Guild Wars 2

Katz.5143:

I’ll take a wait and see attitude. But I quit playing my previous MMO because I was sick and tired of gear grind. I’m hoping this isn’t that. I know some people have been begging for gear progression but I sure wasn’t one of them.

I really don’t want gear to quickly become outdated and content that requires the new gear that you have to grind out IN the content that requires it. I really really hate that kind of game.

This sums up my thoughts as well.

Millions of people bought this game knowing there was no power creeping gear grind, and for a great many that was THE thing which sold us on GW2.

I won’t be recommending any friends during the upcoming trial period, and if the gear treadmill is added to the game, I probably won’t be continuing to play. I’ve played the dungeon grinding progression games before, I have no desire to repeat that experience.

Also (as far as I know) World Completion is only required for legendary weapons. Those also require 500 badges of honor, so if you’re going for one, you’ll be in WvW enough to get all the points anyway.

I’d prefer if the removed it from world completion just so there wouldn’t be people doing useless stuff like running to a vista as soon as the outer wall falls in a siege…..

Ohoni.6057:

Yeah, there’s that, and there’s the thief dancing around somewhere at 900 range shooting you while you randomly run around hitting air.

If the Thief is shooting at you then he’s not stealthed. Shooting breaks stealth.

Shooting breaks stealth? Who knew? (didn’t read the part where I said I’ve played thief since beta?)

The issue isn’t stealth, it’s rendering delay. On the thief’s screen, he’s visable as soon as he starts shooting. On his opponent’s screen, however, the thief model will take a few extra seconds to load. It’s entirely possible to (ab)use this period of time to juke to a random side and pop in for a quick C&D without taking much damage.

By contrast, all of the elementalist’s aoes are quite obvious/easy to dodge, on long cooldowns, and he is visible to the thief the entire fight.

(Also: Strawman = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawman_argument
look under Structure 2-2 for why this applies)

My solution is to bring along another class with the trait to rez me at the bottom…..

(Well, that’s not a solution…….)

It’s hard to fight the rendering bug (uh, I mean thieves, yeah, that’s it….) with scepter as most of your attacks require a target or are insanely slow animated GTAoE. Even though I like scepter a lot for the extra blast finishers and range, I’ve switched to mostly D/D these days to help deal with rendering jive.

Funny though that condition P/D is getting more popular. That was the build I came up with just screwing around back in beta and it’s surprisingly effective, but I get bored playing anything which has an optimal rotation that doesn’t use most of the available skillset (yay, I can press 5>1 over and over and over and over and over no matter who I’m fighting!).

To those suggesting aoe spam, yeah, that kinda works. Any good player will just walk away while you burn most of your big cooldowns though. Auto-attack spam? Yeah, there’s that, and there’s the thief dancing around somewhere at 900 range shooting you while you randomly run around hitting air. Trying to deal damage to something in an unknown location somewhere within a circle of 1800 diameter by spamming skills is basically relying on luck. “I can counter thieves with luck or if they are stupid enough to face-tank my most obvious aoes” is not a statement that indicates class balance working as intended.

Perhaps this game mode is just not for you.

Not trying to be mean or anything. It’s just not meant to be “all action, all the time, everywhere!” mode, it’s an open world medieval/fantasy castle siege simulation. It’s as much RTS as PvP. There are small map, fast paced, PvP games available as well, through sPvP or tPvP (and I would have a similar response to anyone posting in those forums asking for bigger maps and more objective based play with longer lasting fights).

If all that’s happening on any map is one camp flipping back and forth, try defending it, that will give pretty regular PvP action. There are also other maps, are they all in the same state? If so, consider moving to a lower ranked server and go slap yaks and take camps yourself (bored, cause your server facerolls everyone and we own everything, is a situation you chose) or wait for free transfers to end and real matches to start happening in more tiers.

It’s not culling, it’s a rendering delay (likely due to several issues, but there will always be some delay as it takes time for the other player’s computer to tell the server his position as he exits stealth, then the server calls up his information and verifies it, sends it to your computer and your client calls up the necessary files, etc).

I’ve experienced it from both sides, and when playing my thief I can tell that no one can see me yet for a couple seconds after I can see my own character un-stealth. Timing stealth skills to hit right after revealed wears off you can blink in and out of view for less time than it’s possible to fire an auto-attack while spamming tab like crazy.

Most elementalist skills (even auto-attacks) either require a target to begin attacking, or are ground targeted with big red warning circles that appear long before any damage. A good thief abusing rendering delay can completely avoid most damage an elementalist can put out. I have fights like this all the time, because I really like playing elementalist more than thief. The difference is a thief can go full glass cannon and survive by completely avoiding damage, to have any chance my elementalist has to be very defensively built.

