Guild Wars 2

So after all these weeks of anticipating a GoM/HoD rematch, we finally get one… but there’s no Zombieland for you to fight or PAXA for us to fight.

ArkAngel.7940:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

subcrazy.1098:

oregonice.6324:

Jeknar.6184:

I’ve been picking fight with stragglers all over the 4 maps, and I can say that Kaineng remind me of SF… All they know to do is zerg you, because all Kaineng straglers I took on, died miserably to my Engineer (which i’m still improving), or came rolling with a large group on me.

Yes, I know WvW ain’t place for 1v1, but I wanted to put my findings here…

If anyone is interested in a fight, you can whisp me in game and I’ll get to ya if i’m not busy. (Even PAXA… At this point, idc about WvW for the rest of the week. Just want to fight for fun.)

You won’t find paxa around anymore we all left. Just a FYI keep on zerging

Cheers.

I bet GoM is finally going to draw HoD for a matchup now that you guys left. Sucks. I enjoyed fighting PAXA in previous matchups and was looking forward to another go.

Have fun in your new game.

I think you’re a wizard.

subcrazy.1098:

oregonice.6324:

Jeknar.6184:

I’ve been picking fight with stragglers all over the 4 maps, and I can say that Kaineng remind me of SF… All they know to do is zerg you, because all Kaineng straglers I took on, died miserably to my Engineer (which i’m still improving), or came rolling with a large group on me.

Yes, I know WvW ain’t place for 1v1, but I wanted to put my findings here…

If anyone is interested in a fight, you can whisp me in game and I’ll get to ya if i’m not busy. (Even PAXA… At this point, idc about WvW for the rest of the week. Just want to fight for fun.)

You won’t find paxa around anymore we all left. Just a FYI keep on zerging

Cheers.

I bet GoM is finally going to draw HoD for a matchup now that you guys left. Sucks. I enjoyed fighting PAXA in previous matchups and was looking forward to another go.

Have fun in your new game.

AggieTechGuy.4901:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Did anyone get photos/video from the [ASH] mini-golem rush?

Here’s a pic from the IoJ point of view. Sadly I forgot to screenshot as we gate-bombed your golem rush.

There was some good stuff after we wiped the first push. One of your guys was death-scouting in the tower, so the ASH guys surrounded him in their mini-golems and started a mosh pit on him. I was the quaggan with the red balloon.

Banzie.5248:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Banzie.5248:

kitten GoM.. Where did you all go? I give a shout out to the two GoM guildless upleved that stayed on your BL and valiantly defended your borderlands while you all sat in eb and watched. We literally 1 rammed everything but bay.. That was 2 rams.

I think we’ve all been in the pavilion. We put in some serious overtime to beat Kaineng last week and it seems everyone just kind of took this week off. :/

From map chat just now on GoM BL… “How dare these selfish GoM think they have any ownership of these clearly green borderlands. Down right rude of them chaps.” lol

Meanwhile, in the Pavilion…

Banzie.5248:

kitten GoM.. Where did you all go? I give a shout out to the two GoM guildless upleved that stayed on your BL and valiantly defended your borderlands while you all sat in eb and watched. We literally 1 rammed everything but bay.. That was 2 rams.

I think we’ve all been in the pavilion. We put in some serious overtime to beat Kaineng last week and it seems everyone just kind of took this week off. :/

Did anyone get photos/video from the [ASH] mini-golem rush?

Lightsbane.9012:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

The new Bandito thief tutorial video is now up, featuring 1v1s against several IoJ/SF/DR players from the past couple of weeks. No stealth, no thieves guild, no lame stuff… just good fights and gunslingin’ action.

http://youtu.be/R9ODp-OMKwg

The obligatory TL;DR gif version is attached below.

better be good man…i turned off the can’t hug every cat video for this.

Not only will it literally change your life, you will name your future children after Mexican food in my honor.

Swiftness doesn’t add up. You simply get the effect from the highest value of movement speed. In the case of Signet of Shadows vs. the Swiftness boon, you’d get the 33% from Swiftness and ignore the 25% from SoS.

