Guild Wars 2

Fender.3624:

154 obsidian shards gave me 10 mytic clovers….wtf? I just felt like all my hard work went down the drain.

when i started out i did 100 shard and got 0 clovers…

since then ive always done the 1x recipe instead of the 10x recipe

the only thing they really NEED to do for warrior is bug fixes right now…

that and make mele viable in higher levels of FOTM

maby some boost to our level 30 traits in the defense tree?

the whole situation with bugs, culling, and their inability to alter or solve them kinda unfortunatly seems to suggest serious flaws in their game engine… the lack of bug fixes comes not it seems from lack of bug awarness but far worse the inability to fix these bugs…

only armor with both (soldiers stats) has toughness as a minor stat

knight armor has toughness as the major stat but no vit

no its not 40k… its like ~31k or so with gear maby ~33 with some buffs

used to be higher with orbs around but those went away

i dont think theres any armor with it as the primary (major) stat

toughness >> vit for warrior anyhow though

Thevoidiscold.4910:

You guys are not kicking a dead horse. Your nuking it, Jesus every server has had hackers. So inless your servers nose is clean. Dont talk. FYI No servers nose is clean.

On another note: Around 5 to 6 pm I like to go near fogs treeline and stare at the trees. I dont know why, But i just have a feeling they are up to something. Standing there, Not moving. Pretty suspicious if you ask me.

now now, its not just paranoia, after all Blackgate really IS out to get them!

Looks like oceanic logged on… wonder if IOJ can catch up to SOR before the reset…

hes correct, and unless somthing very unusual happens score wise overnight or tommorow its strongly looking like its going to be the same spots as last week…

Snow Aeth.1937:

As mentioned just a bit earlier.
If you want competitive, no ques, then you should look into tier 1~2

Here in tier 2 the battles are competitive all the time.
I’d suggest picking either Blackgate or IoJ if you come to tier 2 as SoR isn’t lacking NA presence.

Blackgate will cover your butt when you sleep, but needs help during NA time.
IoJ just needs more presence overall.

As for W3 oriented guilds, all tier 1~2 servers have some very coordinated guilds that are W3 focused and you can’t go wrong with joining either of the servers and get to cooperate with them.

This pretty much sums up tier 2:

Blackgate: needs more NA coverage, has best oceanic and eu coverage in tier 2
SOR: needs more oceanic and EU coverage, has best NA coverage
IOJ: trys hard, but needs more NA, EU, and oceanic at this point to be competitive

So in summary: either blackgate or IOJ if tier 2 is where you want to be. How to choose between them? send a few transfers to each for a few days to a week and see what its like.

also with apathy, bad groups are bad, if they end up that bad why in the world should we be required to wipe over and over or risk facing some penalty…

the bigger issue which needs to be addressed is dc or leaving recovery in FOTM:

if player A disconects, has to leave, etc. there is no reason the group shouldnt be able to invite a replacement and get em to zone in for the remainder of the fractal…

They have stated they are “working on a fix” for this, but i think the issue also revolves around the fact that with the dailys being the goal reward, the rising issue of party leaders kicking multiple group members to invite guildies or friends after they have gotten to that last boss. Obviously the devs in another thread have stated that this is reportable behavior worthy of suspension at least, but they probably want to work out a system to prevent it from happening in the first place.

pot.6805:

Aurust.8961:

What we are seeing happening here with SOR dominating is 2 things.

1) Sometime in the middle of last week, we really evolved our game and coordination as a server and began putting alot more emphasize on doing the right things, like keeping scouts and escorting yaks. These are boring jobs but we make sure the players doing these things are praised in teamspeak etc so it makes it a little less boring. Also Rping with your yak helps. We are simply not as lazy as last week overall.

2) Our amazing community really helps the turnout and greatly mitigates player loss to new games like planetside 2 etc. People simply love playing and hanging out here, whether its just in map chat or the server teamspeak.

This if fantastic especially considering it is not a result of any mass transfers but a pure evolution of the server wvw skill.

BGs coverage is lacking this week which is what it is mostly about.