In a game with active dodging, no dedicated healers and visual oriented action combat, a perma-stealth ability set is too powerful. The best solution I can think of would be to increase the duration of the revealed condition after stealth (in WvW only if possible, it’s fine in PvE, and I don’t really know about sPvP) to account for the rendering delay.

I play a thief and currently find stealth to be overpowered in WvW.

Aveneo.2068:

Badges and loot should be added to your inventory automatically. How many times have I found myself lying dead behind enemy lines with sparkling bags right next to me…

Same here, I definitely agree.

Thing is, the loot bags are the best thing they could come up with while they figure out how to get loot straight into inventory. Sounds cheesy, I know, but during beta this was a big deal (in the first beta loot was on corpses, same as regular PvE, imagine that for a moment…..). Apparently there is some major issue with the game engine which makes loot generating straight into inventory a huge mess to code. I’m sure it’s still on the menu, but if it’s the same codemonkeys who have to deal with culling/etc, I’m ok with it not being top priority at the moment.

On topic: Badge drop rate could do with an increase, there’s noting crazy overpowered that comes from them since all gear is the same at that level and siege is plenty cheap anyway.

Condition damage is best when stacked, and even then you’re talking about extending fights because more of your damage is backend.

I use both S/D and D/D (on rare occasions I equip a staff long enough to remember why I don’t like it as much) with Power/Toughness/Vitality armors, Knight’s weapons and trinkets, sigils of energy and fire, and runes of adventurer. If you want good damage and some survivability traits somewhat like 10-20-10-10-20 is a nice balance, majors can be swapped around based on preference but I really like quick glyphs, zephyr’s boon, earth’s embrace, cleansing wave and renewing stamina (of course, evasiva arcana rules, if you can lose 10 points from fire and not feel too weak).

I’ve been thinking of switching the runes out for a few part sets that would give me +50% protection duration and +30% to other boon duration, but I need to test that more in the PvP area where it’s free. I also recommend the superior sigil of battle in place of energy, my current build is all about dodging, but stacking might on every attunement swap is also nice. If you want more straight up damage, runes of eagle/divinity/etc, anything with precision/crit damage.

Aw, it’s “unfun” for you not to be able to instagib someone just cause they are wearing cloth? That’s too bad.

I do consider it winning a fight if I can tie up 2 or more of the other team’s players indefinitely. I can also apply enough pressure through DoTs and dps to make anyone run away, or blow their heals and condition removals so when more of my team shows up the enemy is nice and softened up for the bursters.

Wanna know what annoys me? Thieves who abuse the rendering issues to remain untargetable permanently. You might not be able to kill a bunker elementalist, but at least you can see one to try.

Bunker elementalist is our only viable build because apparently dragons tooth>phoenix>fire grab was too hard to dodge so we have weak burst now, and thieves highest spike damage hit costs no initiative and is basically spammable. Sure, let me just build so backstab crits on me for 15k but my biggest damage combo adds up to much less and would be dodgable by an octogenarian playing on a 28k dialup connection from Siberia. Sounds fun….. I mean, no thanks, I’ll stick to bunker till they fix our damage.

There are WvW titles….. check under, you know, the ACHIEVEMENTS tab……

Anyone have Ultimate Dominator yet? I haven’t seen one…… The wiki didn’t even have data on how many kills it takes yet (last I checked). How about Ultimate Liberator?

What is with this nonsense that there are titles in sPvP to work for but not WvW? It’s just not true…… http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_vs_World_

This thread might make sense if it started with “I’ve already got every WvW title”……

Monokoko.3718:

OldFrightful.2469:

So … SoR is overcompensating for something.

HaHa, is this referring to another 10+ golem zerg on garrison then wood?

I will admit me and my guild KIWI were responsible for starting this then PUGS came and it got a little out of hand, may have been 17+ as keep had 1700 resources that went to 0.

To bad you wiped them all out at Dawn’s and we were trying to take it from you for a very long time.

Thank you for that fight it was thrilling despite our failed mesmer bombs wiping us multiple times and you 10+ arrow carts

Good fun there, for sure.

I got on later than usual tonight and didn’t expect us (TC) to be holding much. Was exciting to see we had the home garrison, so I headed there figuring it would be attacked rather soon. Halfway down the cliff and I see “20+ golems incoming to garrison!” So it wasn’t quite that many, haha. We made you work for Dawn’s Eyrie though, even with that wall down for an hour or something. Good fun, see ya tomorrow night.

