Guild Wars 2

nielscase.6258:

Haha, I hope that doesn’t happen again for this super competitive balanced league coming up.

Total server shutdown lasting 7 weeks would be the best thing that could happen to WvW leagues.

IIRC this was actually the intended functionality. The plan seems to have been abandoned after BWE1 though, due to technical limitations of the game engine.

It would take some getting used to, but so what? It would improve communications in the long run. I think it’s an idea that could use another look at this point.

Shiren.9532:

That’s a matter of perspective. Bloolust buffs everyone across all four maps. It gives you an incentive to play on an enemy borderlands (even if you are outmanned) and capture the buff.

Good luck capturing and holding 3 points for 2 full minutes on a map where you’re at a 3:1 or greater disadvantage. Especially since both enemy forces get a global warning and countdown timer to de-cap some points or just straight up slaughter you. Bloodlust isn’t really ninja-able how camps and even towers are.

Add to that, your enemies probably already have the buff, if they outnumber you. You are now a WvW objective yourself, yielding points for the enemy every time they stomp you (up to as many as a sentry or dolyak!). That totally negates the “no armor repair fee” as an incentive to face impossible odds, for anyone who gives a crap about points anyway.

It’s better for your server, strategically, if you avoid fighting in outnumbered maps completely (unless you are REALLY good at not dying). With all three bloodlust buffs, less than one stomp per minute average yields more PPT than holding stonemist.

It hasn’t gotten to that point yet, but I can see it getting so people are told to get out of outmanned maps. Not because more players would cause them to lose the outmanned buff, but because dying (possibly) awards the enemy so many points.

Only fight in force, PvD as much as possible, don’t upgrade anything if you’re down anyway; this is the meta I see on the horizon. With leagues coming, add: avoid logging in for weeks at a time if you’re in the bottom of your league.

Liquid.9672:

Also, the true test of current balance among the top three is when we’re all in the same match.

The thing is, with the upcoming leagues, you won’t see that matchup for the next couple months (except possibly once, just possibly though).

Please stop “stacking” the “top tier” servers. It’s going to be incredibly boring the next couple months for anyone who enjoys a somewhat balanced fight.

If you are in a guild considering a transfer, please, please consider a transfer “down”. The reward for “winning” is some crappy finisher and weeks upon weeks of facerolling or getting facerolled.

Magnetron.5823:

Boss Hard? Its dead within 1 minute..

1x Mesmer
4x full zerk warriors

Done.

spoj.9672:

Not really. There are a number of ways you can beat the boss. The most efficient way is to dps under reflects/projectile blocks. All classes have decent access to those except for necro and warrior. You dont even need the reflects until the boss is about half hp. You cant crit, so any gear with power in it works fine, aslong as traits arent totally terrible for dps. You can also dodge the spawns, blind the boss to prevent them spawning or even block the spawns with aegis. The common pug tactic seems to be kiting the adds around and ranging, but Id honestly slit my wrists if I had to do it that way and take all evening.

Soldier’s > zerker’s in this case.

saiyr.3071:

You shorted me out four paragraphs. Please correct.

I know, frustrating isn’t – it? If you get the full subscription package you’ll never be left out. Buy now for a bulk discount on words words words words……

(isn’kitten really, isn’kitten Anet fix yer kitten filter, it’s clogged with extra kittens….)

Brutus.5732:

Thrashbarg.9820:

A rant 6 paragraphs too long.

Congratulations on your dominating performance.

My previous post was responding to a delusional post, I would have remained silent otherwise.

Thanks, I’m rather happy with it. I’m not concerned with your perceptions, or editing suggestions, however. Anyone familiar with my rants should expect a minimum of six paragraphs. It’s party genetic and partly that I don’t bother writing for people who lack the patience or reading comprehension skills to understand me anyway.

I’m not sure what can be considered delusional about not being impressed by SoR. It’s a matter of perspective and opinion, there’s no facts to be deluded about. Unless PPT and coverage should be impressive (even that is an opinion, which many do not share). Personally, I’m impressed by the ability of the guilds I mentioned in my “rant” to call each other for backup. That takes coordination.

(there, 2 paragraphs, short enough now?) ;p

renmei.3102:

This is the second time I’ve seen TC claim that their NA is able to keep up with or outscore SoR’s during that prime time, and no matter how I look at the millennium history of the matches I don’t see it.

It happens almost every day around NA prime time. I can’t find an hourly breakdown function on MOS, if there is one, only history based on total score. Obviously SoR wins the coverage/ppt game, no contest there. When numbers are roughly equal, however, scores are also roughly equal. That is generally true of any server.

Brutus.5732:

Asudementio.8526:

The WvW regulars have a much worse time fighting outmatched opponents than we do someone like SoR, but we expect SoR to perform and a lot of us were expecting so much more than SoR has delivered.

You were expecting more? Seriously?

TC came within 30k of JQ. You could have 2v1’d us. I thought a 2v1 could win it for TC.

Outside of GvGs you gave SOR a boring week, if anyone has a case to be disappointed it is us.