This looks like a really neat idea.

Quick question, though: Does Sigil of Water proc from your location or your target’s location? Depending on how that particular game mechanic behaves, you might want to try dropping Merciful Ambush to add Ricochet.

kaazdinasty.8120:

always nice to see one of your posts! it’s been a month since I picket up your build and compleetly changed my playstile from stealth assassin to p/p gunslinger! and I cant think of a moment in witch I regret it! awesome. I have even rounded up more kills per hour bbecouse i can take on more enemies!

in the video I noticed you awarded mercy to some players, did I see that wrong? (not killed them but only downed them)

Yeah, some of those clips were from actual duels (with /bowing before) and others were just random 1v1 fights. Typically, if I’m out roaming and see a roamer I recognize, I don’t spike. I also show mercy sometimes after particularly challenging fights if allowing them to live doesn’t jeopardize any nearby objectives for my team. It’s my way of showing respect to an opponent for giving me a good fight, but I definitely don’t expect that kind of mercy shown to me when I lose.

sas.6483:

@ Taquito – I have a question about the build. I don’t understand the generosity / fire sigil combo. Fire is obviously good, generosity makes sense to me in this build since there’re few condition clears, but I thought stacking didn’t work because of shared cooldowns. Am I right about the logic / wrong about the condition clears? Also, I just went down to the 30% endurance generation meat stew, which is running at about 1.6 s. There’s not a huge, noticable difference.

The short answer is yes, the sigils probably do cancel each other out in terms of cooldowns. The thing about the Generosity sigil is that it’s difficult to see if it’s actually working or not. There’s no visual effect when it procs other than staring at your condition bar and your enemy’s condition bar, but you don’t really have time to do that in a fight if you’re playing this type of style.

In the video, I’m using a Bloodlust pistol on the off-hand for most of the fights because I only switch over to Fire when I hit my 25 stacks. But whenever I’m running Generosity+Fire, Fire seems to proc every chance it gets and I haven’t noticed any hit to my general survivability after swapping. So I’m not really sure how it works (or even if it is working)… I picked up my Generosity sigil back during Wintersday when it was about 50s and I’ve been too afraid to replace it ever since because it’s gotten so expensive now. I’d say for the purposes of this build, your sigil choices are completely optional. If someone wants to test the build without plunking down 20g+ on a Generosity sigil, please let me know how that turns out.

One other trick that most of you probably already know, but for those who don’t… if you’re using the same weapon on both weaponswaps, you don’t actually need two of them.

My current load-out looks like:
Weaponswap #1: Main Hand – Pistol of Generosity, Off Hand – Empty
Weaponswap #2: Main Hand – Dagger of Force, Off Hand – Pistol of Fire
The game will automatically fill the empty slot with the filled slot from your other weaponswap so I end up with P/P and D/P instead of P/x and D/P.

Thanks for the comments, all!

The build is a ton of fun to play. The thing I love most about thief is that you don’t have weapon skill cooldowns or have to stick to pre-determined optimal rotations. You’ve got all your tricks up your sleeve for whenever you want them and can act/react at will to the ebb and flow of a fight. It’s a much more arcade style of play over other classes, and being somewhat glassy, each fight feels thrilling for me because I know that if I make a mistake, I’m probably dead.

And even though I choose to play without using stealth, you do still have access to the black powder/heartseeker combo on the weaponswap with this build if you want to keep some stealth in your gameplay.

On to the questions….

nearlight.3064:

my only concerns about P/P is that you’re basically dead if unload gets reflected, and while the offhand pistol skills give tremendous utility, the mainhand ones are mediocre condition applying auttoattacks. But nice job, you do a great job showing off the risky ranged burst potential!

I run into people trying to reflect pretty often (shield warriors, engis, eles) without much of a problem. If you’re keeping a reasonable distance when you Unload, you should have plenty of time to react and dodge if you see it reflect. And even still, the damage probably won’t kill you unless you’re really low anyways. Instead, just use that opportunity to switch to dagger and close the gap, or simply stop firing and let your initiative recharge. The reflect skills are all telegraphed and you should be able to spot it immediately.