Yup, outmanned on 2 out of 3 borderlands with no queue for ebg nor the 3rd at 9:30est 6:30 pst on a saturday evening (NA primetime) is whats REALLY the issue.

Of course we had that in tier 1 too: im shocked more of the NA guilds dont give BG a look as a server to move to:

some of the reasons include:
1) the BEST EU coverage across all NA servers in DEYS alliance, with guilds like HB, RK et al. They are unstopable during their primetime on weekdays.
2) solid oceanic coverage with guilds like urge and thai
3) No Queues except on perhaps 1 map even during the height of weekend NA primetime
4) for past 4 weeks NA primetime typically been outmanned on 1-2 of the borderlands despite which we have managed to spend 3 weeks in tier 1 followed by a winning week in tier 2 last week. (you can get your whole massive guild in all at once!)

Unlike other servers who are trying to get the impossible to recruit EU or Oceanic guilds, we got em! What we REALLY need is NA guilds!

HabibLoew.2590:

In an upcoming patch the WvW capture points will be updated to follow the same rules as the PvP capture points with respect to invisibility & invulnerability. As a result invisible & invulnerable players will no longer contest capture points.

cool, problem solved in an efficient and fair manner to everyone, thanks!

is it?

If so its a cool one and finally one they shouldnt fix, doing the work to get 2 legendaries deserves its rewards imo.

Disclaimer: I am biased, im gonna go try and do this myself

would like to see some way of changing the stats on legendaries without them loosing legendary status, future free stat upgrades, took so long to make and p/v/t is not for everyone…

Ok so its clear with the recent update that legendary weapons are and have always intended stat wise to be “equal to the best in slot stat wise” (see the devs recent post regarding ascended items and intent to upgrade existing legendaries to those stats in future).

One thing however that is still NOT addressed is what if “best in slot” to a character dosent mean power/vit/tough stats?

Its also a fact that if stats are what your after getting the best in slot item you want stat wise is, and always will (or at least it should) be trivial compared to the work needed to get a legendary. Furthermore the best in slot stats may change several times a day depending on your build.

Perhaps a way to add to the legendary weapons would be to either freely (at an NPC) or for a cheap recipe (at say the mystic forge) be able to have their stats changed at will by the user: For example if someone wants knight stats on their juggernaught add a mystic forge recipe: juggernaught + armored scale + mystic coin + locked black lion chest (just randomly adding it as an example).

Another change they should probably consider making is to make legendaries account bound and not bind on equip so people dont use this later to sell them. Also would be cool and encourage people playing alts.

Again if its just stats your worried about, getting one of each of the crafted weapons for a weapon type is trivialy easy and cheap when compared to what the player had to go through forging a single legendary (1 mill karma, 350 skill points, 500 wvw tokens, 500 dungeon tokens, 100% map completion, etc on average).

huh how he get BOTH effects on him at once?!

can swap between sunrise and juggernaught and get one or the other but both at the same time?

i wanna see this video…

edit: just saw it, how the heck he keep both effects?!

anyone know?

all legendaries are soulbound on use, you CAN tranfer from one character to another before you equip but not AFTER you equip.

they are BOE even if the precursor had already been bound to the character that created it

i tested this around oct 17th or so with my sunrise: made on warrior sent via bank to a necro who could take it out of bank and put in invintory before sending back to warrior and equiping.

as much as i love my sunrise, it sits in my invintory during dungeon runs…

GS is NOT the weapon of choice for dungeons

Most of the trash mob fights in most dungeons can be tanked.

Warriors CAN tank many (but not all) of the boss fights as well.

take butcher in HOTW for example, being able to “TANK” him (which i define as hold in 1 spot with aggro on you for most or even all of the fight) makes the fight so much easier for the rest of the party.

for fotm boss fights that can be “Tanked” include: mossman, ice brood shaman, cultist both fights, jellyfish, 1st dredge dude (dont really count though since anyone can stand there and beat on him), both boss fights on asura fractal (just dont tank the bunny, hes mean)

really the grawl fractal and last boss on dredge fractal are the only one where the 2 boss fights have to be short burst dps or ranged, also the ascalonian captian on higher fractals due to his aoe agony although i havent gotten to 20 agony resist yet to see if he can in fact be tanked, last boss on grawl fractal was also tankable before agony set in, again i wonder how much a difference agony resist will make here.