I’ve never seen a 2v1 work and I’ve been playing since BWE1. It might work in “T1” (which no longer exists, as such) because the top 3 servers are by nature (of transfers, or bandwagonners, or whatever) stacked with the most people who care about “winning”.

If my personal pride was tied to my server ranking I would have just transferred, same as many of you in “T1” did.

TC is made up of tons of medium/small guilds and individuals. We work together surprisingly well, often ticking as high or higher than SoR during NA prime, but not many of us are hardcore enough to try to form inter-server alliances to influence point score (especially since it has basically no effect on who we fight).

Boring week huh? Is that why SoR consistently sent 2-3 guild groups to TCBL all day every day? Strange to me. When it’s a boring week on TC, I don’t even go into WvW (there’s better places in Tyria to spam 1 for loot bagz). Different strokes, I guess, but that’s not my kind of stroking it.

Anyway, thanks [Choo] [Hel] [TW] [GSCH] etc for all the training you provided our militia. We have lots of newish people on TCBL much of the day, and teaching them to wipe multiple coordinated guild groups was really fun. Also, thanks to each of those guilds individually for calling the others in for backup every time you wipe, it’s boring when opponents die and don’t come back.

I’m sure we’ll see each other again in the league matches, and you can be sure I’ll be making you pay for every inch of land with your corpses.

GvGs the only excitement huh? How is getting wiped by [EP] over and over again more exciting than getting wiped by “pugs” over and over? (just a friendly reminder to check that ego at your portal while you wait in queue)

I found a TW asura the other day with the “Ultimate Dominator” tag. He seemed to be akitten the middle of the field between garrison and ne tower on TCBL.

I was going to kill him but it seemed unfair since he was just standing alone by a moa, so I dropped shadow refuge over him and hung around till he came back, we had a nice little dance party…..

EDIT: geezus ANet disable the filter on A-F-K, the dude wasn’t a kitten

DevonCarver.5370:

Doing so would invalidate the time people spend acquiring that gear. I think the heart of your post is in the right place, but what we would rather do is make possible for people to get the gear by playing WvW with a sprinkling of PvE, rather than the other way around.

And not doing so invalidates the time people spent leveling and gearing alts. I probably shouldn’t even mention that, since ANet hates players with more than one character. The game should have just come with a single character slot and one playable profession, then we could all have maxed WvW traits and stand in a circle hundred bladesing each other with ascended and legendary greatswords.

Put me down as a yes, but it doesn’t matter. In fact, it seems that anything the majority of the WvW community asks for is immediately off the table (except disabling culling, but really we were just the guinea pigs PvE culling removal, testing it on us was a safe move since they don’t care about our playing experience as much).

Another thing is the lack of dedicated healers. That attempted body-block would turn into a pile of melted heavy armor in seconds with a coordinated AoE burst. The lack of ability to dodge or use mobility to avoid damage makes the technique worthless in this game. Then there’s things like: would stability allow you to bypass collision? would it be possible to bypass with stealth or teleports? if not it’s very OP, if so it’s too easily countered to matter.

Try having a group of guardians and elementalists lay down CC in rotation, along with other classes using the boon stripping skills available to them. It takes much more coordination than “hey heavies, stand in the choke and don’t die” but if you can pull it off you can effectively block a choke point.

Also, more server laaaaag? No thanks.

scanz.4536:

Devon’s response earlier in the thread quite frankly demonstrates the fact that ANet do not care about the WvW community and its feedback. It also shows their complete lack of connection and understanding with us (the WvW community) because who on earth would have suggested this idea? They have clearly not consulted anyone who actually plays WvW on a regular basis and are again not listening to the feedback. .

It’s strange to me that the sPvP team listens quite intently to what the “top” PvP players have to say, yet the WvW team does exactly the opposite. There are official PvP tournaments with high ranked teams picked for their skill level equality, and in WvW we get “leagues” where every match is practically guaranteed to be a blowout before it even starts.

I don’t know why game companies have this ostrich style approach to the fact that many players want a large scale, siege simulation combat mode which is balanced and competitive.

In the last game I played, my “guild” was invited to participate in an international PvP tournament with pretty nice prizes. We had trouble finding enough people even interested to fill the 6 person team. The weekly siege warfare game was 80v80 and we usually had about 20-30 or more people above the limit on standby hoping to get a spot. There would be hundreds of people standing at the entrance NPCs for the weekly wars. The area where most people did open world, small scale PvP most of the rest of the wekk usually had the same 10ish people hanging around (half stealthed waiting to gank someone).The population of these games interested in large scale battle (in my experience) far exceeds the population interested in small team PvP, but tends to be largely ignored by the developers.

If they had a panel of the top WvW guilds (not top tier servers specifically, just leaders from dedicated WvW guilds) advising changes similar to what they have with sPvP, things would be much better.

Sarsbear.3469:

Thrashbarg.9820:

Sarsbear.3469:

Now the devs are putting in an open field objective, a place designed specifically for groups to fight other groups, and its going to kill the “scene.” As a small group roamer I say good riddance. All I ever cared about was good fights, but you guys spent the last year making sure points was all that mattered.