Just finished uploading my latest WvW video (1080p version is still processing). This video focuses solely on 1v1 fights as a P/P thief versus almost all of the other classes. No stealth, no thieves guild, just a pair of guns and reflexes. I think Elementalist and Ranger are the only classes that got left out, but I did manage to include some fights against builds that are typically problematic for pistol thieves (phant-mesmer, retal guardian, evasion thief).

You can view the video here:
http://youtu.be/R9ODp-OMKwg

My current build info can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/mwjsh7b

The only changes I’ve made to my build from prior videos are to replace the Superior Sigil of Battle on the dagger with a Superior Sigil of Force. I didn’t crunch the numbers, but the damage feels about the same and that’s one boon less to worry about getting stolen or converted (weakness is one of the most dangerous conditions against this build… you need all the energy you can muster for those dodges).

I’ve also started trying out other types of food buffs. I’ve been using Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew for as long as I can remember because endurance regen is HUGE for this build, but thanks to the stew’s new popularity among people farming the gauntlet, I simply can’t afford to pay 20s per bite. I’m leaning towards life steal or health regen food, but I’m still playing around with ideas. As always, I’m open to suggestions.

If you dig the video and want to see more like it, you can visit my playlist over at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL0zgxysk21_89P-ffAS2B961HEemQxno

There’s only a handful of us stubborn enough to run P/P on a regular basis and attempt to turn it into a viable weapon-set, so if you want to support us, please like, subscribe, share, and make your own videos of successful gunslingin’ action! If you’ve got any questions, please feel free to ask.

Thanks for watching!

The new Bandito thief tutorial video is now up, featuring 1v1s against several IoJ/SF/DR players from the past couple of weeks. No stealth, no thieves guild, no lame stuff… just good fights and gunslingin’ action.

http://youtu.be/R9ODp-OMKwg

The obligatory TL;DR gif version is attached below.

New video is rendering and will be online later tonight. Several IoJ players make guest appearances.

Darkothe.1253:

On GoM…you come for the WvWvW – and stay for the .gifs.

I feel as though I miss half of the jokes in these threads because I don’t watch Dr. Who.
Then I remember, I don’t like Dr. Who.

infantrydiv.1620:

4. Dunno what Gun-kata is, but it sounds like dividing the skill could be interesting

Do yourself a huge favor and go watch Equilibrium right now. It’s a little over the top, but quite an amazing movie. The gun-kata stuff we’re talking about is a the style of gun-fighting they use in the movie. It combines martial arts movements with calculated positioning in a fire-fight to inflict max damage on multiple targets while evading most attacks, even at point-blank range.

It’ll change the way you feel about playing p/p thief.

Banzie.5248:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Averaelas.1876:

Aswell, no joke, there’s probably ten or less on map, half of which don’t speak English. Do you know how hard it is to command in Spanish? Attacke la torre. Da me el burrito. Regresen a los tacos

Be careful who you’re insulting, they might be a lot more hardcore than you think.

http://youtu.be/-rXt8L1Vu8A
(source: annual exploding sledgehammer festival in San Juan de la Vega)

TAQUITO!! Come try and kill the SF warrior inbetween mend and sf spawn, We be dueling there and only a few of us can tie, no one can win WE NEED YOU

But… that was at like 6:00 AM my time.

