Guild Wars 2

Sigmoid.7082:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

To me, the real issue with Scourge is that desert shroud makes it so that walking next to players will corrupt their boons.

And boons don’t get corrupted like they usually do. No no.

Every boon corrupted by that will be changed to a damaging condition.

Desert shroud skill F5 does not corrupt boons.

Oh, you’re right.

My bad, it was trail of anguish that did that.

Scourge is over tuned.

Personally, I think everyone is over hyping barriers just a little bit.

To me, the real issue with Scourge is that desert shroud makes it so that walking next to players will corrupt their boons.

And boons don’t get corrupted like they usually do. No no.

Every boon corrupted by that will be changed to a damaging condition.

To me, Scourges are an exemplary example of the problems facing WvW.

Too much stability spam, too much boon corruption.

These 2 things are constantly pulling on each other, creeping in power, and the devs are just ramping it up even further.

I highly doubt mirage is bad in open world.

If the dodge was holding you back, you probably should’ve swapped to sword.

Yeah, you won’t do any where near the damage other classes would in open world running a power build with sword.

But dear god, you can get around fast.

Thief is still my favorite open world class, just because of how much mobility it has. And mirage gets a bit closer to thief.

Except for the fact that mesmer still doesn’t have good swiftness stacking.

Xenon.4537:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Can’t have boonshare, can’t have too much invis time on veil, can’t have a high retaliation build, can’t have the ability to make the frontline invulnerable with a well, can’t have any real damage on calamity or gravity well.

Reading this made me realize what a sad waste a lot of mesmer has become… There’s so much potential for powerful unique mechanics, but instead they would rather make mesmer do something as boring as revive and cleanse…

Yeah, Mesmer has had this problem for quite a while.

We get something unique, and then it gets blasted to hell.

It’s why I’m finally investing time building my Reaper up to prepare for Scourge. Since ANet probably won’t bother tuning down how strong Scourge is.

Even if you tune Scourge’s barrier down, you still have the fact that Scourge literally corrupts boons just by walking next to people with the desert shroud on.

Fipmip.7219:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Blackgate is really weird.

Honestly, if I had any complaint about my server (PPT wise), it’s that we over focus SMC when other people are holding it.

Everyone does from what I’ve seen.

Spent an entire day running around and defending SMC from both teams hitting it over and over on both sides.

Similarly, when my server was heavily out matched, we spent loads of time re-attacking SMC over & over, just like the other out matched server did.

I think the reason for this, is because it’s actually valuable for smaller servers to hit SMC.

Everyone wants to defend SMC, it’s the freaking castle after all.

So people will pull their entire zerg off of a BL and go to EB to defend said castle.

That opens up opportunities to hit up their BL, or provides useful time to repair up your BL if they were hitting it hard.

You dont think that the reason people just keep hitting smc over and over is because it’s you know, just fun? Perhaps there’s some other reason, perhaps monetary, perhaps strategic? You said yourself, the endless battle for smc is simply a good time. Something i’d like to experience too.

If the reason you’re getting this constant pressure over the central castle is because it’s just fun to be a part of a rough ongoing battle and trying to either just get as many kills as you can or do something to tip the balance, then I really think i don’t need to make my case any more. You can see right in front of you that this is what people want. so lets give it to them.

Even if it were purely because it’s fun, (it isn’t, but lets roll with it), your change wouldn’t accomplish that.

If you want to accomplish the SMC fun across the rest of the game, change all the maps to have a valuable, powerful, center objective.

No need to add whole new siege weaponry to act as mobile spawn points, which is bound to be bugged since the spawn points already in the game break frequently.

Just give us more central objectives.

Also, consider changing up the skirmishing system. Currently my server will win first place just by maintaining second place.

There needs to be more emphasis on keeping your top place throughout the week.

synergy.5809:

i already do most of the things you listed to some extent and i host my own TS server.

It’s also about the decentralizing of your data even if I host my TS on a vendors server or on digital ocean.

people like you is why net neutrality and privacy rights are being reamed in the kitten

That last sentence had me rolling in my chair.

Shooting sacred cows is not equivalent to “Oh my god, net neutrality is awful”. And people like you are why I’m such a condescending kitten, just in general. You can’t have a conversation about anything without having to find a way to attack the person. Even if that attack is more like a wet noodle slapping a brick wall.

Not that net neutrality even matters. Once you hit certain bandwidth thresholds, your ISP is free to throttle the hell out of you however they see fit. Not to mention the FCC is wholly incapable of enforcing the rules. What are they going to do, fine the 2 companies offering “high speed” internet in the country?

As for privacy rights, you never had any on the net. You’ve never been private, you’ll never be private.

And congratulations for being slightly above the rest of the rabble running on a VPS, that’s owned by a major server host, that’s recording all of the traffic because that’s what a good net admin does. And they totally won’t disclose that information to anyone that offers enough $$$.

Kovu.7560:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Now, for using stealth to get out of combat:
This changes literally nothing.

Maybe for the two professions with 1527 teleports. On ranger (well, druid) stealthing away to escape combat is a fairly common approach I take. I imagine some engineers would feel the same way.

~ Kovu

I’ve chased a ranger to the ends of the earth. The stealth isn’t necessary to escape combat unless you’re totally overrun.

As for engineer, it accomplishes nothing. Engie’s only long enough stealth is on a gyro, and the gyro will keep you in combat anyway.

Curunen.8729:

lol I get it – we’re meant to be the new decap/+1 thief that isn’t supposed to fight anyone. xD

Exactly! You go out there, you get on that dead horse, and you beat the crap out of that dead horse.