couple of things:

1) also try the 200 toughness when crippled, chilled, stunned etc trait (either you got 5 conditions on you in wvw or your winning anyhow)
2) armor it seems seems to start scaling up HARD after ~3k or so, 3.4k base is a really solid build, 3.7k you ARE the 1 man turtle!
3) omnomm berry bread is your friend! (+100 toughness)
4) 30 points into defense tree please: the 50 toughness and 50 healing power are worth it even if the 30 point major trait isnt worth it (the 25 pointer is still worth it adding around 120 power.
5) for the record i do use soldiers runes, 3 shouts, and my weapons are typically hammer swaping to axe/warhorn, i get to use mending since between shouts and horn i can cure 6 conditions (actually more if you consider the fact that immobilize, chill, and cripple are automatically cured by warhorn before it cures another condition, 2 turned into boons, 4 cured through stun or knockdown or even while your resing an ally or doing somthing else, 1 stun breaker)
6) stunned, knockdowned, feared, knockbacked enemies arnt hitting you while they have these conditions on them
7) weakness decreases enemy damage by a lot

vs these perma stealth thieves: just spam auto attack and mele aoe abilities while moving around randomly, the glass cannon ones will become revealed typically in a downed state, the survival ones you just gotta ignore and go do somthing else (cant kill em but atleast they wont kill you unless you wait around for them to do so, the answer here is the same as for guardians, just dont play their game, dont 1v1 them, go do somthing else, if they wanna chase after you then fine, find a buddy and take em 2v1)

see also: rifle build, highly viable as ranged.

good for general world pve

often used by new and inexperienced players for high HB damage agains other new or inexperienced players

substandard for dungeon pve as mele unless your party has like 2 warriors and 2 guardians and you HAVE to go for the DPS.

nonviable for wvw as mele

toughness should be stat #1 for you as a skilled warrior for pvp

with most of our builds running around 20k+ hp without any vit equip, more vit is kinda redundant…

I feel that it is much better to deal with conditions by removing them rather than trying to endure the bleed duration (although we already do the latter better than just about anyone given our high base HP).

Healing power is our #2 stat especially when paired with toughness.

tl;dr: for gear, try knights armor with soldier runes running 3 shouts, works great for dungeon and wvw.

The fair solution would simply be to put in a line of code that says more or less: if thief stealth is active, then thief cannot prevent from capping.

No need to nerf thief stealth directly…

I do believe this is an oversight, because a stealthed thief is not allowed to cap a point right now, but their stealth can prevent an enemy team from capping which is the issue.

what it comes down to i think is that results matter:

warriors are the LEAST represented class in the leaderboards, this is not because people dont like play warriors

warriors in tpvp are very 1 dimensional, sure they can deal massive damage, but to do so they have to spec glass cannon and have to give up their tanking and cc

also, dont let the hp and armor fool you, warriors made terrible bunkers: guardian, ele, necro, and engi were/are all better bunkers than warriors (warrior comes in a poor 5th out of the 8 classes here)

on the warrior even more than other classes: toughness >> vit

knights gives more toughness than soldiers being the major stat

vit is kinda a mediocre stat to us since we already got such high HP at baseline

2 answers:

first the math answer, going summing up his spreadsheet:

2 questions:
1) do you play a warrior
2) do you heal yourself or plan on healing yourself at least once a fight

if you answered yes to both these questions (i hope you did) then the wierd math spreadsheet thingy says toughness > vit.

Or if your just looking for an experienced opinion: i can tell you in my experience toughness > vit.

for pvp: toughness > power > prec (knight)

pve: for dungeon its tough > healing power > vit (no armor with all 3, would be WAY to OP on guardians as theyd be basically invincible vs 3 or 4 players as opposed to currently just vs 1-2 with this)

for world pve: easy so dont really matter but id say power > prec > crit dmg

tl;dr: get a set of knights armor and jewlery, you wont be seeing any 20k+ HB, nor 15k kill shots, but works the best all around imo especially with soldier runes

Fritz.5026:

Jasher.6580:

19k-25k hundred blades is okay… yet they nerfed pistol whip… I’m genuinely confused. Both root the character, both are channelled attacks, yet the guy with the heavy armour and high health gets to keep that ridiculous damage.