Averaelas.1876:

Aswell, no joke, there’s probably ten or less on map, half of which don’t speak English. Do you know how hard it is to command in Spanish? Attacke la torre. Da me el burrito. Regresen a los tacos

Be careful who you’re insulting, they might be a lot more hardcore than you think.

http://youtu.be/-rXt8L1Vu8A
(source: annual exploding sledgehammer festival in San Juan de la Vega)

SeeBeyond.1486:

[P/P] –
1 .Body shot applies 5s weakness instead of 3s Vulnerability
2. Ricochet either made to be 100% on first bounce, 50% on second, or move it to adept trait.
3. Black powder has a small AOE anyway, have it place the pulsing blind AOE on yourself and any enemy hit by it (might make D/P too strong tho)
4. Change Unload to be 2 staged like FS/LS, first stage is the same as it is now, second is a dancing AOE attack (Gun-kata like) with an evade and does more damage based on how many conditions the target has. Only 1s allotted time after Unload stage 1 is completed to activate stage 2 before it reverts to stage 1 on the bar

I think P/P should look something like this (just not as OP) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2KJHysK6k8

[Signet of Shadow]
Activate: Gain Swiftness for 15s and blind nearby enemies
Passive: Ignore combat speed reduction

[Withdraw] + [ Roll for init]
1. Increase dodge distance (basically reverting a nerf)

[Signet of Agility]
1. Breaks stuns on activation
2. Removes a set 3 conditions on activation
3. Passive increases the length of all evade frames (on abilities) by 1/2s (or 1/4s if that is too OP) instead of precision

You, sir, get a big +1 for bringing up Gun-kata. I’ve been begging for some kind of evasive skill added to pistols, and Equilibrium is the best point of reference I’ve seen so far.

infantrydiv.1620:

Smo.6520:

We have Is, Shadowstep, and shadowtrap as stun breakers. One Signet, one trap, one deception. It’s a pattern. One stun break in each utility category, except for venoms of course. To add a stun break to another signet would have to remove an ability from it to prevent it from being OP. Can you imagine signer of agility breaking stun refilling endurance and curing multiple conditions? Just wow

I do agree that if a stunbreak was added to signet of agility it might make it OP unless there was some balancing done.

Someone ran some tests with Signet of Agility in a previous thread and found that it only cures one of your conditions no matter how many allies are around. With all of the conditions in the game (and factoring in future conditions being added like Torment was), SoA is extremely underpowered. It makes it even worse that you can’t choose which condition to remove, so there’s no thief counter to condi-stacking classes other than to use stealth and stealth traits.

If SoA acted more like Signet of Stamina, I’d be a pretty happy camper even without making it a stun breaker.

Banzie.5248:

GoM gets +10 for gifs.

Natronix.9827:

What…. i don’t even.

Welcome to GoM, where the gifs are doubled and the points don’t matter!

ARM.3912:

Averaelas.1876:

ARM.3912:

Averaelas.1876:

I will agree to stop putting holes in SM if someone on SF will mail me 150 ancient bones.

Yes, this is extortion.

Yes, you can choke on my kitten.

Yes, I’m gonna swiss cheese dat kitten.

OMG that is brilliant! This game would be so awesome if you could extort the other server for gold at any time. Want us to stop spawning? Make an offer. Want me to stop spamming /sit on your body? Make an offer. I am so glad I thought of this and posted it months ago…

ARM

Shut up ARM :p

All is one in ARM. This mighty body is my church. When I command your surrender, I speak with six billion voices. When I make a fist to crush your resistance. It is with six billion hands. When I stare into your eyes and shatter your dreams and break your heart. It is with twelve billion eyes. Nothing like ARM has ever come among you; nothing will again. I will take you to a hell without exit or end. And there I will murder your souls! And make you crawl and beg! And die! Die! DIE FOR ARM!

ARM doesn’t always speak, but when he does it is the greatest speech ever.

Not only did I start spamming the +1 button before I even got to the second sentence, but I did it with such ferocity that even my heartseeker key would be proud.

Devon.9061:

From what I know.. I could be wrong there are only 3 moves that remove conditions not traiting into the stealth line. One is our healing skill [Hide in Shadows] but we are avoiding stealth here. Another being [Shadow Return]. The other [Signet of Agility] which can be used every 30secs and gives a passive precision increase. You can run Sword #2 to also get rid of conditions. Thought I am not fond of spamming sword #2 to get rid of my conditions nor am I of wasting my stunbreaker of [Shadow Return] and I personally dont know of many thieves who run [Signet of Agility].