I don’t think anyone is arguing against the new map objective. The issue is the stat buff. Snowballing mechanics are bad. They were bad last year and they are bad again. It’s lazy design to go with a simple stat buff rather than creating a strategic reason to fight for these new points such as many which have been suggested in this and other threads.

“Getting rolled is getting rolled” you say, I say it’s not so black and white. Adding this buff just makes it that much harder to come back from behind.

In some matches my server starts every “morning” with basically no points and steadily comes back throughout the “day”. We mostly have a strong NA presence, but our opponents often do as well, so it’s not like we just trade off PvD with the other server’s oceanic/asian populations, we have to fight for every inch. In those fights they will all now have an extra stat bonus and more points from killing our frontliners who do the dirty work of retaking our lands every day.

I’m hoping the new points will add some interesting small/medium scale open area fights, it looks like they will. I stand by my opinion that the stat buff is crap design and and other number of incentives would do much better (faster upgrades, less costly repairs, increased defense from siege, swapping buffs with “outmanned”, etc.).

I would argue that your complaint isn’t the stat buff, it’s the mechanics that allow snowballing in the first place. You wake up with 0 points, why? Because another server outnumbered you enough to walk all over your towers. They got the buff because of that, so let’s solve that problem. I also like your incentives if they were for outmanned, but a stat buff for holding 3 of 5 open field objectives sounds very reasonable, considering I will spend most of my time preventing the other teams from doing so.

I miss 24 hour rotations.

I agree with your assessment of my complaint. However, I think it would be much simpler to avoid adding more power to dominant servers than to fix the massive discrepancies in coverage without alienating oceanic/asian players.

I hope we’ll get lots of good small scale fights out of this, but I can already think of ways zergs can effectively hold these points and most/all structural objectives as well. Not going to elaborate, since I’m hoping for a few weeks at least before the meta totally shifts back to map-blobs.

Large scale combat isn’t necessarily “zerging”. The term ‘zerg’ comes from an NPC race in StarCraft, mindless aliens you could use as cannon fodder basically.

Zerging is large scale stupid combat, when players don’t know or care about positioning because they simply outnumber their opponents and can win by brute force alone.

Large scale, coordinated combat is quite fun until there are simply too many people involved for the server to handle.

TheAmpca.1753:

Next, let’s look at another common complaint. Due to lag most zerg fights just dissolve into players spamming their auto-attack button and not pulling off well coordinated combos. However, the appropriate response shouldn’t be to simply say “let’s discourage zerg fights” and instead should be more along the lines of “let’s fix our server performance”

It’s not something they can fix. Their servers are as top of the line as they can get, their game engine as modern as possible given development costs. The problem is the game is too complex for current tech. 80v80v80 results in billions of simultaneous calculations over 240 systems with varying latency. With combo fields/finishers, projectile physics, position/direction/velocity based calculations, boon/condition interaction/stacks/timers/power of sources etc. there is more going on behind the scenes than the combat in any other MMO.

The only fix would be to reduce total map caps, which they are very reluctant to do, for various reasons.

Sarsbear.3469:

Now the devs are putting in an open field objective, a place designed specifically for groups to fight other groups, and its going to kill the “scene.” As a small group roamer I say good riddance. All I ever cared about was good fights, but you guys spent the last year making sure points was all that mattered.

I don’t think anyone is arguing against the new map objective. The issue is the stat buff. Snowballing mechanics are bad. They were bad last year and they are bad again. It’s lazy design to go with a simple stat buff rather than creating a strategic reason to fight for these new points such as many which have been suggested in this and other threads.

“Getting rolled is getting rolled” you say, I say it’s not so black and white. Adding this buff just makes it that much harder to come back from behind.

In some matches my server starts every “morning” with basically no points and steadily comes back throughout the “day”. We mostly have a strong NA presence, but our opponents often do as well, so it’s not like we just trade off PvD with the other server’s oceanic/asian populations, we have to fight for every inch. In those fights they will all now have an extra stat bonus and more points from killing our frontliners who do the dirty work of retaking our lands every day.

I’m hoping the new points will add some interesting small/medium scale open area fights, it looks like they will. I stand by my opinion that the stat buff is crap design and and other number of incentives would do much better (faster upgrades, less costly repairs, increased defense from siege, swapping buffs with “outmanned”, etc.).

Istaf.1953:

Thrashbarg.9820:

stuff

Few problems with this. One, the best players aren’t on T1. Matter of fact they avoid T1.

PPT is only really effected by coverage. Some servers might have just as many players as other servers with coverage, but they just have more people on at prime time.

If everyone goes to T1 servers, the queues there would be even more ridiculous as well as the skill lag

Lastly, it’s possible that some servers have more people than TC, JQ, SoR and BG, but they just don’t WvW for whatever reason. I’d guess lack of commanders etc.

In my opinion the devs should look at it the other way around and try to spread out the population, not give reason to stack servers even more. This would also help the skill lag everyone hates

I agree. Perhaps you missed the sarcasm in my post.

When I was referring to population, I meant (rather obviously, I thought) active WvW population. Active WvW population has many factors and isn’t necessarily a measure of total server population, but server rank is a direct result of active WvW player numbers.