For the Coast!

Yes, it has been brought up thousands of times. In the first beta, loot was on corpses how it is in PvE. The loot bags were the best they could do to make it better, as there is some major issue with the game engine which makes auto-depositing into inventory impossible (was what we were told at the time anyway).

A better plan would be scrap the RNG altogether and just give one badge per 5 kills or whatever seems fair and make them a currency like gems which are available account wide and have no actual item in inventory. (Not sure how easy/possible that is with the engine either, however.)

Having been on a server with all 3 orbs, and none at all, I’ve noticed a huge difference.

With all 3 orbs, I rarely have any problem fighting even mid sized groups solo.

When fighting against players with the three orb bonus, even 1v1 is quite difficult. I notice quite often that when I would usually get a kill/down my enemy instead escapes with 5-15% hp left that I just can’t quite burn through before their heal/dodge is up again. (I’m talking equal leveled and fairly equal skilled opponents here, I can tell when someone just outplays me or if they are just really unskilled).

This game is quite well balanced as far as defense/dps (except in two areas, but those aren’t relevant to this topic) and the orb bonuses were obviously tacked on as an afterthought to a balanced system.

I don’t blame ANet, they really had no way to play test the game for months with millions of people to get a real idea what was needed, but it’s time to listen to the players now and get rid of the orb bonuses or rework them to bring WvW into better balance.

Yorkie.8950:

Just a quick question, is using a catapult on the inside of a tower and firing it at the doors so the AoE splash hits the other side a valid tactic, cheese or an exploit?

Maybe a bit from all three categories. Unlike the clumping exploit, there are several effective counters (including just setting rams at their max range instead of dang near inside the door like people seem to enjoy).

Draygo.9473:

valid, but as I said, arrow carts are more effective at getting things off doors.

@Thrash you are saying that you can make your group invurnable such that 8,000 dps cannot kill your group?

Yes, but like I said, I don’t really want to explain how, sorry. Numbers that high would require a large, coordinated clump, but it could be done.

Is it the guardian invunerability and properly pulsing it that you are exploiting?

No, but that may help also, any defensive abilities will add survivability of course

The people I see defending this tactic, or saying there are counters, either don’t understand how it works or are hoping it doesn’t get fixed. It’s an exploit, plain and simple. I’d explain it, but I don’t want more people using this stupid “tactic”. ANet should know exactly where the problem is by now and how to fix it (aoe cap removal and collision detection are NOT the ways).

A handful of arrow carts against 50 people? please….. I’ve stood with 50 people in the rain of a half dozen arrow carts and a ton of other aoe, but the group understood the stacking mechanics (exploits), maybe a couple would go into downed once in awhile but would get insta-rezzed by the hoarde in the less than a couple minutes it took 3 rams and 2 golems to chew through a “reinforced” gate.

Go ahead and do it till it gets fixed, it’s the new meta or whatever, just don’t delude yourself that it’s some sort of tactics when it’s really just exploiting a design loophole.

Cyricus.2981:

Many organized guilds/groups stack up, not just in this game. It’s a tactic so everyone stays together in tight formation and pushes most often, and anyone can do it. You can also coordinate a group of 40 people to drop aoe’s on that spot and kill a bunch of them, even with a 5 person cap.

It’s not about formation tactics, sure, moving as a group is valid. You can coordinate a group of whatever to drop aoe on them, if their stack is organized and not just a random clump of players you will not be able to kill enough of them to make a difference. the best you could do is stack also and neither stack could kill the other. Again, I’d explain how, but I’m not really trying to promote an exploit.

If you’re looking for a build that has some range and melee, I’d suggest scepter/dagger. The #1 attacks in earth and air are quite good dps on their own, and there are a ton of synergistic abilities.

Ring of fire + dragons tooth + phoenix + earthquake + churning earth is a fast easy way to stack aoe might (S/D has 4 blast finishers built into the set) not to mention blast aoe heals and other cool effects off other players fields. Evasive arcana is the trait everyone suggests for another blast finisher, and there is a trait lower in the same line that increases endurance recharge when using a scepter (although I prefer the gain vigor on crit trait). Two weapons also means you can put a sigil of energy on one for a free dodge every 10 sec or whatever the cooldown is and sill have a sigil to increase damage or do something else).