Make sure you +1 every fight, and then just time all of your movement abilities and evades such that you never die, and are able to run to the next fight after your teammate inevitably dies because you’re doing nothing to help them.

Now you’re thinking like a mirage!

If I sound overly negative, it’s because I am.

Mostly play WvW here, and I’d really like a Mesmer that didn’t suck the butt cheeks of life in WvW.

Can’t have boonshare, can’t have too much invis time on veil, can’t have a high retaliation build, can’t have the ability to make the frontline invulnerable with a well, can’t have any real damage on calamity or gravity well.

Best thing we’ve got is mercy rune reviving people, and using mantras to pull condis off of teammates without even giving them resistance, meaning “why take a mesmer when you could take a revenant”.

sigh

Tbh, I disagree with everyone here.

(Contrarian position for the win).

Mirage is neither supposed to be a shatter spec, nor an illusion manipulation spec.

It’s supposed to be a completely useless spec that accomplishes nothing, fixes nothing, and is just there to fill a check box.

[X] – Mesmer got an elite spec

That’s it.

“It’s meant to deceive with clones” – Literally what Mesmer was described as doing since launch.
“It’s meant to shatter” – Literally what Mesmer has been doing since launch, outside of the old tanky retaliation build.
“It’s meant to use the ambushes” – All of the ambuses except for sword are downgrades from the auto attacks, and sword is mostly for movement.

Honestly, if Mirage was meant to do anything, it was meant to be a thief with loads of mobility and dodges. Look at the absolute insanity in movement abilities. Sword 1, 3 utilities, our elite is literally 3 short range jumps.

I don’t know why everyone isn’t seeing the obvious. It’s just a high mobility mesmer spec. That’s it. That’s all it has.

They didn’t even try to make it do better damage with illusions. They didn’t even try to make it better at shattering than Chrono. They didn’t even try to make it do better damage solo.

They just thought “Hey, lets give it mobility skills & evades, and tack on some other stuff too”.

Fay.2357:

mortrialus.3062:

Mastering focus is one of the signs of a great mesmer. It’s an incredible weapon, especially in PvE.

It’s not exactly a complex weapon to use in PvE now that the pull is a simple central point pull. Press 4 near some mobs, press it again. Press 5. Congrats, you’ve mastered pve focus.

Bro, that’s like. 3 button presses.

Very complex.

It only takes one ball of dark energy. By the time you can craft the legendary armor, you’ll have gotten an ascended drop or two in WvW.

I’ve gotten an accessory & ring in the past 2 weeks playing WvW. Not nearly as many as you’d get playing Fractals for the same amount of time I play WvW, but you can certainly fulfill that requirement with WvW & the TP for the stabilizing matrixes.

Tbh, though. You really should get into PvE content anyway.

Daily fractals are really good gold, have a pretty high drop rate of asceneded items in my experience, and you can spend your relics, pages, + a few crafted grand masters marks to get ascended armor with choosable stats.

And PoF stats will undoubtedly be added into the pool for choosable stats for fractals eventually. Probably not at launch, but it’ll be there.

Okay, so I don’t know which route you’re going with this, so I’ll answer both.

Unable to stealth when outside of combat changes:
Basically nothing. Backstab thief builds already aren’t all that great, and portal bombs already don’t work.

No one calls for veil, no one cares about veil.

And honestly, smoke + blast doesn’t accomplish much in GvGs anyway. Let alone in zergs.

Now, for using stealth to get out of combat:
This changes literally nothing.

Fipmip.7219:

Yes I won’t deny that having near respawns will make it almost impossible to demolish larger zergs with smaller ones. It all depends on how the game would evolve over time. If say, The fights devolve into prolonged brawling, but the initial encounter is still that of the two flocks flying straight into eachother, there’s still room for zerg stomping and getting a ton of rewards, even if you probably wont take the castle. On camps or sentry points it could be a different story though. It is in my opinion that this is a sacrifice worth making to make the core gameplay a better experience.

I’m on blackgate by the way, fights over smc are like the same as a fight over any other castle. Your zerg will be away doing something else and another zerg will try and take it, If your zerg is able to to notice and redeploy in time, there will be a short fight and whichever zerg loses probably won’t retry for a while. The only time a defense of smc is actually prepared and waiting for another zerg to attack is when it was retreating away from the attacking army and back into smc in the first place, again, like any other castle

Dawdler.8521:

Getting more of that will inevitably lead to having new maps, not features.

EB is a fantastic map that constantly pressure whatever server is holding the center. DBL tried to mimic it but got about 30% of the way, then ran off a cliff and broke its limbs. Yes, all the limbs. And its still lying there on the bottom, crying for help. ABL was never designed for it even though they also tried to revive the center, its great on its own because it focus the top and bottom half seperately.

Either way the tl;dr is that we need new 3-way maps that are shaped like EB in general. Fancy features cant replace basic gameplay.

The system I’m trying to create, like i said, is trying to get longer fights to happen in more places than just these focal points. Changing basic gameplay is exactly what i’m trying to do, there’s nothing fancy about it.

Blackgate is really weird.

Honestly, if I had any complaint about my server (PPT wise), it’s that we over focus SMC when other people are holding it.

Everyone does from what I’ve seen.

Spent an entire day running around and defending SMC from both teams hitting it over and over on both sides.

Similarly, when my server was heavily out matched, we spent loads of time re-attacking SMC over & over, just like the other out matched server did.

I think the reason for this, is because it’s actually valuable for smaller servers to hit SMC.

Everyone wants to defend SMC, it’s the freaking castle after all.

So people will pull their entire zerg off of a BL and go to EB to defend said castle.

That opens up opportunities to hit up their BL, or provides useful time to repair up your BL if they were hitting it hard.