Ive tried a pure dodge based build. It just doesnt have the same effectiveness of a stealth based one. I will openly admit I am 10x better at the stealth based since that is what I learned to play. In a 1v1 the dodge build does well but when 1vx comes you might as well dodge your way out. AoE and Conditions tore me apart. But I could have been doing something wrong.

I run Signet of Agility simply because it’s one of the only non-stealth condi removal options.

Averaelas.1876:

ARM.3912:

Averaelas.1876:

I will agree to stop putting holes in SM if someone on SF will mail me 150 ancient bones.

Yes, this is extortion.

Yes, you can choke on my kitten.

Yes, I’m gonna swiss cheese dat kitten.

OMG that is brilliant! This game would be so awesome if you could extort the other server for gold at any time. Want us to stop spawning? Make an offer. Want me to stop spamming /sit on your body? Make an offer. I am so glad I thought of this and posted it months ago…

ARM

Shut up ARM :p

I feel Signet of Agility should also be made into a stun-breaker, or at least have an additional condition cleanse since it’s one of the few condition removals thieves have that are not tied to the stealth mechanic.

Also… as much as I would love it, you DO NOT want to give me 1200 range on my P/P thief.

I’ll be bummed if the orrian truffle and meat stew stays expensive because it was such a good fit for my no-stealth thief build, but I’ve already started experimenting with other foods (thanks for the Zhaitaffy info!) and adjusting my playstyle accordingly. Haven’t noticed much of a decline so far even in 1vX situations, so this whole price skyrocketing thing may have actually saved me money in the long run by ditching a food I don’t really need.

Thanks for the advice, all!

I posted this one in a thread a few weeks back:
Two baby quaggans doing a jumping high-five over your victim’s corpse.

Banzie.5248:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Banzie.5248:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

soooo? which server is winning?

In-game, or on the forums?

Forums obviously, Who cares about in game

Keeping track of how many infractions each server has in a thread is a pretty fun game in its own right. It’s GW2: Office Edition.

Edit: I think we’re winning!

Nice vids btw man ;o

Thanks! Unfortunately, the quest for Quip has cut into my recording time a bit, but I’m finally almost done with all that pve junk and should be able to start uploading videos on a more frequent basis pretty soon. Might give that streaming stuff a shot, too.

Banzie.5248:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

soooo? which server is winning?

In-game, or on the forums?

Forums obviously, Who cares about in game

Keeping track of how many infractions each server has in a thread is a pretty fun game in its own right. It’s GW2: Office Edition.

Edit: I think we’re winning!

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

soooo? which server is winning?

In-game, or on the forums?

Ah, ok that makes sense. I haven’t done much of the new content so I didn’t realize other people had a sudden need for endurance recharge.

Well, hopefully it comes back down to much more manageable price after the event is over.

The food in question is Orrian Meat and Truffle Stew, which has rosemary and sage as the obvious high-price culprits. Those ingredients are both used in the much more popular Lemongrass Poultry Soup recipe.

However, LPS has been in high demand for quite some time now. After the initial price spike as people discovered the joys of reduced condition duration, the price stayed pretty reasonable until the new update.

I’ve noticed this trend on other foods as well, even the ones that don’t require those ridiculously expensive herbs. Seems like just about all food is spiking right now.

So admittedly, I’m not very good at market analysis or playing the tp. But I’ve noticed that food and cooking ingredient prices have skyrocketed since the latest update. The food I rely on heavily for my WvW build has gone up from 3s to around 15-20s per serving. Even the cheaper versions are likewise over 10s a pop, and that’s the price of crafting it, not buying it outright. I play WvW almost exclusively and make a paltry 1g-2g per hour (guaranteed greens from rank chests, maybe 1 rare out of every 10 ranks, haven’t seen an exotic drop in a month or so). Having to pay 40s/hour in food costs brings that income waaaay down.