From ANet’s business perspective, the tier 1 servers are the “best”. There was a post from Mr. Carver a while back equating server rank to skill directly. This isn’t my view, or even most WvW’ers that I know, it’s the view held by the company making the game.

As for skill lag, it may actually decrease if more players transfer to “winning” servers. With the new league rotation coming, it will be very rare for the top ranked 3-4 servers to fight only each other, making blowouts even more common and with larger point gaps. If one server has 80 people on every map and the other two can only wrangle up a few masochistic/suicidal players to get farmed by the map zergs, there won’t be much lag. Perhaps this actually is their fix for skill lag, eliminate the big 3 way fights which cause it by encouraging players to all stack on a few servers which will rarely meet in combat.

Blanche Neige.7241:

sinzer.4018:

There’s a problem with having to defend a keep 3 times. What if your server is worse than the other two and the only keeps you actually have is on your bl in the first 5 minutes after reset?

If that happens, I doubt your server would be eligible for any wvw league prizes anyway.

^ This.

The prizes go to the server with the most coverage. Want prizes? Transfer now!

Master of Timespace.2548:

Really, why dont you just make it so that the server with most people in WvW at a time automatically gets a buff?

Outnumbering! Your fast numbers over the enemy inspire you. Have fun pillaging! +100% magic find, +20% wexp, +50 to all stats.

Now that we are at it, why don’t we also change outnumbered to

Outnumbered! Your army is greatly outnumbered, demoralising you. Be careful out there. -50 to all stats, 5% chance to be feared when struck.

This change would be perfectly in line with ANet’s apparent vision for WvW.

It’s a win/win/win situation. Bigger servers get more transfers (money) and more incentives to “win” and more rewards to make them feel good about their server-stacking skills (I mean, pvp skills, yeah….). Smaller servers get crapped on, but hey, that’s more incentive to transfer (money). Bigger servers deserve to win anyway, because they have more players (customers) for the company to keep happy.

Money, money, happy customers, revenue, win, win, win……. If you’re losing, either suck it up and “enjoy” being farmed or transfer to ride that win wagon.

Also, if anyone has a good suggestion and posts it on the forum it’s marked to never be implemented.

Johje Holan.4607:

DevonCarver.5370:

No. That is not a possibility at this time. The point of the buff is to affect the WvW game mode as a whole disabling it on your character would lessen the value of the buff to a server and completely invalidate the whole point.

What is the point? Can you please tell us the thinking behind this at least?

How can you think that this will do anything but make the stronger more populated server even stronger?

That is exactly the purpose. The more populated server has more players (paying customers) to keep happy. They are obviously the type who enjoy winning by unfair advantage already (for the most part anyway).

Avatara.1042:

And yet my full Lightning Hammer DPS build with exotic and ascended berserker gear, was killing slower in the gauntlet than most other classes.

Lightning hammer “build” relies heavily on party support to maximize damage. Without an external source of fury, might and burn it’s nothing special, hence the slow kills in gauntlet.

They don’t want elementalists to be best at anything. Mine is the best at collecting dust while I “just press 1” on my guardian. My engineer makes a much better jack-of-all-trades, so elementalists aren’t even best at being mediocre at everything…..

Max level is 10,000 Diamond Legend.
If I get one rank ever 2 hours I’m doing pretty well.
I have 5 characters.
To reach max rank on all of them will take me approximately 30 years of dedicated, full time WvW.

It’s taken a full year for them to admit the titles/achievements for WvW are crazy (50 years defending stonemist non-stop anyone?). Hopefully within the next year the math from WvW ranks will sink in and they will come to a similar realization.

Between the firm character bound WXP stance, the re-introduction of orb bonuses, league matchups further breaking balanced matches and ascended gear, I’m done with WvW other than guild raid nights. When those start requiring full ascended sets and guard-leech buffs I’m out completely.

Benkei.6293:

But The human factor if you are in teamspeak makes it fun, while ANet for some reason keept max number of player in a dungeon as five killd any aspect of social interaction for this game, and WvW is the only place left to go.

Sounds like the Tequatl fight is getting updated to require ~80 coordinated players, so that could be fun for ya. There’s also the temples in Orr. Last reset night most of my guild got stuck in queue so we cleared Balthazar while we waited; that fight is pretty hard and takes more coordination than a lot of WvW (and more than 5 people).

I wonder how much it has to do with guesting. My server is generally chatty as heck, especially LA and DR, but I’ve seen lively chat in most maps at one time or another.

I’m thinking maybe people who like to chat guest to servers where more people are chatting, leaving some servers with mostly quiet people.

Gele.2048:

is it that hard to make asscendeth i play 4 hours per day i got full ascendeth gear on 4 of my caracters and 10k accivment points o guess what i played gw 1 and i have all titels in that game even god walking amoung mear mortals and it was difrent game u cant compare gw 1 and gw 2 there the stupid gear was passing u where max lvl in day and max gear the same day also

Just imagine what that amount of time spent with a book instead of a video game could have done for the world. Seriously, can’t even read this post, it hurts my brain.