Fipmip.7219:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Your siege camp idea would just break the game, to be honest.
I don’t see how you think you would get “prolonged battles”. The bigger army is just going to steamroll over the small one, and then it’s going to bomb the hell out of the small one’s spawn area, so no one can jump in to help.

To be honest with you, we already have a prolonged fight mechanic built into the game.

You want a long siege warfare, it’s called cap SM and try to hold it when both teams are trebbing the hell out of your walls.

It’s lots of fun, and it’s why EBG has a queue 24/7.

Compare that to the other maps, with no central objective, and a long travel time to a battle, due to the WPs being contested at the slightest tap of the gates at bay/hills/firekeep/air/garri.

Maps need central objectives, and the stupid ruins haven’t been a valuable objective in ages.

You say that seige camps will break the game, and then say the larger army will roll over the smaller one. So how is that breaking the game exactly? are you contradicting yourself? I’ve played for quite a while now and having a long siege in smc is something that has yet to happen to me, unless you’re talking about the random dudes that set up a treb from miles away and just bomb the same wall over and over again.

Yes, large armies roll over small ones. No one disagrees with that. The way it currently works, this happens in the span of about ~60 seconds and then you’re back to running around for the next five minutes. With respawn points closer together, it will go some way to making those fights last longer. It’s that simple.

You also just admitted that these mythical smc prolonged fights are lots of fun, and are why ebg gets such long queues. I’m trying to get more of that, in more places, more of the time.

The reason it will break it, and I probably should’ve elaborated on this.

Is that if a 20-30 man group manages to demolish a much larger zerg, they will not have the power to bomb the larger zerg’s spawn.

So basically, the entire advantage of spawn points, goes to the person with the larger zerg.

So a tower a smaller group may have been able to flip before, will become a tower they cannot ever flip due to the larger group being able to reinforce themselves.

Basically, it completely dooms the little man.

As for a lack of SMC fun, what server are you on? Because I always have SMC fun every day.

Curunen.8729:

Given how many extremely overtuned builds I personally encounter while roaming, choosing to use Focus is like giving myself a handicap. I don’t know if the scene is different on NA, but on EU you will run into good thieves and mesmers in particular, but also solid players of all classes, and believe me I have run Focus, Torch, Shield… all weapon combinations – likelihood of dying is far greater when using a Focus than when using Torch or Shield, Staff, Greatsword.

No one wants to button smash cheese all over the place, but when vast majority of opponents are on the HoT powercreeped bandwagon, trying to play elegant is not effective anymore.

Focus is an elegant weapon for a more civilised age. The age that was before HoT, before specialisations.

In NA, it’s pretty much the same. But it kind of depends on what server you’re against.

T1 probably doesn’t have many roamers, due to how over crowded it is up there. And skill lag.

Honestly? Kind of the same problem with T2, to a slightly lesser extent.

I’ve met many an awesome roamer in T3, and I don’t see someone using the focus standing much of a chance against them. You kind of need your blocks/stealth.

DeceiverX.8361:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

DeceiverX.8361:

- The most potent and most-common small-scale classes aside from cases where things end up totally overpowered tend to be ones which are absolutely useless in zerg fights. When was the last time you saw a commander ask for rangers, thieves, or mesmers (outside of a veil/portal/blur bot)? They’re basically useless in big-scale encounters, unfortunately by design.

To give a little bit to the mesmer class here.
I’ve never been turned away from an organized group for playing a support chrono.

Boon sharing resistance is still pretty important, especially since everyone’s boons end up corrupted most of the time anyway.

Not to mention dropping gravity wells deep on a group’s back line can flat out stop small organized groups from standing a chance against your larger, less organized zerg.

I haven’t been in T1 in the past few months, so maybe things have changed, but last I knew, since the changes to boon sharing the mesmer was no longer included as part of the meta which is why I excluded boonsharing from the list.

Upped usage of necromancers and condi reapers and the likes for mass corruption pushed them hard out of their prior purpose AFAIK.

There’s a degree of utility which any profession can bring – I frontlined a bursty power thief meant for target prioritization/pin sniping in most groups up until this last patch which removed my build from the game – but there does come a point when people need to understand “yeah, I’d generally be more useful on a guard if I were equally as good on it.”

The mesmer has the ability to make some pretty big moves in highly organized groups, but historically so have thieves and mesmers. Most open raids won’t kick by profession choice – it’s why they’re open raids – and always want you playing your best, whatever profession that is. That doesn’t mean they aren’t secretly hoping for more of what’s on the top-end of useful.

Afaik it’s still reasonable to bring mesmers. Generally boons don’t last long enough that the change is going to screw anything over anyway.

Not that I’m on a T1 server, because frankly, I prefer my 20 man organized havoc groups over constantly running a blob.

Ansau.7326:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Fay.2357:

Durzlla.6295:

Literally my only complaints with Mirage are that mirrors don’t persist long enough in the world, and that infinite horizon feels mandatory.

Idk why so many of you seem to be under the impression Mirage is just completely worthless and unusable, it seemed very solid to me, just different due to the dodge mechanic.

The problems with mirage:

• All ambush skills except for sword are utterly abysmal.
• The mirror mechanic is fundamentally flawed. Who wants to go chasing their dodges around the map? Nobody, that’s who.
• The axe skills are weak, buggy, and clunky
• The deception utilities are largely weak and clunky
• At least 1 trait at every level is utter garbage

Funnily enough, these complaints are extremely similar to base mesmer complaints.

Most of our utilities are weak or clunky. Everything outside of sword & GS is weak/buggy/clunky.
The illusion & shatter mechanic is fundamentally flawed, who wants to try and maintain any number of illusions when they can be killed in less than a second preventing the damage from shatter mechanics to land in full.

