can also just leave the item there till needed.

Does that apply to the enemies? Can they pick up the items?

Nenolih.6583:

I have the same problem as most others do and I feel like it’s the one biggest thing that currently feels annoying on rangers. The pets feel like they’re not always helping since it’s hard to spam F2 while also trying to use your rangers abilities so they also drag you down with their nonresponsiveness. I have the problem with all pets and not only the ones that require a target to use their abilities on but also pets that have boons that they give to allies like some Moas or the Fern hound. The fern hound feels especially nonresponsive with the aoe regeneration that I have to spam 5-7 times before it goes off.

Have you tried it since the patch this morning? If so: has it been improved? (it was supposed to in the patch notes for last night)

The “No” you said when charming the first time was a question that asked if you wanted to equip that animal immediately after charming. You said “No”, and it was therefore stored in your pet list.

To use that animal click on your pet’s picture near your skill bar, this will open the interface that allows you to select which pets you want to use at the moment.

I run a small guild of mostly friends on a server that has constant 1-3hr queues for WvW. Our group is mostly people with full time jobs, so it’s frustrating to get on, and spend 75% of the time in queue, play 10min of WvW and have to log off.

Our guild would gladly move over to the lowest population server, but if we do we’ll lose all of our guild upgrades and influence.

We’ve been earning, and spending, and upgrading since day 1. If we choose to move we’ll lose weeks of influence and upgrades and completely waste 1-time use things like the influence item from DDEs that were used for the guild.

Arenanet, if you want guilds to help even out the population then please allow us to move our influence to a different server. At the very least give us a way to “refund” all the influence used on non-consumable upgrades so we can get into the other server and start a huge queue to get us back to where we were!

I can’t wait to test this out tonight after work! It’s been making me so frustrated in sPvP recently.

Now let’s make it so the pets can cast moves while moving.

orci.5019:

Longbow autoattack skill (1) needs a base attack speed increase. With this, it would be much, much more viable. Currently it’s lackluster overall when compared to other weapon options.

Pretty much sums it up there.

Shortbow from the front (no bleeding damage) kills a target faster than the longbow at max distance. (tested in sPvP on golems) That’s just sad…

Adding large-scale raids adds an element of the game that a casual player or small groups would never experience.

My guild for example is personal friends. We are at 13 people, but usually 6 online on average at once. The largest draw to most of the people playing in our group is that with even just 5 of us we could experience 100% of the game.

I hope to heck that Arenanet never adds dungeons PVE systems with groups larger than 5.

I DO hope that they allow larger groups in WvW though, as it would be nice for a guild to have a group of 20 to utilize chat/map-drawing for strategy in WvW.

@OP – Beware, the majority of people claiming they get 60FPS all the time are just misinformed about how FPS should be gauged.

Most people are either guessing their frames are “60+ man!” due to them not noticing the frame-rate drops, or they are testing it in areas where FPS is not a problem. There are many areas where the game still needs optimization and can be used for consistent FPS testing.

One of these areas is the Mystic Forge in Lion’s Arch, and the other is the main castle in WvW.

My story is similar to yours. I was rocking an FX-6100 (6-core Zambiwhatsitcalled) and a 560 Ti 1GB card. During the betas I was getting mixed frame-rates. However, the one thing I was able to determine is that the AMD chips are terrible for gaming nowadays, especially the new FX series. I wound up buying an older gen Phenom X6 (1090t) and it helped for sure, but still I had issues in certain areas.

Using the WvW main castle as a guide I was getting 15-20 FPS with about 20 people on screen. Lowering graphics to the lowest possible I only gained about 3-5FPS. The game is still very CPU dependent.

I built a new computer just for GW2. I went with the fastest Ivy Bridge (newest gen) i7 they made (i7-3770K), a GeForce GTX 670 2GB, and a 480GB SSD. I expected phenomenal results…

Not the case…in the same area of WvW – the castle during a small battle – I was getting 30-35 FPS. (CRITICAL: Always test FPS in the same area so you can have a benchmark!)

That’s a pathetic number considering the money that was spent on the machine, but when you compare it to the Phenom 1090t, it’s a 1.5 – 2X increase.

There are areas that just have horrible performance, hopefully Arenanet will do some more optimization to those areas.

For another FPS reference for testing: (Note: I’ve had to go back to my GeForce 560 Ti as my 670 was defective, still using the i7-3770k)

Standing by the Lion’s Arch Mystic Forge with a handful of NPCs/People on-screen I’m sitting at 42 FPS. Settings at high (except Animations and shadows at Medium)

The TL:DR – AMD CPU’s suck for gaming, especially the FX series. Top of the line new-gen Intel chips can still drop to 30-40 in the lowest optimized areas.

My small guild would join you on the server if we were not going to lose our weeks of upgrades and influence earned.

The fact that we’d have to start from scratch after so many points earned and spent is just ridiculous.

MikeFerguson.8921:

(snip) Ideally, we would see some people move from worlds with extreme queue times to worlds that need additional people and start building up active wvw communities there as well. (snip)

How do you expect guilds to willingly change servers when you lose all your upgrades and influence points!?

My small guild would move to the lowest population server in a heartbeat if we weren’t about to lose weeks of points and upgrades.

Allow guilds to transfer their influence and upgrades and I think you’ll see many more guild be willing to help even out population.

If Arenanet would allow my guild to move our upgrades/influence we would swap servers in a heartbeat.

As of now our upgrade categories are rank 2/3 and much influence has been saved up. We can’t afford to lose weeks worth of that.

Does it allow the leader (or other members) to draw on the map and all members of the squad see it?

Map drawing is an invaluable function in WvW and I wish we could have larger groups just for WvW so guild members can share this function.