Good job Anet, you made someone happy at least. (Well, I think he/she’s happy, or something, something about god and deth anyway, sounds happy to me.)

I can agree about the phrase “stupid gear” though. Stupid, stupid gear…..

Zero Day.2594:

fun is another topic….
This topic is on whether ascended gear will kill builds and alts….

I have fun playing different builds and alts. Not sure how fun doesn’t relate to the topic, unless there is another reason besides fun to play a game?

Ascended gear isn’t going to literally kill my alts, but it may as well, because it’s a bit hard to have fun staring a years long grind just to get BACK to BiS gear in the face.

YMMV of course. I’m sure it’s a good change for some people. Just not for me or those like me.

Zindrix.1750:

I think at this point it is fairly obvious what they say and what they do are 2 different things now. They probably didn’t want to add in this kind of time sink, but they don’t have the power to make those type of design decisions, the executives at their parent company tell them what to do.

fixed (well, maybe anyway, but that’s my theory given past experience with f2p style MMOs from the area of the planet where Anet’s overlords live)

It might be easy to get charged quartz, but I have never made one. Will I be behind by default? I don’t really care anymore. Getting full ascended gear for all my characters is looking like the title for capturing stonemist….. something that will never, ever, happen.

Gnat.9405:

They mentioned that 2014 will not have a new gear tier introduced. This gives players ample time to create gear significant to design. I would bet that the only content that actually requires PvE ascended gear will be higher level fractals for a very long time. Casuals aren’t participating in that anyway.

Lots of generalizations and assumptions there. Labeling people “casuals” and telling them how they play is a bit offensive.

There is also this game mode called WvWvW where players use their PvE gear in a PvP environment. Although the developers have made it clear they do not intend this game type to be as balanced as sPvP, many of the players themselves do in fact want it to have some semblance of balance. Many WVW players consider this mode to be endgame, high-end content, where the best gear is necessary to make sure the playing field is as level as possible. Time gating gear progression is not enjoyable for many WvW players, especially locking the materials behind daily PvE activities.

Time gating is a cheesy way of extending the gear treadmill. For those of us who just want to play the game, especially those with multiple characters (and builds) it kicks the fun factor right in the jimmies.

I had BiS weapons for ALL my characters. Why would I be happy with a downgrade? Especially if it takes months or years to get back to where I was before. How long will it take for me to get all 5 characters ascended weapons for all their various builds? Should I just give up and retire all except the zerker warrior because that is the most efficient stat set for ascended? Too bad that’s the worst build for WvW…..

Five level 80 characters here. Enjoy playing them all somewhat equally. Spend about half my time in WvW. Not interested in fractals in the least. Feeling screwed over by power creep.

For a player with one main character, the grind is reasonable, and possibly even an incentive to play more.

For someone like me it adds:
5 x (builds per alt) x (individual gear pieces required per discreet build) x (time required per piece)
to the grind required to simply GET BACK TO WHERE I WAS BEFORE ASCENDED GEAR.

That’s right folks, all your exotic weapons are currently best in slot gear. They are getting a downgrade on Tuesday. How fun.

It’s not even about any of that from the company perspective anyway. It’s about cash. Money. Nothing wrong with a company wanting to make money, I suppose. Time gated ascended weapons + legendaries for sale x impatience/foolishness = profit. Simple math.

Delvoire.8930:

Thrashbarg.9820:

This is the point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_creep
Anyone telling you something else is deluded or lying to sell you something.

The introduction of ascended gear turned me from “fanboy” to disillusioned cynic instantly.

To those still under the impression that higher numbers equals higher skill, I’m sorry, not trying to offend you, just trying to show reality.

That power creep definition is way off on what is going on with Ascended gear. Look closely.. it states the “successive additions”. We aren’t getting successive additions of gear… Look at DCUO. Launches with T1, then T2 comes out, then T2.5.. and now T3. That would be a power creep. The T1 gear, originally the best gear in game, has now become irrelevant.

Ascended Weapons are not the same as this at all. Seeing as Legendary Weapons were here upon launch and were the highest gear you could get, that still will hold true with Ascended Weapons.

Legendary weapons had (and still have, until the update) the same exact stats as exotics. With the update they will get higher stats. Their POWER is CREEPING higher.

Successive additions = rings first, then backpieces, then amulets, then accessories, now weapons, soon armors……

Successive. Additions.

All time gated (and/or grind gated in the case of rings and backpacks).

Due to the time gating effect, this heavily discourages alts. It also heavily encourages buying legendaries to have the highest stats as soon as possible. This makes the game “pay to win” for the first time, something which I have defended ANet from accusations of many times on this and other forums. Those who can afford to drop thousands of dollars on gems to outfit several characters with legendary weapons will now have a statistical advantage (and be months/years ahead of those who can’t/don’t spend as much). It may not be huge, but it is quite disturbing (or would be if I had any hope for MMOs left at all).

This is the point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_creep
Anyone telling you something else is deluded or lying to sell you something.

The introduction of ascended gear turned me from “fanboy” to disillusioned cynic instantly.

To those still under the impression that higher numbers equals higher skill, I’m sorry, not trying to offend you, just trying to show reality.