Oh, and at least one trait out of pretty much every level of every spec is useless.

I feel like you could probably expand these complaints past mesmer at this point. A lot of classes have clunky/useless B.S.

We’d have a lot more variety if they fixed the base classes.

They can only be done if you analyse them individually. the problem with Mirage is that even when you try to see them with the rest of mesmer around, they don’t make sense.

Apart from sword and GS, we have other good weapons like staff, torch and shield.

Shatters might be flawed individually, but when you put them around a class that easily generates illusions and greatly benefits from shattering them, where is the problem? The problem exists with Mirage, a specializations that benefits from keeping alive extremely weak IA, but chrono that loves shatter spamming or core mes with their spikes?

And sorry, but the worst chrono trait available is still better than an average Mirage trait…

Torch I’ll give you, even though I find it lacking in illusion generation similar to focus, while also lacking in some of the utility of focus.

Staff’s auto is garbage. Similar to scepter, the auto attack on staff is just too freaking slow as a projectile. Though, unlike scepter, staff makes up for that bad AA with really good utility.

Utility that doesn’t really scale with anything.

And shield is chrono, I was talking about base mesmer itself in that instance.

Also, if you think for a second I was defending mirage, I wasn’t.

Mirage is crap.

I was just pointing out the funny similarities I see with mirage complaints and base Mesmer complaints.

Geforce 1600

Oh geez, Rick. Did we travel to the year 2023?

I’m kidding, but seriously. What? Did you mean a gtx 1060?

We also have been getting ques.. with almost no one on the BL. There are almost no people standing in spawn.. very few roamers and we get ques with 1 tag on the map with maybe 30 people on him or less.

I can’t really comment on the lag. Kinda comes as a feature of every every game with 200+ people on a map.

But, I would suspect that there’s a group running tagless on your server before I assumed the queue’ing system is screwed up.

I know my server had a 20+ guild raiding during the beta weekend running tagless as a group of deadeyes.

Also, one thing to note is that queue counts do not change in real time. They change on set intervals.

Fay.2357:

Durzlla.6295:

Literally my only complaints with Mirage are that mirrors don’t persist long enough in the world, and that infinite horizon feels mandatory.

Idk why so many of you seem to be under the impression Mirage is just completely worthless and unusable, it seemed very solid to me, just different due to the dodge mechanic.

The problems with mirage:

• All ambush skills except for sword are utterly abysmal.
• The mirror mechanic is fundamentally flawed. Who wants to go chasing their dodges around the map? Nobody, that’s who.
• The axe skills are weak, buggy, and clunky
• The deception utilities are largely weak and clunky
• At least 1 trait at every level is utter garbage

Funnily enough, these complaints are extremely similar to base mesmer complaints.

Most of our utilities are weak or clunky. Everything outside of sword & GS is weak/buggy/clunky.
The illusion & shatter mechanic is fundamentally flawed, who wants to try and maintain any number of illusions when they can be killed in less than a second preventing the damage from shatter mechanics to land in full.

Oh, and at least one trait out of pretty much every level of every spec is useless.

I feel like you could probably expand these complaints past mesmer at this point. A lot of classes have clunky/useless B.S.

We’d have a lot more variety if they fixed the base classes.

Tongku.5326:

Rangerdeity.5847:

Its easier to use and has more features including proper role/permissions management. Why is everyone still using ts3? i mean i know it still works and its not terrible but honestly how long would it take for servers to take the free upgrade?

For me I still vastly prefer TS over discord, primarily for 2 reasons.

1. As stated above: CComs – extremely important and main feature not present in discord.

2. Discord is new and lacks full range of protocol support as well as often has issues running with various security features. Even default Win 10 firewall will often block its updates on anything other then crappy settings. It has serious difficulties running on some of the best VPNs as well as using encryption, etc. to the point where it just won’t run at all.

The 2nd reason is far more important then the 1st. I understand many of you do not care for security, but many people do, and disabling it, or parts of it to run a gaming chat app is not an option.

Can’t say I’ve had any real firewall issues with either TS or Discord.

As for VPNs, they’re glorified proxies.

You can’t even trust onion routing these days, let alone a private service telling you it’ll keep your communications secure with a small amount of off-shore servers and a bit of encryption. They’re totally not logging all that traffic bro. Totally.

The only thing you can trust is that https:// at the beginning of your URLs, and whatever you tossed into iptables. That’s it. Anything else is a get rich quick scheme to take advantage of people’s insecurities.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

DeceiverX.8361:

- The most potent and most-common small-scale classes aside from cases where things end up totally overpowered tend to be ones which are absolutely useless in zerg fights. When was the last time you saw a commander ask for rangers, thieves, or mesmers (outside of a veil/portal/blur bot)? They’re basically useless in big-scale encounters, unfortunately by design.

To give a little bit to the mesmer class here.
I’ve never been turned away from an organized group for playing a support chrono.

Boon sharing resistance is still pretty important, especially since everyone’s boons end up corrupted most of the time anyway.

Not to mention dropping gravity wells deep on a group’s back line can flat out stop small organized groups from standing a chance against your larger, less organized zerg.

That last sentence just lol. Bring Mesmer so your giant zerg can flatten a smaller zerg, gotcha.

Giant unorganized zerg, can flatten a smaller organized zerg.

Unannounced to most here, apparently, an organized group of say, 20-25, can take an unorganized group of say, 40-50.

If you’re at on off hour time just kitten ing around in a zerg that isn’t on TS/Discord, gravity wells are actually really good at shutting down organized groups. Since gravity wells gobble stability up like a whale at an all you can eat buffet. And the backline is unlikely to have pulsing stability.