I guess what I’m asking is, are these prices here to stay? Or are they a temporary effect from the new content that was just released? WvWers are the crowd that arguably need food buffs the most, but are the least likely to be able to afford it. And until Anet can find a way to give us a reward structure comparable to PvE, we’re stuck in a bad place for maintaining any semblance of wealth when a large chunk of our income goes to simply staying alive in addition to having to build upgrades and what not.

Sororita.3465:

I like GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDDD!

=D

now please…back to WvW shenanigans!

I hate you so much.

KyoHanakaze.8145:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

sioux.1653:

KyoHanakaze.8145:

uberkingkong.8041:

Shademehr.1397:

I’m calling it now: Our “random” matchup next week will be Eredon Terrace / Blackgate / Jade Quarry

lolol

Ahhh hell no, Jade Quarry doesn’t want to face you, Jade Quarry only wants to face the best.

When Jade Quarry faces chump servers like ET and HoD all it does is drop our rating. Jade Quarry is the #1 WvW server right now but due to terrible matchups Jade Quarry cannot be the #1 even though it is the #1.

When you want WvW you come to Jade Quarry, when you want access to CoF (and other PvE related things) you come to Jade Quarry, when you want to PvP you come to Jade Quarry. Jade Quarry #1 server overall NA.

When you want to zerg pointlessly, you go to Jade Quarry. When you want to have the most boring WvW day, you go to Jade Quarry. When you’re feeling lazy and want to have absolutely no skill and just press 1 all day, you go to Jade Quarry.

I feel like I can like HOD now…

As an outsider to this matchup, I agree. Henge are some cool folks, even if they try to send you their unwanted guilds from time to time. :P

I deeply apologize for that, and, as happy as I am for GoM, I’m sad that they left for JQ because I was oh so looking forward to staking Zombie Land 24/7. That being said, come back to us soon? VLK’s been pining for some Raven Hold blood for quite some time. We love fighting you guys. <3

Yeah, I figured you guys were really looking forward to some revenge on ZL. I’ve got nothing negative to say on them. I didn’t care much for their karma trains and the bad habits they instilled on our pugs during the slow weeks, but when kitten got serious they pulled it together and worked hard for us in some clutch situations. It just seems that GoM wasn’t a good fit for their playstyle, so they moved on. Things on GoM are a lot less… umm… golemy now.

I’m hoping we get that GoM/HoD matchup eventually. We miss fighting you guys and PAXA (even though we’d probably ruffle their feathers by running more than 5). And we also miss all the free badges that jellybean and PHZE so generously give out all day every day.

sioux.1653:

KyoHanakaze.8145:

uberkingkong.8041:

Shademehr.1397:

I’m calling it now: Our “random” matchup next week will be Eredon Terrace / Blackgate / Jade Quarry

lolol

Ahhh hell no, Jade Quarry doesn’t want to face you, Jade Quarry only wants to face the best.

When Jade Quarry faces chump servers like ET and HoD all it does is drop our rating. Jade Quarry is the #1 WvW server right now but due to terrible matchups Jade Quarry cannot be the #1 even though it is the #1.

When you want WvW you come to Jade Quarry, when you want access to CoF (and other PvE related things) you come to Jade Quarry, when you want to PvP you come to Jade Quarry. Jade Quarry #1 server overall NA.

When you want to zerg pointlessly, you go to Jade Quarry. When you want to have the most boring WvW day, you go to Jade Quarry. When you’re feeling lazy and want to have absolutely no skill and just press 1 all day, you go to Jade Quarry.

I feel like I can like HOD now…

As an outsider to this matchup, I agree. Henge are some cool folks, even if they try to send you their unwanted guilds from time to time. :P

You must be mistaken. [RISE] is a PvE-only guild that specializes in running fractals.

DevonCarver.5370:

timidobserver.7925:

This guy has it right here. Someone that exclusively plays WvW should be able to get rewards just like those that exclusively play PVE. I’d dare say that there should be WvW legendaries.