Nilkemia.8507:

Zhaitan seemed to be trying to destroy us. So was Jormag.

Insects probably see me as trying to destroy them when I go out for a stroll through the park. Well, maybe that’s not the best metaphor.

How about this one: The microorganisms coating my lunch probably see me as trying to destroy them when I eat. Dragonlunch= the sort of shiny magical objects our characters like to horde. Our characters= too small to do anything with other than digest along with lunch.

Haha, nice of them to endorse a product which advertises how well it violates the terms of service. Isn’t there a rule about “1 key press = 1 action”?

Hold off buying siege weapons until you’ve played a bit to familiarize yourself with proper placement and usage or you’ll be wasting your money and your server’s supply. Many commanders would be happy to give instruction on placing and using siege, try whispering a few for advice when there isn’t any major action going on.

A badly placed cart is pretty worthless and will likely just get you killed. They aren’t the sort of weapons you drop randomly mid-combat, they are tactical area denial weapons primarily (similar to rapid fire turrets in tower defense games).

You do not gain any additional exp or kills from building one. Using one will reward for any kills same as any other method, but does not require that you were the one to drop the blueprint.

The clues are in Scarlet’s main subjects of interest. Not going to speculate here beyond paraphrasing something from Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy: In an infinite universe, it’s not really necessary to actually manufacture much, since pretty much anything you can imagine just grows somewhere naturally.

The story of the transformation of Ceara into Scarlet reminds me quite a bit of the story of The Master in Doctor Who (new school series). For anyone who hasn’t seen it and likes epic storytelling, I’d highly recommend the series. If this story plays out to be anything close I’ll be happy.

GuzziHero.2467:

DethWarrior.8316:

I encountered a strange phenomena while doing Scarlet’s minion map invasion event (Mount Maelstorm btw) . During the entire event, Scarlet spawned on me over 12 times (lost count -_-). And by that I mean, she knocked my character off and literally spawned at exact same spot.

I am usually alone or have 3-4 people around in event as I avoid zergs. But she spawned on me in every possible scenario. (Alone, with zerg, with few people, within a red event circle, far away from any event circle)

After the final wave was done, . I knew she was going to spawn on me so I was going to the zerg on the map and when she did spawn as expected. I was getting close to the zerg but it was very clear she didnt spawn on the zerg.

I was on the map before event started (was doing jump puzzle) so it may have been the reason why she stalked me but I am not sure.

Has anyone else had similar problem?

Are you the guy from Tarnished Coast who was talking about this earlier? If so, your rant was hilarious

I’m from Tarnished Coast, and this did happen to me, but my rant was mildly interesting at best so that must have been someone else.

Feature or bug? Either way I was entertained. Especially when she jumped me at a merchant while trying to empty my bags.

For me it’s the awkward threesome of the dome, the zerg and my hardware. That shadowfall AoE drops my framerate when I am outside the dome…. My normal framerate inside the dome is about the same as in the largest zerg fights in WvW (at least there I’m not trapped in a tiny bubble, usually).

I know, upgrade my toaster….. I plan to….. Just not for one stinkin boss.

Talonblaze.3175:

Thrashbarg.9820:

I doubt they’ll be adding DR for deadeye since it’s out at tomorrow’s patch anyway. It’s fine if farmers want to farm. It may be unhealthy to play 10 hours a day but that’s your choice (and sometimes mine too, lol).

What I dislike is the inflation, but that’s not the farmer’s faults it’s Anet’s. (woot apostrophes!)

More crafting material drops = good.
More raw currency drops = bad.
More cosmetic options= good.
More time gated endgame gear= bad.

Incorrect, the only thing being removed tomorrow is the Opening Ceremony instance for the LS for the festival. Everything else will continue to remain until Sept 3rd.

But I doubt it will get DR during that time, since its here for only a short bit more, i don’t think they are even gonna bother with it till next year.

Dang, I was wrong, sorry about that. I still stand by my mathematical breakdown of loot vs. gold…..

I doubt they’ll be adding DR for deadeye since it’s out at tomorrow’s patch anyway. It’s fine if farmers want to farm. It may be unhealthy to play 10 hours a day but that’s your choice (and sometimes mine too, lol).

What I dislike is the inflation, but that’s not the farmer’s faults it’s Anet’s. (woot apostrophes!)

More crafting material drops = good.
More raw currency drops = bad.
More cosmetic options= good.
More time gated endgame gear= bad.

To interest me much, GvG would need some sort of interesting terrain and objective based play beyond “wipe enemy group”. There is definitely skill and coordination in GvG groups, but it seems lackluster to me.

What I’d really like to see (and what may have been the intention of the game, looking at certain systems) is guilds claiming towers and challenging other guilds to take them as GvG. That would add several layers to the strategy involved. Limits on siege would need to be agreed upon the same way limits on numbers and sigil stacks, consumables, etc currently are. Holding the fort against randoms and trolls may make it impossible in reality though.