Confused.

because you are looking at things in a vacuum.

a warrior cannot turn invisible to avoid being attacked.
a warrior cannot teleport away when things are going badly.

also your numbers are so inflated its ridiculous.

the other thing, numbers are all well and good but what it comes down to is statistics and results:

1) prior to patch warrior was one of the LEAST 2 played classes in tPvP, guardian is just flat out better as a bunker and burst damage in tPvP was essentially nonviable
2) glass cannon was and IS a joke in the zerg oriented WvW, all of the good warriors are running around with a hammer, and trying to stun as many opponents as possible.
3) if they went using a hammer in WvW it was because they were a “Turtle healer” and were using the fact that shouts could heal an infinite number of targets in a turtle to their advantage (this has been nerfed, hard)

ZudetGambeous.9573:

People seem to think that precursors were being handed out to everyone at this event like candy corn. I’m here to kill that nasty rumor once and for all.

Anet said their highest concurrency is on Sunday at 12 PST (event time). They also said they had over 300,000 players on at their peak concurrency. So if we assume about 300,000 players got to participate in the event throughout the day (lower concurrency then their peak, say only 200,000 but the event ran repeatedly throughout the day allowing more people to participate, was still starting on some overflows as late as 9:00 PM PST) we can figure out the relative drop rate.

According to GW2Spidy: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/29185
The amount of dusks available for sale jumped from about 10 to 24 due to the event. Lets say that an additional 6 people bought dusk since it dropped in price giving us about 30 supply, which is 20 added to the market due to the event.
We can look at other precursors (Zap: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/29185) and see a similar trend, 10 to 40 in zap’s case. So overall we get an average of about 35 (high estimate, most only added about 20) precursors of each type were added into the market. There are 20 different precursors (only 10 of which are actually worth any money but we won’t worry about that here)

so 20*35 = 700 total precursor drops (within an order of magnitude)

700/300,000*100% = ~0.2% drop chance

which is about the same chance you have from the MF

So no, you did not miss a free precursor candy handout. Only a very small number of players got one, you just heard about it a lot because they were all concentrated in one area at one time with lots of people around that heard what happened.

Ok
1) yes as i said it Was more like a 40-50% drop rate
2) no, when i said that in the other thread it was not just sour grapes, I myself got and sold a Dusk from the event

im sorry but your fan sites information is inaccurate, in our guild id estimate that almost 50% of people who participated (myself included) got precursors from a single or first chest.

Ekove.4586:

And what’s the limit on how many toons per account a player can run? you realize some people have 8? You realize people can delete/create character to re run it which is actually what someone in my guild did after already running it with all his already existing characters….I ran it with about 4-5 of my characters everyday and got a total of 4 exotics each worth 2-5 gold…total; made no more than 20 gold over the course of 4 days.

Now I have nothing against it, I was ok with it for an event like halloween where it was an increased chance to get a random exotic from the chests…

For this one, it is guaranteed to get 2 extremely useful exotics PLUS a very high chance to get some of the most expensive items in the game PLUS a chance to get a few random rares/exotics. The reward was too big to allow people to run it multiple times on the same account, when some people ran it once or struggled to finally run it once before it ended. The total some people made in this event is 500g+…hell just running it once with one character and not getting any fancy drops is a guaranteed 20g.

correct me if im wrong but, wernt the drops scaled to character level?

so to do what your talking about wouldnt the player need 8+ level 80s? and wouldnt deleting and remaking characters not provide the drops your talking about?

Also what about 1 player with 2 accounts? What about 2 players in a family who share an account? What about 2 players in the same household who have different accounts but the same IP?

How would you enforce each instance?

And if what your saying is true then why would they make the chest lootable only once per character, unlimited times per account (we know from the last event they have the ability to make a chest lootable only once per account), and add the unique but account bound stats to the items?

And finally, why leave the event running all afternoon and evening (as i said people were just starting it at 11:30 est when i logged off last night).