We are continuing to make progress on these things. You can get ascended gear with badges now, the rank up chests have decent loot in them, including chances for precursors, all of the keep and tower lords drop the champion loot. The daily achievement is extremely easy to get in WvW, we’ve made a change (going live soon) to make many of the events group events to help with monthlies. Believe me, I am aware of the fact that the rewards in WvW don’t always keep pace with PvE, but we are moving to address that as much as we can. There will be an update on achievements in the not too distant future which will help to address the achievement point imbalance as well.

A good start would be to make the WvW rank chests on par with daily boss chests… a guaranteed rare or better. I can farm daily bosses for more gold in one hour than I can make in a week’s worth of WvW. It’s pretty disheartening cracking open WvW rank chests and getting green after green.

Another helpful idea would be to provide WvWers with an alternate way to getting dungeon tokens, since you guys gave tons of free Badges of Honor in achievement chests so that the PvE crowd could avoid WvW altogether. Someone posted a really great idea in another topic that you could possibly make players have a chance at dropping tokens depending on if they’re wearing dungeon skins.

Yeah, as someone who almost exclusively plays WvW, I saw the price of the food I use (not a very popular food, by the way) skyrocket from about 3s to almost 20s per serving after the last update. How are we supposed to keep up with the PvE crowd if our drops are so crappy? We can barely sustain our wvw builds and still provide upgrades/siege, let alone think about trying to go for a legendary or some other nice REWARD for time spent playing this game.

Serenity.8246:

Great job to GoM these past two days! I wish you guys would have played like this all week!

We sincerely would have liked to. Unfortunately, every time we’d settle in for a push against YB, we’d have to leave to go chase some vultures out of our yard. The mere idea that KN tried so hard to play for 2nd instead of going for the win is the reason that we chose to switch focus and take that precious 2nd place away from them.

As for YB, you guys played well and deserve the win. You didn’t do anything flashy, but you didn’t make any mistakes, either. YB was able to keep up good pressure on both servers all matchup long without over-extending and played solid defense as well.

Congrats on the victory! And cheers to the [LoS] thief and mesmer I got to duel last night. In my limited time fighting against YB, they stood out as top talent to me.

Kaineng’s military strategy thus far:

TCDJ.5378:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Kaineng also appears to be downright terrified of Yak’s Bend. So factor in the fact that we have to sacrifice a good portion of our offense to play non-stop defense against the 2nd place server, meanwhile the 1st place server gets a free pass on keeping most of their borderlands fully upgraded all week.

We seem to be winning most of our head-to-head clashes, though, and we’re able to nab top PPT occasionally during peak times, so I’d say we’re doing quite alright. If blue would start playing smart, the scoring would be a lot tighter and they’d actually have a shot at winning the week.

It’s different. If I have 10-15 rallians on me, of which I have may be 5 on Teamspeak, I’m going for GoM. To take today for an example: we held all your towers, garrison and hills at the same time.
Props to the defenders at bay, but we eventually got that too. I had sent scouts to YB BL and GoM BL just before we started on your hills, and the reports made the choice easy.

Just look at how later, when we did have bay but lost your garrison again, we went in again with the three omegas. Even after repeated calls they didn’t aim for your ACs but instead targeted the warrior that rushed outside, giving you all the time in the world to build siege at your inner gate. That was terrible execution on our part, and was also one of the reasons why I didn’t bring that group to YB.

Additionally your havoc groups keep showing up on our map. Taking a tower or two (or four) on your borderlands usually gets them to switch back. And because switching maps often costs a lot of players, we just stay and take whatever else is up for grabs. Operation “Low Hanging Fruit” commences and we stick around for a while focusing on you instead of YB.

I’m not saying GoM is bad. If you were, the score wouldn’t be as close as it is. However you definitely are an easier target to get our PPT up and remain in second place. Additionally, I think some of the decisions you’re making don’t work out in your favor.

Yaks focuses on us a lot to keep us from catching up – which makes sense, the server in 2nd place is the biggest threat for the one in 1st place. At the same time you’re hitting us to try to overtake us. So we’re stuck in an endless 2v1 (like WvW is supposed to) – we’re the most interesting target for both servers. If you have to retake your BL that gives us some breathing room to push YB back again.