Running in circles in a very small, flat area, playing small scale ZvZ deathmatch style really favors certain compositions and builds. Someone suggested enlisting the sPvP map team to make a 20v20(ish) GvG map, and I think that’s a great idea. In fact, I think it might make a more successful esport than the current incarnation of tPvP.

senritsu.2574:

I used Fresh Air, D/F, GoEP, signet of water, and basically just tried to keep the dog permanently crippled and chilled. Works reasonably well, but you need to be lucky enough that the meat lands actually not right on top of the dog.

Therein lies the issue for me. Never had an attempt where at least 1 of the first 3 meats didn’t go straight to chomper. Coupled with my machine being outdated and the screwy camera angles I’m just stuck on this stupid boss. I can see how to beat it, on any number of characters and builds, but what I can’t see is where the stupid meat gets thrown half the time at 5fps. My framerate is better in WvW zergs than in that tiny reflective room in the sky over the boss zerg pits.

RNG + lag isn’t fun, so I stopped trying. Kudos to those with more patience and/or better computers.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Great news! I am finally equip all my 8 characters full without doing the fractals (grinding fractals was so boooring).

Yep, but it’s going to take you 8 years to get them all some good WvW mastery levels.

DevonCarver.5370:

We will not be changing WvW ranks or WxP to be account bound.

That’s too bad, but thank you for the reply. I would like to know why you (as in the team, not you specifically) believe this is the right choice as opposed to a system like the sPvP glory/titles.

DevonCarver.5370:

However, we are going to be implementing a host of changes that should make this seem less like some sort of punishment(a categorization I disagree with entirely) and more of a character progression system.

“Punishment” is a bit strong of a word, I agree. The thing is, I’m not looking for character progression in WvW. I have that in the PvE world, and from what I’ve read, we’re getting even more. I want to be focused on doing whatever benefits my group, be it playing an alt to cover a specific role or scouting and walking yaks instead of zerging. If my alts have less HP, defense/damage with siege, etc. I’m less likely to play them. (nearly) Unlimited character progression is only a good thing for a specific type of gamer, the one who make one single “main” and sticks to it despite being bored then demands the game add more to make it fun again. I don’t see many of that type in WvW. For the rest of us it just seems like a lot of grind to stay on par.

DevonCarver.5370:

The first step is the liquid WXP that is being added to the rank up chests which is account-bound. We are planning additional systems as well. Hopefully, as we continue to announce some of those changes, you will be happier with the system.

This sounds good, and I’ll keep my hopes up for it. Sounds a bit like an overly complicated system to give a halfway reasonable compromise, just to avoid having to say “yeah, we were wrong, let’s fix this” but I’ll take what I can get.

Ok I Did It.2854:

Real easy fix to that, if you really want to get into it then, how hard to you think it would be to make it that you cannot take supplies from 1 BL to another, oh wow what you going to do now, make it that golems cannot be ported, oh wow what you going to do now…………

Control the supply, control the map, simple.

I would be totally in favor of that. Would make reset nights particularly epic. Would probably lead to “spawncamping” more though, so perhaps more stale gameplay.

Other changes would be required as well. Although it’s slower, I can still build golems in a BL without taking a camp or bringing outside supply….

DevonCarver.5370:

selan.8354:

well im sure the patch after the 20th is gonna be the new golemmastery.XD i see the disaster already happening

Shows what you know. The next line is Mastery Mastery. 5 pips, each one makes all the other lines more Masterful.

Seriously, there is a glut of golems right now for a few different reasons, which should start to balance out over time. The price on the TP has started to rise again and likely enough they will be much less plentiful as they continue to be used. We are definitely aware of the change to the game that making golems tradeable has had and we’ll keep looking for ways to adjust the balance of the game, but for now stop those golems!

The main problem, and easiest fix, is the golem per map cap itself. Bring it down to something reasonable (5-10) and solve the whole problem.

The price is rising, but is the supply falling? Also, do you have data on how many people have piles of them in the bank waiting for the price to go back up? Is it possible that the glut of gold in the economy due to the champion loot changes and pavillion/gauntlet farming has simply caused the cost of most goods to rise?….

Hrist.8972:

Ok I Did It.2854:

Golems take a lot of supplies to make, so instead of sitting in your T3 tower waiting for the 30-50 golem zerg to show up, why not do more map control and watch them camps, you control the supply line, you control the map…..if you cant be bothered to do that, then be prepared to sit and wait for them 30-50 golems to come at you.

Here people, wisdom being handed out, get some of it before it runs out!

Too late, it ran out, wasn’t much there to begin with though.

I can build a 50 golem army without ever taking a camp on the map I plan to rush. How you gonna stop that? I won’t explain how, because I’m tired of seeing it, but where there’s a will, there’s a way.

@ Amadeus: The sigils in your build will bugger each other’s cooldowns. Drop sigil of rage for force/accuracy/bloodlust/stamina/restoration/etc (something with a permanent effect or no cooldown). All sigil cooldowns cause a global cooldown on any others, if that makes sense.

@ OP: The thing about zerker armor is that it’s the least efficient way to get critical damage. Point for point it costs over 50% more than traits, weapons, runes; and over double what you get from trinket upgrades.