However you want to interpret what they SAID, actions speak louder than words and everything they did points to an intent to have people run the event multiple times through the course of the afternoon and evening on multiple level 80 characters to get them their unique rewards.

What I agree was NOT intended was having such a high drop chance of precursors.

THAT is where they need to fess up, admit the drop chance was a big mistake and that a decimal point got misplaced somewhere in their code.

Everyone… Come!

Aestina.3687:

Tammuz.7361:

UnrepentantProcrastinator.7420:

Rengaru.4730:

Tammuz.7361:

Seems legit to me, if they had intended it to be once per account they would have made the chest lootable only once per account (like dailys, DR in dungeons, DR in events etc)

“If they had intended me not to rob this place they would have put a better lock on the door.”

or in Guild Wars 2:

“If they had intended me not to buy thousands of 42 Karma weapons they would have put a higher price tag on them”

It was probably an oversight on the developers part.
Exploiting such an oversight would be called… well… exploiting.

We need to wait for an official statement though.

It’s a pretty huge oversight considering they must’ve known overflows would be in use for the event. And for all events until they upgrade their sever systems.

Again, I just assumed this was intended since they:

A) made chests lootable only once per char, did not link to account like last event 2 weeks ago
B) went to the trouble of making the 20slot box and earing account bound but unique (which suggests to me they INTENDED) for peope to get them on multiple characters. But didnt want people loading up 1 main character with these.

I think what they need to admit is they misplaced a decimal point somewhere in the code for the precursor chance and THAT is what is leading to all these problems.

I’m not even sure the decimal point was misplaced. They DID say drop rate was increased & literally 99% of the online population of the game was participating, therefore leading to an insane amount of drops. Was it a bit much? Maybe. Was the decimal misplaced? Possibly. But if they intended it to be on multi characters I think it would have been all DAY rather than “one time”. This to me just means that a few servers lagged behind or weren’t as fast, letting people take advantage of that.

It was all DAY, people were still completing the event at 11:30 est last night when I logged off and went to bed.

Thats NOT server lagging just a little behind.

Yea, except the numbers and the reality didnt match up, out of my guild of people who did the event about 50% got precursors.

Of those who got precursors about 50% got 2 precursors (from a single chest), and 1 person even got 3 precursors from a single chest drop.

The chance of getting ANY precursor from the chest had to be closer to 40-50% at least.

UnrepentantProcrastinator.7420:

Rengaru.4730:

Tammuz.7361:

Seems legit to me, if they had intended it to be once per account they would have made the chest lootable only once per account (like dailys, DR in dungeons, DR in events etc)

“If they had intended me not to rob this place they would have put a better lock on the door.”

or in Guild Wars 2:

“If they had intended me not to buy thousands of 42 Karma weapons they would have put a higher price tag on them”

It was probably an oversight on the developers part.
Exploiting such an oversight would be called… well… exploiting.

We need to wait for an official statement though.

It’s a pretty huge oversight considering they must’ve known overflows would be in use for the event. And for all events until they upgrade their sever systems.

Again, I just assumed this was intended since they:

A) made chests lootable only once per char, did not link to account like last event 2 weeks ago
B) went to the trouble of making the 20slot box and earing account bound but unique (which suggests to me they INTENDED) for peope to get them on multiple characters. But didnt want people loading up 1 main character with these.

I think what they need to admit is they misplaced a decimal point somewhere in the code for the precursor chance and THAT is what is leading to all these problems.

Aestina.3687:

Grezko.7950:

NO exploit – ppl that went to other overflows did NOT get to open 2nd chest. This was ONLY available with 2nd character on a different overflow. So no real exploit here.

I think the main issue that people have with it, is the fact that people did not have to complete the event on 2nd, 3rd, 4th characters but rather just tag the boss before it died. I know a guildie who literally ran up at 25% health 3 times and got loot. THAT to me is “free loot”. If they put the time in to do the hours of the event a 2nd, 3rd, time then power to them, but they did not.

This is how all world events work and have since beta, you have to do VERY LITTLE in a world event and have since beta to get full (gold) credit. Includig wacking a mob a couple of times at 25% health or less.