Not that gravity wells are bad in even encounters. I just noticed how good they are at shutting down organized groups.

Fipmip.7219:

Have you played planetside recently? Since when has revive grenade spam been anything other than something to possibly tip the balance when the forces fighting over a close quarters base where the forces on either side are about equal? Getting vehicles in and behind sundies is a highly effective maneuver and it often makes for great high level tactics and strategy.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with farming or zerging. I’m saying there isn’t enough. What is WvW? is it a gamemode where you, the average player follows around a commander tag to cap as many circles as you can in as short a time frame as possible, with the occasional hot minute? Or is it a gamemode that you can hop into and expect to take part in sieges, battles, and the joy of doing something to tip the scales of a prolonged fight, all while earning plenty of exp and rewards?

GW is still fast paced enough to cap a base with your little havoc group, except now you’ll get more resistance, and if you brought a siege camp with you, has a good chance of escalating into a prolonged battle, as more and more people get attracted by the crossed swords on the map.

Define recently. I’ve played it off and on for years, and the changes to it have been so incremental that it plays exactly the same as before, except with fewer and fewer organizations that still play it.

Last time I played it was probably a couple of months ago, for a couple of weeks. Exact same crap I was used to for the last few years, which is why I only ever play it for a couple weeks at a time.

Hilariously, Hossin is the only map where zerg rushing isn’t the ultimate strategy, and it’s also the map that everyone hates because they’re so used to zerg rushing.

Air raids on Hossin are loads of fun. Good luck getting people to do an air raid with you though.

I’m a tri-factioning nanite bag and I still struggle to get people together that are willing & able to fly liberators & esfs.

Your siege camp idea would just break the game, to be honest.
I don’t see how you think you would get “prolonged battles”. The bigger army is just going to steamroll over the small one, and then it’s going to bomb the hell out of the small one’s spawn area, so no one can jump in to help.

To be honest with you, we already have a prolonged fight mechanic built into the game.

You want a long siege warfare, it’s called cap SM and try to hold it when both teams are trebbing the hell out of your walls.

It’s lots of fun, and it’s why EBG has a queue 24/7.

Compare that to the other maps, with no central objective, and a long travel time to a battle, due to the WPs being contested at the slightest tap of the gates at bay/hills/firekeep/air/garri.

Maps need central objectives, and the stupid ruins haven’t been a valuable objective in ages.

Cerby.1069:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

synergy.5809:

i for one will not use discord for privacy reasons

I recommend that you remove your probably modern intel processor, and uninstall your copy of either windows or OSX. And you should probably unplug your router.

Oh, and never use your phone. In fact, you should probably avoid VOIP entirely, at least for another few years.

I recommend getting an old thinkpad, you know. One of the ones that has been fully reverse engineered. And running OpenBSD on it.

Oh, and by the way.

The TeamSpeak privacy policy isn’t the only privacy policy you agree to when using TeamSpeak.

The server host? You know, the third party server host?

The one that stores & transfers all your messages & VOIP communication?

Yeah. Every server you hop onto is a gamble as to whether or not they sell your information.

Have fun with that!

Just a case of choosing “maybe they are spying on me” vs “yes they are spying on me”. Most people would opt for the maybe scenario.

I prefer the direct “This is what we’re capturing data wise”, “This is what & how we’re selling it”.

It’s like VPN servers that tell you that they don’t log your traffic. They’re lying to you, and any sys admin worth his salt will tell you the same.

You have to log something, else you’ll NEVER be able to trouble shoot issues with your network. And trust me, you’ll have to do it at some point.

And seriously. You’re all, including me, likely using a modern intel processor. Which has their management engine on it, which basically gives intel full control of your system, and no, I’m not joking.

By the time you’re worried about Discord’s privacy policy, you’ve already lost all of your privacy.

Except you haven’t, because people that buy this type of information truly don’t care about who you are.

Mostly because the sheer volume of data out there makes it less valuable to know who you are, and more valuable to know about what general markets are popular.

DeceiverX.8361:

- The most potent and most-common small-scale classes aside from cases where things end up totally overpowered tend to be ones which are absolutely useless in zerg fights. When was the last time you saw a commander ask for rangers, thieves, or mesmers (outside of a veil/portal/blur bot)? They’re basically useless in big-scale encounters, unfortunately by design.

To give a little bit to the mesmer class here.
I’ve never been turned away from an organized group for playing a support chrono.

Boon sharing resistance is still pretty important, especially since everyone’s boons end up corrupted most of the time anyway.

Not to mention dropping gravity wells deep on a group’s back line can flat out stop small organized groups from standing a chance against your larger, less organized zerg.

Spurnshadow.3678:

OK, so I was wrong about the API, good for them to catch up. Great, so they both do that.

Also, their plug ins are “bots?” If I’m correct? perhaps limiting? Really minor as I think most people just want an overlay. Both do that.

When I said channel interface, I was speaking of the left side where all the channels are, not the right side that shows stuff when you click on a channel. That’s a big deal. As one person said, most TSs are a mess. BGs is very clean and well organized. If people don’t want to take the time to organize their TS, it’s on them. But you can’t do that with Discord. Not nesting channels is a big deal and part of organizing and managing a whole server. One does need more permissions than what a previous poster mentioned. And I’m not just talking about /invite or /kick, multiple level of channel permissions. I think Discord has 4? Not good enough.

Look, it just can’t be argued that from an admin and organazational standpoint, TS is superior, and that’s needed for a server wide voip.

As far as clean and well organized go, that’s kind of a “eye of the beholder” type thing.

Getting out of TS and speaking generally here, there’s only a few ways you could really organize a server wide system.

You could go for something super basic, that wouldn’t really fit multiple guilds.