This is about as glassy as I like to go on elementalist:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmKbzR4wjEAEFpgyoQHiHW0gElCzA-jUzA4LQMGAJCkKAk9ESTgSj9hioxqXwUmJVfGZtLg7Iq+DlZhAGtFA-w
Fresh air would be a decent choice for this build, but I put tempest defense because this build’s burst combo is deadly against players who think “hey look at that ele charging his churning earth, I’ll go hit him with an interrupt….”. Armor of Earth for the stability>start churn>swap air>shocking aura>swap water>frost aura>churn hits (if the stars align correctly) for over 10k due to all damage bonuses from traits.

I usually use more defensive traits such as Earth’s Embrace, Soothing Disruption and Cleansing Wave; as well as different foods but the basic build remains the same.

Yes.

What did my alts ever do to you?

Also, this:

PariahX.6970:

Rhongomyniad.5081:

rhodoc.2381:

WXP Pool can be account bound while abilities can be character bound. Seems fair

I think this is a great idea.

Me too I vote for this idea, preserves individual character development whilst not curtailing alt aholics.

PariahX.6970:

No! I agree with Belle, I don’t give a flying monkey kitten what my WXP rank is and it totally baffles that so many of you do or think you are somehow sub-optimal in this easy cake walk super duper casual version of PvP. They made the WXP stuff total fluff because it is not the point of the game, just a little extra bit for those who get so freaking progression obsessed.

The extra vitality or damage you get from maxing the guard trait lines is clearly significant and you are clearly sub optimal without it.

That looks a lot better. I’d suggest ether renewal as a heal, kinda lacking condition removal outside water attunement cooldowns. With ether renewal I’d also drop the 2 monk & guardian runes in favor of 4 altruism, same boon duration and healing but another 3 stacks of aoe might (for you as well).

The azurite gems are spendy and not necessary, emeralds or beryls will do basically the same thing. The azurites are exactly optimizing the build anyway.

The power is still low for my tastes, but pretty good survivability.

silvermember.8941:

I just want to add that because of the current design of the elementalist (low damage) people have to compensate for by spamming their skill as soon as it leaves CD instead using their skills tactically.

Fox, The current air fresh builds relies on simply using up your blind (air 2) with no regard to whether the target can hit you or not. This design runs counter to the whole tactical gameplay we were suppose to have and more like a buy a high powered keyboard and simply let the macros do their jobs.

Small correction: Air #3 is the blind, and fresh air builds make it available twice as often, giving more opportunity to use it tactically. The damage skill that gets spammed is #2 and it’s cooldown matches fresh air’s pattern anyway so there is no waste.

Yes, it applies to yourself as well as the 4 closest allies. As far as I know, all “applies to allies” effects include your character as an “ally”. Bad wording, but yeah, it’s an MMO….

I use boon duration runes or food to get at least 50% boon duration making it 3 sec. Doesn’t sound huge, but with 30 arcana, that’s about 30% uptime on one of the rarest and most useful boons (not considering armor of earth from trait and utility, and outside sources such as guardian shouts). Getting stunlocked is what kills most of the time, in my experience, which is pretty limited. Depends what the meta is in your matchups.

Definitely nothing wrong with geomancer’s freedom, especially if soloing. In that case consider Melandru runes, it’s a small hit to condition damage but massively increases your kiting ability. It also helps with stunlock trains, and also allows you to switch to saffron bread (check it out if you haven’t, it’s a great snack).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmkbzR4wjEAEFmcyoQIiCPUeMTO2A-jUzA4LQMGABBgEBm9ESTgSj9hioxqXwUmJVdGZtLg7Iq+DlZA-w

This is basically what I run, except I use 0-0-20-20-30 for D/D general WvW play, I feel stability from rock solid is better than fury/swiftness from auras but that’s personal preference.

Definitely drop the useless “windborne dagger” trait though. It doesn’t stack with swiftness and it doesn’t even work properly anyway (unless they ninja fixed it). Vigor-on-crit is standard and very useful (vigor = 2x dodges).

FrownyClown.8402:

I would probably switch out sigil of earth for doom So I can have a 66% upkeep of poison. Then I would switch out the sigil of geomancy for some type of on crit sigil. Putting a sigil of force isn’t worth it when you have 980 power. 5% of that is nothing.

All sigils which have a cooldown share the cooldown. An on-swap and and on-crit sigil will bugger each other’s cooldowns, depending on which procs first. Corruption would probably be the best choice for a 2nd sigil with this build, or maybe stamina for zerg fights.

I ran a build like this on my engineer for a while and considered it on elementalist. Thinking of a signet aura version maybe to increase burn uptime and might.

A couple changes I’d consider are:
1) The runes, perhaps adventure for an extra dodge every 15 sec, or undead to boost toughness even more.
2) Change geomancer’s freedom to rock solid. Stability guarantees ether renewal heals. It’s also aoe, so unless you’re running solo it helps the team immensely.

Strengths: Shiny animations.

Weaknesses: Tend to pull aggro from nerfbat wielding developers.

For pve it really doesn’t matter. Unless you are looking for maximum efficiency, in which case just stay with your warrior.

It mostly comes down to if you like sparkly lightning and fire more than swamp gas and zombies.