Now suddenly your saying the rules should change (ok), unannounced (err…), and that this should be (with this unannounced change and without a change in game mechanics to even suggest that there is an intended change) a bannable offense?

First let me state I am one of the lucky few: I got a Dusk, turned arround and sold it for 100g (shoulda waited till price went back up but hindsights 20/20 and all)

Now let me state I agree with the original poster, RNG drops have no place in a good “western” MMO and need to go the way of shared loot, rolling on drops, and the dinosaur in general.

When all is said and done, i think the precursor drop chance from the chest was probably accidentally WAY high. Like someone ment to make it a 0.5% chance but messed their decimals up and in the code put a 0.5 instead of a 0.005 making it a 50% chance or so per exotic.

SundayTrash.9562:

how is it fair that some people get to loot the chest multiple time, while the rest were left out in the cold. Looking back at how Anet were banning people for karma/cooking exploit, and considering as how this was suppose to be an one time event, it is clearly a exploit.

Seems legit to me, if they had intended it to be once per account they would have made the chest lootable only once per account (like dailys, DR in dungeons, DR in events etc)

They made the chest lootable only once per toon but multiple times per account.

Further they made the exotic 20 slot box and exotic trinket UNIQUE and account bound meaning they EXPECTED people to get multiples on a single account but felt it wasnt fair for a single character to get them all.

Seems like they INTENDED for the event to be completed on multiple characters to me.

wow thats a pretty big buff, this and the precision signet together mean burst builds now can get a free full bar of adrenaline every 15 sec

hmm now gotta decide if its worth it to pop just for the adrenaline …

i can confirm that the new legendary buffs work ust fine in WvW so i assume all ascended gear can be worn there…

knights armor and trinkets with runes of the soldier:

also i prefer 20/25/25/0/0 with the GS in WvW or harder dungeons if im gonna use it

5% of your high toughness gets added back to power, theres also a food that lets you add a %age of toughness to power

yes the 1 thing we need is BUG FIXES:

1) fast hands
2) crack shot trait dosent apply the 20% cooldown reduction
3) last stand does not activate ever
4) our defense tree grand mastery major traits are uber weak (not really a bug but still)
5) shield stance not a stance
6) stances not affected by trait
7) stances not lasting full duration stated

no, the issue is that there is a bug with ability 5 on axe/axe. it does about 10% of the displayed damage so axe/axe is kinda useless right now.

if they ever fix this bug then axe/axe will be great!

nah, GS isnt great for WvW… if your using it its as a backup to a rifle as the primary in a glass cannon build or using it to move around the map quicker.

Hammer/longbow is the best combo imo for a warrior in WvW right now with knights armor, knights trinkets, and sup soldier runes. Longbow for the AOE and taking siege off of walls on offense, hammer for pushing the line in a ground battle.

GS is only useful in combat in an open area where your team already has momentum (a win more weapon thats good for farming kills but not really helping your team).

Rifle while useful on defense requires a glass cannon build, the recent buff to scorpion wires range should put a MAJOR crimp on this. A smart thief should be watching and planning on scorpion wireing any defender they see up on the walls kneeling. (after which since your glass cannon u go splat). Rifle may also be useful in open field battles but again like GS these battles tend to end shortly with 1 team running from the other and are a very small part of the siege based WvW.

Axe/warhorn as an alternative to the longbow or hammer to swap out with them is also somthing worth considering.

ok to the people saying: be happy we could have been nerfed.

Why?

1) Class ballence changes were 100% based on pvp: warriors are the LEAST used class in TPvP prior to yeaterday in the highly defensive bunker metagame.
2) we got a huge nerf in WvW to our healing ability which was in fairness OP. And lets be honest: in the zerg vs. zerg format, our burst builds are largely useless and tend to just die quickly. any GOOD warrior is usin a toughness based build in WvW anyhow which does not have the ability to 1 shot or even kill most players 1v1.
3) yes warriors are strong in PvE but they arnt trying to ballence classes for pve

badge system needs major overhaul, unfortunatly it likely is really REALLY low on their list of priorities right now

Id hope legendary stats would get boosted and legendary weapons would in general be exempted from needing to be on a gear treadmill.