I run my traits at 0-10-10-20-30 currently, with cleansing flame/lightning flash/mist form (3 cantrips) and mostly power/toughness/vitality karma (orr) armor and knights trinkets. I can chase down or escape from nearly any group in WvW, deal damage at range or melee and support groups quite well. I don’t usually feel the need to switch to staff, because even in the most intense siege I can survive long enough to get out the door and do damage warrior style then mist/flash back inside.

Zonzai.2341:

I think it’s a different sort of difficulty. The warrior is difficult to position. The elementalist is much easier to position but has survivability issues. In a big group the elementalist can really shine. The elementalist needs something to get them by when they aren’t in a big group though. They just don’t have it right now. More damage probably isn’t going to happen.

I think shortening the reuse times is the best thing to do. Elementalists have to use every ability at their disposal because of the recharge timers on them. Whereas pretty much every other profession can spam abilities with a relatively high frequency.

It is easier for most people to position the warrior than it is to memorize and understand every skill the elementalist has and know when to use them. If you are better at skill use than at positioning, good for you.

Not sure what you mean about warrior being harder to position, ever tried to land a fire grab? Easier or harder than 100 blades? Also on a 45 sec cooldown instead of 8, so if (I mean, when) you miss, it’s a lot more costly to your damage output.

Sure, you can use a staff and stand back a good distance, but most of your damage skills are GTAOE so mobs and players can just walk out of the damage, and again, there’s nothing in the elementalist staff that hits like kill shot. Warriors have a ton of CC options to hold their targets still, elementalists have to sacrifice a utility slot if they want one single immobilize on a long cooldown. The attack radius on melee weapons autoattack makes them all aoe, most with wider attack radius than elementalist melee-autoattacks (the ones that are even aoe, that is, most are single target).

I can beat any class with elementalist, but I’m not under the illusion that I am more skilled than any of them. In fact, I’d wager that an equally skilled warrior would beat me every time, at best I could just escape or force a stalemate. Higher defense, health and damage, more CC options and dang near as much regeneration/condition removal/healing if built a certain way doesn’t really point to balance between classes.

Speaking for TC (and I really don’t have the right to do so, take this for what it is, one opinion), we kick a good bit of kitten in WvW, largely due to our overall stubbornly cheerful attitudes. Our tactics are hardly perfect, but sometimes pretty awesome and usually great fun either way.

However, this week is the Halloween event, and we are largely a PvE server, so don’t look for us to field the same numbers we would normally. There’s definitely some hardcore WvWers, but a big chunk of our usual force also enjoys PvE and won’t want to miss out on time limited events for something which will still be there in a week.

I wouldn’t want to be on a server with 2+ hour WvW queues and a barren, empty world full of events in perma-failed state because most of the server population is primarily into PvP modes. I was on a server like that for a couple days, didn’t fit my playstyle at all.

-Thrashy
Asura Elementalist of Tarnished Coast
(The one your zerg is running from! Or maybe toward….)

I’d roll alts and level 2 crafts on each, honestly. I think (not going to test it, lol) that it’s 1 silver per 10 crafting levels, so activating a level 400 craft would be 40 silver. For that cost you might as well just buy crafted gear off the TP because the markup won’t be that high. The other reason is that the Master Crafter achievement is account wide not character bound, and unless you intend to avoid playing the game at all you’ll “waste” a bunch of that exp on a post 80 character (since 400 in all crafts without boosters is 80 levels).

A single crafter with all maxed will be significantly more expensive and wasteful than 4 chars with 400 in two crafts each. Even if you don’t play them much or at all, you’ll have 3 more ~20lvl chars (which I’d see as a big benefit, but maybe you don’t care). Too much info? Eh, caffeine…..

Agemnon.4608:

Works on third alt before inevitable crafting exp nerf

I don’t expect to see one. This method has been widely known since early beta, there was an official ANet statement about it. They absolutely intended leveling crafting to give about 10 character levels per maxed crafting discipline, and there are 8 crafts.

It is a huge gold/materials sink though. Doing this leaves you with a full master crafter character but only access to 2 of 8 crafts at any time (to re-activate another costs 40 silver (iirc) each time you switch one) without enough skillpoints to even get one of the top tier elite skills, no unlocked weapon skills and no karma. Then there is the cost of materials, without an already leveled 80 to gather materials you’re looking at probably over $100 real money to buy all the basic/fine materials. Without any karma, you won’t even be able to craft your exotic sets, since the recipies for those cost close to 1k karma each.

It’s great for an alt, but anyone doing this for their first character have both my pity and laughter as rewards.

Erin.7521:

Masterpyro.4310:

Its.. candy…

‘Candy’ could mean anything! What actually is it? Is it just boiled sugar? Are they soft or hard? What does it taste of? Why on earth can you buy 5lb bags?