• WvW
  – EBG
  * Team 1
  * Team 2
  – Home BL
  …
  – BL 1
  …
  – BL 2
  …
• PvP
  – Team 1
  – Team 2
  – Team 3
  …
• Raids

Then to incorporate guilds, it would look like this:

• [ROLF]
  – WvW
  * EBG
  …
• [DOLO]
  – WvW
  * EBG
  …

Or you could do it like this:

• WvW
  – [DOLO]
  * EBG
  …
  – [ROLF]
  * EBG
  …

To me, the latter 2 options are a complete cluster to try and find the various groups raiding at the time.

The only one that’s really usable from a user perspective, at least to me, is the first one.

And the first one is almost accomplish-able in discord. It doesn’t necessarily need nesting. Though nesting does make it a bit neater.

PoF won’t change much. It’ll still be primarily daredevils roaming. With an occasional deadeye.

Sorry, but as long as shortbow gives thieves the ability to disengage from just about any fight regardless of numbers, they’ll be the defacto roaming class.

If it makes you feel any better, playing thief isn’t easy.

Running away is certainly easy, but actually getting a kill can be pretty tough. It’s not just about evades, it’s how to maximize them while also killing your target.

I no longer care. Just going to play a scourge instead.

To be honest? I’m already enjoying my reaper more than I was Chrono.

I love everything about Mesmer, I just can’t stand playing mesmer anymore. It’s too freaking underwhelming.

Spurnshadow.3678:

Discord can NOT set up as many sub-channels and organize those with large amounts of separation in the UI. This is a big deal for a server wide voip.

Can I be honest? I don’t see the attraction of this.

Every teamspeak server I’ve been on has been such a mess of channels that figuring out where anyone is, is a challenge.

Is that really any better than having a simple small number of channels in discord, and telling people if they need more “fine grained” channels, they’re free to make a discord on the fly for their needs.

Because seriously, making a temporary discord channel your guildies can use and drop out of is pretty easy. Make the invite expire after say, 30 minutes to an hour. And boom.

You’ve got that fine-grained control, but without the absolute cluttered mess that every TS Server is.

I don’t really care if people do or don’t move to discord.

I just wanted to give my 2 cents about all this “great fine-grained separation” that TS offers.

Fipmip.7219:

These are things i learned playing planetside. That game is similar to gw2 in that the game is fast paced. However in planetside, mobile respawn points are a thing and there is a repsawn room for every poi. The whole game is about getting territory, but because the of the way respawning works there is going to be a battle at every poi, a prolonged one that wont run out of steam until either sides respawning capability has been disabled. There’s no reason to set up some sort of killing farm between the players because the next battle is always a few moments away.

Can we be honest for a moment here?

Literally everyone that plays Planetside 2 has complained about this. (Also, killing farms are extremely common in planetside 2. We call them “biolabs”, they’re literally there for the sole purpose of farming, because you sure as hell aren’t taking them with equal numbers.)

It completely gets rid of tactics with your vehicles (Think: Siege weaponry), and replaces it with mindless zerg rushing & spamming revive grenades.

Specifically, everyone hates AoD (Angels of Death) and DaPP (Da Party Poopas) because that is literally ALL they would ever do.

Throw 2 platoons on a base with loads of revive grenades & like 6 sundies.

Planetside 2 is so prone to zerging that it’s basically all the vast majority of the players do in that game.

Where as it’s quite often I’ll end up in a small 15-20 man group in WvW in this game, and play havoc, take bases, and maybe take some fights against the other team’s groups.

At least until they pull a whole map Q onto us, and we get wiped. But you know what? That Map Q didn’t come from no where. It most likely came from our BL, or EBG. Which means our 15-20 man group is actually doing quite a bit of work.

Now, if you’re in T1, your experience probably differs from mine. And I can understand the complaints about zerging up there.

But on smaller servers? It’s actually kinda fun to run a smaller group.

You can have your wall destroying dragons, just as soon as I can pilot an airship and drop bombs on anyone that tries to attack my castle.

synergy.5809:

i for one will not use discord for privacy reasons

I recommend that you remove your probably modern intel processor, and uninstall your copy of either windows or OSX. And you should probably unplug your router.

Oh, and never use your phone. In fact, you should probably avoid VOIP entirely, at least for another few years.

I recommend getting an old thinkpad, you know. One of the ones that has been fully reverse engineered. And running OpenBSD on it.

Oh, and by the way.

The TeamSpeak privacy policy isn’t the only privacy policy you agree to when using TeamSpeak.

The server host? You know, the third party server host?

The one that stores & transfers all your messages & VOIP communication?

Yeah. Every server you hop onto is a gamble as to whether or not they sell your information.

Have fun with that!

Zoltreez.6435:

imagen one zerg heaving many guards and the other don’t… the results would be the same….

So basically what you’re saying, is that Scourge is the new Guard. And is so powerful that being faced with a group that has Scourge with your group that doesn’t have Scourge, you’ll lose.

Yup, seems under powered to me. Buff Scourge.

All this talk of open field siege is giving me heart burn.

On top of Fabo’s suggestions to do fractal dailies.

I would start working on your daily craftables as soon as you could.

Those dailies include:
Charged Quartz Crystals (Used to make celestial gear. You can already do it: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Charged_Quartz_Crystal)
Elonian Cord (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spool_of_Thick_Elonian_Cord)
Silk Weaving Thread (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spool_of_Silk_Weaving_Thread)
Mythrillium (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lump_of_Mithrillium)

You’ll want to keep up with those dailies. Because the thread/cord/mythrillium is used in crafting other mats needed to make ascended gear. And you can usually come out cheaper/make money by crafting these yourself instead of buying the mats they make.