The amount of work needed to obtain a legendary is nuts, if theres gonna be a gear treadmill getting the occasional stat boost to keep them up to par is not unreasonable.

I imagine that people who have legendaries SHOULD find obtaining all their ascended gear trivial by comparrison to getting the legendary anyhow… unless ANet does something really stupid like making them RNG or some such.

in defense of larger transfering guilds you have to look at it from their perspective:

1) no one wants to go out during primetime, spend hours fighting for wvw objectives, win them, defend them, pour money into upgrading them, only to loose those objectives 20 min after they log off to night capping because your server dosent have a night crew.

2) its a common myth among the uninformed that a server has to have queues 24/7 right now to be in the upper tiers of the rankings: case in point without mentioning any names there is a teir 1 server that has the outmanned buff on 2/3 of its borderlands for most of NA prime time the past 2 weekends. And no queue on any borderland map.

3) it IS a fact that only a few of the servers (those in teir 1 and some in 2) have sizeable night crews (oceanic and EU) who can either hold what youve take , or in the cases of servers like blackgate, SBI, and sea of sorrows somewhat embarrassingly (to NA guys like me) hope that WE can hold what THEY took (since the night crew is better than the NA primetime crews on these servers) (flipping is OK if everyone is getting their holdings flipped evenly, nothing stays upgraded for anyone in this case).

basicly the neverending transfer battle boils down to ANets response to the “night capping” issue, reading between the lines their post basically says you need a night crew to do well in wvw or for anything you DO in wvw to have a lasting effect or meaning. These guilds have simply realised that and repositioned themselves for sucess.

agree with above poster with only 1 change: just use endure pain and NOT a stability stance (stick with 2 shouts), instead try out the turtles defense trait in the defense line… suddenly cripple effects (which you always have) become a boon instead of a condition

its just too bad we cant tell the game which condition we want our abilities to remove.

as ranged specalist, probably not since your not looking to tank a bunch…

now for a mele wvw war, ya its useful, especially when your also wearin either knight/soldier or cleric/dwayna stuff.

Of course a mele wvw war should be putting at least 25 if not 30 into that trait line anyhow (30 point abilities are terrible but in a tank build the extra 50 heal power and 50 toughness are what your after)

on the other hand you got survivability backwards: survivability for a warrior is directly related to toughness and healing power, we already got enough HP, adding more HP just increases the duration (that your able to run into the enemy zerg and soak up hits)

Since you dont plan on needing a high duration of tanking (as ranged) any points your putting into tactics are for buff duration or for other trait purposes.

Honestly if your planning on going with a rifle build, try 10/30/0/0/30 full zerker gear with furious, crack shot, quick burst (or the one that burst takes less adren) signet mastery, crit passive, dmg passive, precision from signets, run 5 signets (yes for this build alone)

= 68% base crit (88% fury and 97% full adren i think) 109% crit damage 8 sec for each kill shot with a bonus 10% if u shot target to start em bleeding first…

if your gonna go ranged go ranged with the 15k kill shots in all their glory, just hide behind a mele warrior, guardian, or wall when the dead players friends come after you.

err, the answer to turttleing perhaps?

GS = solo pve, a few noobs try using it in wvw and spvp because if 100 blades connects it can do massive damage, and works wonders on the “pseudo” level 80s with the green arrow (wearing level 10 gear and having no traits DOES make a big difference) but the reality for an experienced warrior is it lacks utility and controll for pvp… hammer, axe/warhorn, and axe/shield are really the most viable mele weapons for pvp purposes at a higher skill level. Mace also useful for tpvp.

Those of us using a GS at the endgame in WvW are often doing it for a different reason:
1) trying to farm badges of honor since damage done does apparently matter significantly here, not effective in taking objectives or moving a line (since you die) but will get you a few more of those impossible to get badges.
2) for mobility purposes of getting around the map
3) as a player “aggro generator” (in a very tanky spec trying to soak up hits) since sunrise tends to draw fire (brilliantly glaring greatsword in the middle of the night = giant “Hit Me!” sign)