You don’t really want to know, but if you do….. the answer is in here:

Awesome.6120:

Solbrio.1902:

That’s a really stupid thing to say. We eat candy corn in my house here every year. You should try the flavored candy corn. There’s caramel apple, caramel, and raspberry to name a few. It isn’t all orange, yellow, and white you know.

Caramel apple wax is still wax.

The little spider is just hard mode. As others have mentioned, both the mummy and skeleton can hold their own just fine.

Before anyone gets any big ideas, I don’t have any of the cash shop costumes, nor do I care about “winning” the costume brawl, so take whatever I say with that grain of salt.

The last MMO I played was really “Pay to Win”, this doesn’t even compare. In that game a character that cost $50,000 could go afk and kill non-cash players with reflect buffs only (if they were dumb enough to attack, that is). Mightiest tree in the forest and herring would often spring to mind….

Until the free transfers are closed or a cooldown implemented on entering WvW after transfer, and the orb/outmanned buffs are swapped or retooled somehow, changing the length of matches will not help balance much.

Located the second point, did the scan, all that happens is four water spouts pop up from the base of the pillar which each give a personalized trick or treat bag, no ghost appears.

That isn’t the case though, there are other players around trying and the same thing happens.

People giving up due to the overall score are forgetting a couple things.

The bonuses earned from points over time isn’t just for the winner, sure they get more proportionately, but it’s still worth fighting for.

Winning often means moving up a tier in the rankings. If you’re getting stomped already, why be focused on winning? Learn what you can from the situation and don’t give up, it builds character.
(Granted, there isn’t much to learn from 100 beats 10, but that isn’t the situation in this match, or wouldn’t be if people didn’t give up simply because the score didn’t have them in an easy 1st. About setting up siege to hit the spawn exit, I’ve never seen us do that before and whoever is doing it, freakin stop, that ain’t how TC rolls, keep it classy….)

Free transfers will stay open until the guesting system is implemented, and will continue to mess up the balance of WvW as well. A one week cooldown on entering WvW would go a long way toward fixing the issue and might be easier to implement.

Overall I’m encouraged by this thread, and glad for the update. Culling and all-capping are definitely the biggest mechanical issues.

I would add bots and cooldowns on entering WvW after transferring to that list as top priorities. Twenty or more bots taking up player slots also skews the game toward the side with less bots (assuming full map populations on all sides).

hakurface.2619:

Thrashbarg.9820:

We’re a fight ending class, not a fight starting class.

One Major trait does not make us an end fighting class. In fact, the majority of our skills and traits all point to initiators. If you played the beta, you would know that Ele’s used to faceroll and that is no longer the case. With our current viable build, our damage actually comes from drawing the battle out because our survivability is much higher.

We do have one of the best stomps in the game though. +1 Mistform.

Quoting one line and responding out of context doesn’t mean you understood or read what I wrote either. Where did you get the idea I didn’t play beta? I specifically talked about how during the first beta we had a good spike damage initiator combo that was nerfed due to some people playing well and others complaining.

All that stuff about drawing the battle out due to survivability? That agrees with what I said….. draw out the fight, outlast your opponent, then finish them off. Where are these skills and traits that point to initiators? We have many things that add burning or bleeding and so many ways to increase that damage or spike off it, and so many survival abilities, that it really does seem we are supposed to wear our opponents down rather than burst them down.

We’re a fight ending class, not a fight starting class, and the more I play, the more I think we don’t really need buffing (besides downed/underwater skills and bugfixes, that is) so much as a few other classes need to be toned down a bit. No one should be able to 1-2 shot someone else before they can react, but that’s a topic for another thread.

We used to be able to front load a good deal of damage, but a few highly skilled elementalists wiping the floor with opponents in beta labeled the phoenix/tooth combo and a few other things as “OP” so we lost that ability. We still can pump out a good burst IF we spec “right” and our enemy stands still and tries to face-tank our most obvious attacks.

For S/D (that’s how I usually roll) get a sigil or battle on your weapon to stack might on attunement swap, go fire>4-2-3>Earth>4-5>lightning flash to target>Air>2-3-4-5. Easier said than done, and there’s more stuff you can add even if you have ninja-fingers. It probably won’t instakill anyone but glass cannons even if everything crits, but at this point, if you want that experience, roll a signet>backstab thief.