And celestial gear is a stat that is used on quite a few builds, so going ahead and having a good supply of the quartz crystals can be handy should you decide to make celestial gear.

Esplen.3940:

Tbh, I think if Mirage wants to be focused around Evades and “Mirage Cloak” there needs to be more “on-evade” or “on-dodge” traits. (Moreso on successful evasion).

Nah. You’d be on a quick path to a monster at that rate.

It just needs the ambush skills to be better in that regard. And should probably ditch mirage mirrors for something else entirely.

They should also delete the evade backwards utility & put something actually decent there. Something that does damage, preferably.

Yeah, tbh.

Playing on reset night isn’t really worth it.

Just do something else for a while.

Jayne.9251:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

That’s quite an optimistic outlook you have there.

Actually it will be fixed slightly after the heat death of the universe.

So next year when the straw headed boy hits the red button?

Ah who am I kidding?

This year.

Humans are powerful, but we aren’t powerful enough to cause the heat death of the universe.

Heck, we aren’t even powerful enough to destroy the earth.

Give it a million or so years and the earth will shake us off like fleas.

As for World War 4 (3 was dubbed “The Internet”), I think we’ll mostly be fine.

A few hundred years of rebuilding infrastructure that was taken out by EMPs, but mostly fine.

That’s quite an optimistic outlook you have there.

Actually it will be fixed slightly after the heat death of the universe.

VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618:

yeah, I actually make more money in wvw than with boss trains. Sure flax farming would be even more profitable, but so boring.

Was that last bit a runescape reference, or am I missing something?

kathy.8291:

Dont care if you think this post is ridiculous or not. this is how i feel and I DONT CARE. I understand making a legendary is costly but when wvw is all you do, you dont make alot of money doing wvw unless your doing something we all dont know about.

Zalavaaris they would enter wvw get to participation 4 (which we have all seen) and would sit at spawn while the maps are que and the actual people who participate in wvw couldnt even get in.

Now if you all excuse me I am allowed to vent so if you dont like this post, move on.

I mean. There is one thing you could do to make money in WvW.

Which is to not run food or oils for a while. I usually avoid using my food or oils unless I’m in an organized group. Whether that group be 5 or 20.

Honestly? It’s because base Mesmer is too selfish.

All of its group utility gets hit with hard nerfs, while a selfish playstyle continually gets pushed.

Look at the nerfs to PU and how they affected veil’s usage. Even in GvGs people tend to run a smoke field & blast it instead of running mesmer veils now, because veil doesn’t last long enough without mimic & continuum split.

It’s also far more predictable than a smoke field with blasts.

The entirety of staff lacks any potency at all. There’s almost no damage what-so-ever on staff. The biggest thing is chaos storm, since that has poison you can apply to someone just before they heal.

And even that has a longer cooldown than abilities that are far more useful in a group (Ele’s Meteor shower has 5 seconds lower on its cooldown).

The only way I can describe base Mesmer, is that the devs have done everything they possibly can to dissuade you from playing it.

Never before was quickness & alacrity stacking a problem. But now with Chrono, good bye boonshare viability on base Mesmer.

Thank the nine divine that base Mesmer can still get some resistance that it can share with teammates. Else it would be wholly useless outside of moa & null field.

Idk. When you combine all the problems mesmer has with illusions, the problems with the mesmer’s weapons scaling (Or lack there of), and the lack luster utility skills that are purely a gimmick.

Playing base Mesmer in a group environment would literally be running inferior to anything short of a thief. And we’re only better than a thief if you ignore venom wells.

apharma.3741:

I dunno, if we die in VR do we die in real life?

Were we ever alive to begin with?

MikeL.8260:

Hot Boy.7138:

I strongly feel that power mirage is better than power chronomancer when it comes to running dual swords. It covers almost all of the weaknesses of chrono melee fighter.

How does Sword off hand even come close to the uses of Chrono’s shield?

Mostly the phantasm, to be completely honest.

You could setup a full burst quickly, plus have the pretty good damage of the sword phantasm smacking them in the face.

If you think about it, with S+S you actually have 4 illusion generators even without deceptive evasion. Ambush 1, 3, 4, and 5.

That’s not really “better than chrono’s shield”, but combine it with, say, an unexpected Illusionary Ambush on a target trying to even out your fight (You’re still the +1, that’s likely never going to change), and it can be decent.

Idk. I’m playing devil’s advocate at this point.

DeceiverX.8361:

Anticipating the attack from stealth is an acquired skill that is also best learned by just playing a thief for a while.

Playing thief for a while is always an eye opening experience.

You never realize the plethora of B.S. a thief has to deal with in their kit in order to play it well, until you’ve actually done it yourself.

(Same with mesmer, but don’t tell anyone that on the PvP forums. mesmer is still an ungodly easy faceroll character to them.)

Running away is about the only thing that’s remotely easy on a thief (Which is why it’s all so many thief players are good about).

Dahkeus.8243:

Here’s where your example doesn’t hold up:

1)
No one here doesn’t expect to not run into trolls. However, just because you expect to encounter people acting like jerks doesn’t mean that you can’t say something against it. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t say something against it. And saying something against it does make a difference, even though it won’t make the problem go away entirely.

Saying the R word isn’t even trolling. Like, seriously. The OP doesn’t even separate whether it’s okay to talk about the topic even in a serious manner.

Also, it’s the internet & we’re all trolls.

If you tell me you haven’t trolled or tried to troll anyone, all I can do is shake my head in disappointment.

Also no.

It doesn’t make a difference. In fact, because you’ve pointed it out, all you’ve made multiple people want to do is use it even more.