If you really wanted to win the week, you would try to slow down Yak’s point intake by either capping their territories or by capping our territories that YB is holding. Instead, you’re choosing “to keep your PPT up” by hitting our unprotected territories while we’re dealing with YB. That does nothing to help you actually close the gap because, in case you haven’t noticed, YB is pretty eager to chomp away at your territories whenever you guys push on us and they’re keeping their PPT just as high, if not higher, than what your push is earning you. So, enjoy that immediate PPT boost, because you’re leaving both GoM’s territories and KN’s territories completely exposed for YB to come in with superior numbers and easily take it all later when they can open the scoring gap up in off-peak hours.

If your commanders were smart, they’d want everything YB owns to be paper at all times, even if it means that GoM is doing some of that flipping. The pressure would stay on the top server and both lower servers would slowly eat away at the lead all week until it becomes a mad dash for the finish line. That’s how a 2v1 works if all three servers want to win.

Unless, of course, Kaineng is happy with 2nd place. If that’s the case, then I’ve got nothing more to say except good luck and have fun with whatever you do. I’ll be over in YB borderlands with some players who actually like to scrap if any of your servermates decide they want to grow a pair.

Kaineng also appears to be downright terrified of Yak’s Bend. So factor in the fact that we have to sacrifice a good portion of our offense to play non-stop defense against the 2nd place server, meanwhile the 1st place server gets a free pass on keeping most of their borderlands fully upgraded all week.

We seem to be winning most of our head-to-head clashes, though, and we’re able to nab top PPT occasionally during peak times, so I’d say we’re doing quite alright. If blue would start playing smart, the scoring would be a lot tighter and they’d actually have a shot at winning the week.

Shanks R Us.2489:

multivira.7925:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Shanks R Us.2489:

Arenanet likes having a care bear game. Aww did mean ol pvp players kill you? That’s okay we’ll move this stupid PvE thing somewhere close to bad AI NPC’s so you don’t have to worry about it.

Well, since Anet made it rain with free badges of honor from achievement chests so that the PvE crowd wouldn’t break a nail trying to get their gifts of battle, I want free dungeon tokens without having to set foot in NPC land.

Agreed, it’s pretty much impossible to do dungeons with people from a WvW guild (as in getting them to wanna come, dungeons aren’t too hard :P). We need to get those tokens somehow….

I say whenever you kill someone in WvW wearing dungeon armor, they have a chance to drop a small amount of the tokens required to purchase said armor set. So if someone is wearing CoF armor, you kill them, chance to drop a few CoF tokens.

Would be neat, might get farmed/exploited though, so any player wearing any dungeon armor —> chance to get any dungeon token would probably be better.

MAKE IT HAPPEN ANET DUNGEONS SUCK

That’s actually a really cool idea! Signed.

Shanks R Us.2489:

Arenanet likes having a care bear game. Aww did mean ol pvp players kill you? That’s okay we’ll move this stupid PvE thing somewhere close to bad AI NPC’s so you don’t have to worry about it.

Well, since Anet made it rain with free badges of honor from achievement chests so that the PvE crowd wouldn’t break a nail trying to get their gifts of battle, I want free dungeon tokens without having to set foot in NPC land.

Euphelis.1084:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

They probably did that as a partial refund for the players who spent gold buying tickets.

This would make sense if those people hadn’t been the ones who actually voted, and therefore the ones with no more support tokens left over, only buttons (which are completely worthless, but hold on to them for the next 2 years because anet will probably 1 day make them worth millions)

The ticket vendors and mob drops were still active long after the election had ended. It’s a good way to purge them from the system.

Plus, it kind of makes up for all those weeks of running back into the heart of an enemy zerg just to pick up a wooden chest that should contain a rare, or possibly that precursor you’ve been waiting for since launch, but was actually a kitten support ticket.

They probably did that as a partial refund for the players who spent gold buying tickets.