I tested a bit with full 30-30-x-x-x builds and berserkers gear, and there is just no way to get anywhere near the front-load damage of a thief. My current build is sorta hybrid bunker/dodger to outlast enemies. I play mostly roamer in WvW, running supply and guarding/killing yaks. I can generally survive anything but the full zerg (by “survive” I mean run the heck away) and can put up a pretty good stand first if there’s less than 5 opponents. 5-10 people focused on chasing me down for an “easy kill” (ooooh, an elementalootbag! get im!!!!) can easily be kited into friendly forces or NPC (you’d be surprised how hard a veteran zealot will hit when buffed with 15+ stacks of might….) or just distracted running around for several minutes. In sPvP I can hold a point solo for a couple minutes usually, but I don’t play tournaments so I know that I’m not really any good.

tl;dr look up the trait “bolt to the heart”, we’re fight enders by design, make that thief blow his initiative and heal, make that warrior blow his adrenaline/CCs, wear them down, then BLAM! Survive, react, conquer (in that order).

Get
a
staff.

Problem solved.

Xriah.5743:

How many boons are you really getting from Arcana that you can’t get elsewhere?

You can get virtually permanent protection with the powerful arua + elemental shielding combo along with a good amount of fury and swiftness. You can build around Cantrips and get 3 stacks of might + vigor+ regen per activation on top of the cantrip effect. With a cantrip regen cooldown, this is nearly permanent regen and vigor.
We’re already loaded with swiftness buffs and can maintain perma swiftness easily with Zephyr’s Boon.

I’m not saying ignore Arcana. I’m saying consider not using it. Those extra points open up so many other options.

What I understand you to be saying is everyone should experiment with different trait combos to see what they like best. I totally agree with that, there are tons of interesting and viable builds with elementalist.

Most of the stuff you’re talking about there applies more to staff, D/D and D/F than S/D.

Scepter is my favorite weapon for several reasons, not gonna clog your thread with them, just know I been playing since BWE1 and tried about every build I could think of or saw with every weapon. If I ran staff primarily I’d probably use a 20-0-10-30-10 build or similar, D/D something like 10-10-30-20-0 (or maybe 10 water/10 arcane, still love that attunement swap boon share). My current build is 0-10-20-10-30 with S/D (dang, there I go clogging the thread…. woops).

I run mostly S/D, and after speccing 30 into arcane (and trying a ton of different builds) it’s hard to imagine going back, but you’re right, it really is about weapon choice. With D/D I could see more benefit spending points elsewhere.

For example: scepter has a skill with a very short cooldown that grants vigor and a master trait in arcane that gives increased endurance regeneration when wielding a scepter. I run with runes of adventure that give me back 50% endurance (one free dodge) every time I heal (used to be 100%, kitten nerfbat….) and if I really want to be dodgy I can toss on a sigil of energy on my weapon. Evasive arcana has a cooldown, but with this build I can aoe heal/purify/burn/bleed/blind basically any time I want to.

Hello! Welcome to Guild Wars 2.

All severs will have the opportunity for some good WvW action. Depending on the weekly matchups and server transferring zerglings whichever you pick may end up in the top or bottom for the week. I’d advise picking a mid-tier server from the rankings, as the top servers tend to have longer queues and the lowest ones may have morale issues or be mostly PvE oriented players. The rankings from last week (not totally accurate due to the transferring zerg effect) are stickied at the top of this forum.

Also, you may want to pick based on a guild you’d like to join or an overall server personality. For example, I’m on Tarnished Coast, the un-official roleplaying server, because I like some RP occasionally and find roleplayers to be generally intelligent (smart people do pretty well in WvW, and even if not, tend to have a good attitude). Check out http://www.gw2guilds.org for a lot of good info on different server popualtions/styles.

Edit: ninja’d…. happens since I type slow and talk a lot, anyway looks like I’ll be seeing you around on TC.

Don’t forget that the mesmer #1 downed skill also stacks confusion, so have fun trying to finish with anything besides stomp….. wait, which mesmer do I stomp?

It’s totally possible to WvW before 80. Rangers have a tough time escaping, that’s the price of having the longest attack range in the game and a permanent minion which extends that range even farther.

I’d suggest a couple things:

1) Replace the sword with a bow. Either kind is fine. Shortbow has a skill that jumps you away from target and gives swiftness, longbow has one that knocks back and cripples target, both do the same thing but feel a bit different. Using a sword in WVW is hard to do without getting killed a lot.

2) Spend some time in the PvE world getting used to your skills. Rangers are kinda easymode against regular mobs due to the pet, so try pulling groups and attack any veterans/champions you see to get practice timing dodges/heals/etc. Players will be more complex to fight, of course, but it can help to just have the muscle memory from practice. You’ll probably level faster and cheaper that way as well, and you may even enjoy the PvE.