Because that’s what the internet is for, and plow anyone that thinks otherwise.

2)
Video games may be on the internet, a place where some people act like jerks sometimes, but that doesn’t mean for the act of being a jerk.

Video games are designed for people to be able to play video games.

That’s it.

The community that inhabits a game are the effect of the game, not the cause of the game.

Mosh pits are designed for moshing. Video games are designed for gaming.

Your comparison works better with a bad neighborhood. There’s lots of violence in really rough neighborhoods and people going to those neighborhoods should expect that violence because of it’s prevalence.

Actually, your last comparison would work better if it was a gated community inside a bad neighborhood.

Like a video game, and like a dance floor that was created as a sectioned off part of a mosh pit.

The bad neighborhood (internet) is a mosh pit.

The gated community (video game) is the place where you reside.

The bunker beneath your house (a small discord server) is the amount of space you could realistically control whether or not you get mugged.

Dahkeus.8243:

You keep making this comparison of people doing kittenty things in video games to mosh pits, but that logic doesn’t hold up. You don’t go into a mosh pit if you don’t want to get hit because the sole purpose of a mosh pit is for people to flail around wildly.

Video games, and for a more specific example, WvW, aren’t designed to be places where people talk kitten to each other. Sure, it happens sometimes, but that’s not directly tied to the experience they are based on.

Allow me to explain why the mosh pit example holds up.

1. The internet is a place where people go to be themselves. Wholesale. That’s it. We hang out with like minded people. We listen to videos that we like or agree with, some of us listen to videos we disagree with for either enjoyment, argument, or for any number of reasons.

The mosh pit, is the internet.

If you go onto the internet, and aren’t 100% expecting & knowing that you’ll bump into something that you don’t like, you’re an idiot.

Just like a mosh pit. If you go into a mosh pit, and aren’t 100% expecting & knowing you’ll have people bump into you, you’re an idiot.

2. Online video games are on the internet.

Thus is why I tried to explain that what is being attempted is to cordon off (section off) a portion of this mosh pit (the internet).

Unfortunately, you’re taking up too much of the freaking pit. Maybe make your home a bit smaller. You know, like a discord server that has rules against saying the R word.

Sorry to tell you this, but the mosh pit analogy is perfect. It’s exactly what the internet is, and you’re consenting to being bumped into (note: Not attacked, just bumped into) every time you hop on the internet. Whether that be in a video game or otherwise.

I’m not an kitten if I bump into you, it’s expected here.

Dahkeus.8243:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Dahkeus.8243:

Does it really matter if it makes sense to you? Is it really as hard to try and not use that word as it is to eliminate all references to guns and knives?

Yes, actually. In fact, it’s harder.
You can’t get rid of a word on the internet.

The internet is a mosh pit. You’re trying to cordon off a section of that mosh pit and say “You’re not allowed to mosh here”.

For that, I wish you good luck.

Personally, I’ma keep moshing. And if you get bumped into, you knew the risks.

However, if someone in the mosh pit goes out of their way after bumping into you to attack you, feel free to call the authorities.

Nobody likes moshing with those types anyway.

You don’t need to erase the word from the internet. It’s really just asking individuals to refrain from using the word when talking to groups of people that could involve those who are affected by it.

You’ll never stop everyone from using the word everywhere. I mean, people still use the N word and it’s 2017. However, we’ve reduced the use of that word a lot.

There seems to be this mentality that if you can’t make everything absolutely perfect anywhere, then there’s no point in doing anything. However, this is about making things better, not perfect.

Sure, there’s trolls out there who don’t give a kitten about anyone but themselves. There’s people out there who will choose whatever rationality is most convenient for their own personal experiences and perspectives.

But there’s also people out there who are open to seeing the world through more than just their own perspective. It’s those people that this message is intended for. It’s because good intentions only go so far without experience and knowledge to guide those good intentions to result in good outcomes.

Why tell people to refrain, when you could just cordon off a section where refraining is the rule?

I just won’t go to that section outside of accident, unless that section is taking up the whole mosh pit.

It’s really that simple. Screaming into the mosh pit, like this post is doing, literally does nothing.

As for the N word. Everyone. And I do mean EVERYONE still uses it.

We just say the N word instead of actually saying the word itself. We’ve effectively made that word into schrodinger’s cat at this point.

It exists, yet it doesn’t exist.

Oh. I was expecting clips of a bunch of scourges running through zergs with desert shroud corrupting everyone’s boons.

Clearly Scourge needs a buff.

I did. It was mostly a resounding meh for small & mid scale WvW encounters. And completely useless for large scale encounters, whether that be as someone eating at the tail or someone in the zerg.

Chrono offers more independence while simultaneously being less selfish than Mirage.

Mirage was really good at surviving, but actually doing lethal damage wasn’t easy while running power.

Playing Mirage as condi was quite a bit better in small scale, but still beneath Chrono imo.

Wouldn’t matter. When you max it your endurance no longer matters for anything except gliding faster.

On a side note, the desert BLs really don’t need to get any easier to flip in my opinion.

It’s already a pain trying scout out attacks on them since they’re so large, and there’s walls in little cubby holes you wouldn’t normally think to look at.

Zintrothen.1056:

Hesacon.8735:

The block button is a fantastic function.

Because you can totally get away with blocking a commander on TS. I sure hope you know exactly what he’s going to do, because any commander who says “kitten” is going to kick you immediately as soon as he sees that you are not listening. kittens tend to be like that.

Genuine question.

If the word bothers you that much, would you really want to follow a commander that says it?

Seriously, I’m on HoD and I have like, 1/4th of that server blocked.

Not because they offend me, but because so many of them blow smoke out your kitten

And trust me, that block list includes commanders.