I’d rather see double the amount of maps (even just clones of current maps to save development time) and half the amount of players allowed into each one, but then, I am a fan of the smaller scale fights and tactical play.

I’m still learning and adapting (been playing elementalist since the first beta weekend as my main). I’ve played most other classes off and on, but the complexity and continued learning is what I like best about elementalist.

There was a class called elementalist in an old pen-and-paper rpg I played a thousand years ago, in a lot of ways very similar. I really like the profession, overall.

Having lower survivability and damage than every other class is challenging, and in most PvE quite fun. If any of the devs have the fondness that I do for elementalists, we’ll get the balance changes we need eventually (until then I’ll play my alts for pvp and wvw, as half-decent an elementalist as I am, my lvl 30ish thief does as well in wvw as my 80 elementalist).

It’s quite simple, they built this class using basic math. We have twice as many skills as other professions, so they are all half as effective. Balancing 101.

(9k fire grab? sure, given a burning setup and an immobilized enemy. 100 blades and backstab might have a few things to say about high damage though…. Thieves can crit for 3-4k on auto-attacks, which happen a lot faster than any of ours. Elementalists can do damage, but anyone arguing that our damage is even comparable to classes with higher base survivability is talking out their kitten.)

WvW/PvE Scepter/Dagger survivalist:

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.2.0.13.0.34.0.31.0.2.8.10.9.24.8.9.42.4.7.0.0.0.0.33.37.0.48.0.0.65.0.0.20.0.25.15.10

That’s the build I use, basically. It’s not totally exact on stats because it’s a PvP build simulator and I have a mix of PvE gear, but it’s pretty close. I use a combo of the karma armors from orr with power/tough/vit, and some crafted exotic carrion armor with carrion trinkets.

The runes just got reduced from 100% endurance regen to 50% (gee…..thanks…..) but it’s still viable. I can get and keep a ton of might and endurance with this build.

In WvW I act like a melee warrior, charging headfirst into battle stacked with might and throw down my heavy aoes. When armor of earth from the trait activates, I pop into air attunement for the swiftness and hit updraft>mist form to get back to my team, as soon as mist wears off ride the lightning (gotta have no target selected) to get even deeper behind friendly lines (dragging anyone dumb enough to follow to their own deaths). Many other professions might be able to pull this off easier/better due to inherently higher survivability, however, I just have fun pushing limits. I can also swap a couple utilities and pull out a staff should the situation require it, but I can do a lot to support with S/D as well (blasting other people’s healing fields while dealing damage and stacking allies with might, etc).

In PvE I basically do the same thing, and can solo 5+ mobs at once pretty easily (except the ones in orr that spam immobilize/knockdown/confusion, those I can only take 2-3 at once without danger), most veterans are pretty easy and even some champions I’ve managed to solo. I could do a lot more if it wasn’t for the insanely short leashing distance, makes kiting not really a valid playstyle.

My personal opinion of the state of balance with elementalist (after play one since BWE1) is that it is almost there. However, it really could use work on the downed state and underwater combat. Simply increasing the damage or attack rate on the #1 skills underwater would be plenty, the rest of the skills are fine, we just can’t actually kill anything in a reasonable time. The downed #2 needs replacing entirely, that is all. Other than that, a slight increase to either base health (bump to next tier, same as mesmer) OR damage output would make many more builds viable. As it stands, something similar to the build I run now is all I could see really working.

I did an experiment a while back:

found one of those skales that regenerate health that was about 20 levels under (I know, downscaling, but it’s still easier to fight while downscaled) and attacked it in the water with my rare quality trident.

Blasting away at it as hard as I could I couldn’t get it under half health. That’s right, I literally could not kill one single mob in the water. That’s fun.

I ran up on land, giving up the futile battle with the little lizard and it chose to follow me. Turned around and burned it down in about 5 seconds with scepter earth auto-attack only.

Ah well, at least I can look back fondly on the couple weeks where we actually had one skill that would reliably deal some damage underwater, even if we had to wait 3 minutes between bursts of slight usefulness.

Ouch, reduced whirlpool damage? Really?

Ok, guess I’ll go back to hiding behind everyone else in any water fights and doing basically nothing. I want to believe they don’t just hate elementalists, but it’s getting harder and harder.

There are titles.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_vs_World_

This topic continues to surface, and I continue to be baffled by it.

The things in life which give tangible “rewards” are the things which are fairly unimportant. Fun is it’s own reward, and if that doesn’t feel like enough then it probably isn’t really fun.

I have 2 suggestions for people missing the rewards in GW2, and these are not meant to be insulting at all, just honest advice:

1) Play one (or more) of the hundreds of other games out there which use the exponential power increase carrot-stick-treadmill model instead. GW2 is one of the very few games of this genre not using that model, and there are many gamers who prefer horizontal to vertical progression. Everyone is entitled to their preferences, and there is room in the world for games to accommodate them all.

2) Do a bit of research before purchasing games in the future if you have specific expectations. GW2 has been very openly marketed as a game without power based endgame progression which is based around the ideas of maximizing fun and level playing fields.

It’s really Maguuma and Ehmry Bay that are allied!

Yesterday at dreadfall bay, EB took the keep from TC after a long siege, then Maguuma (who had snuck in during the fight) took it from EB almost immediately. EB moved in on the north wall and harried TC’s countersiege, which devolved into a messy 3 way inside dreadfall outer…..

There is no alliance (between worlds, that is). Everyone is fighting each other, the scores arekittennear even overall. Silly conspiracy people go back under rocks now please.

Yeah….. it would be awesome…. like:

“Oh an event!”…..

then…..

“Run away fast so we don’t die to everyone else’s aoe!”

or…..

“Let’s wait till it’s half over then go aoe everyone!”

It’s like some people haven’t noticed how this game works yet. Anet has stated that open world PvP would not work in this game with the dynamic event system, do you not believe them?

On my elementalist I have 30 points in earth (300 toughness, +380 in earth attunement) and 20 water (200 vit/healing), protection (-33% damage) when attuning to earth and another protection/stability that happens automatically at 50% hp, a trait that auto-blocks 3 hits at 25% hp, a signet that adds another passive =10% defense…. basically as tanky as you can build an elementalist and still put out any damage (mostly conditions, full master/rare carrion set with runes of krait and afflicted for +62% bleed duration). My build is completely ineffective against these glass cannon thieves, any other class (except maybe the fotm shortbow ranger) I can at least survive long enough to get away.

The other day I got hit for over 6k with just steal. Then I dodged and went mist form like a pro (lol, not really ;p), knocked the thief down and started into my combo to retaliate. While my dragon’s tooth hung leisurely in the sky, waiting the requisite 40 years to fall from the sky on the great conjunction, the thief leisurely carved me into giblets with his auto-attack (at over 3k per hit). No matter how crappily geared, there is no player I can hit for 6k with my build, I gave up power for toughness (well, cause an elementalist can’t hit over 6k anyway even with the “hey, I’m so squishy I just died tripping over a pebble!” build, and with the bild I run, I can live againt any balanced class…..).

So yeah, thieves can hit that hard. Should they be able to? From stealth? That’s a different question altogether. (My answer would be “no”, at least until they fix the shadow refuge re-stealthing glitch and the effect that causes few or no character models to load in big groups).

(Edit: some forum bug is causing that line in the beginning to be underlined, lol.)

Exactly. People act like if a server isn’t in the top rankings there is no good PvP to be had.

I’ve found it to be quite the opposite. On the servers with the huge alliances (and queues) the PvP in WvW is pretty boring, running around in a group of 100 capping everything so fast that most people can’t even get a shot off at anything and then standing around for days outside enemy spawn point waiting for a few easy kills. I can do the same in PvE and it’s more fun there. There’s no feeling of PvP in winning by overwhelming numbers. The feeling of killing a player is no better than whacking a lvl 2 moa when all you ever get in is a hit or two and it doesn’t matter which skill you use anyway.

I mean this in the nicest possible way: sack up you ninnies! If you want to actually fight in WvW rather than waiting hours for a queue to pop so you can spawn camp a weaker server, transfer to that weaker server and help them out.

Here’s another shot of this effect, same place as the one above:

Loading stock skins for everything instead of every custom height/size/armor/weapon would go a long way toward solving this, I think, but there is also a bug there somehow causing basically no models to appear at all when numbers are over a certain amount.

For some reason minions and skill effects appear when there are no players visible at all (Lion’s Arch during WvW reset, probably over 50 players there but couldn’t see any of them):

Reviving, blocking incoming damage, healing and dealing damage to enemies should all get the same credit in events (both PvE and WvW).

Currently, the event system heavily favors power/precision builds (much like many other games with public events, unfortunately). The trait/skill/weapon system is obviously designed to allow flexibility of playstyle, but the rewards system for events does not currently support this intention.