Guild Wars 2

Funnily enough, I was running full stances before so this feels similar to what I’m used to. Thanks

Yeah imagine my surprise when I logged in today for the first time since before HoT and seeing YB beating BG. Heck, seeing YB in the same tier as BG was shocking enough. It really felt like something out of the Twilight Zone lol

X T D.6458:

In before thread gets deleted…

I will explain this simply…

BG does not find ktraining empty maps, pounding on gates, and humping siege, an achievement or something to be proud of or brag about. If this is something you like please look to YB.

HoT wvw changes, new games, and general staleness with wvw have driven many players away from wvw and gw2. Some have quit, some are taking breaks, some are playing less, some cant play as much because they are grinding pve for guild hall upgrades.

Many people don’t care about PPT, because winning a pointless matchup…is pointless. Lack of fights, leads to lack of activity. Lack of any meaning to matchups leads to people not giving a kitten about it.

There you have it folks, mystery solved.

So basically, it’s not a problem with BG but rather the state of the game as a whole unless you’re down with the PPTrain, which I never was. Good to know. I’ll stay on BG.

This thread just reminded me that racial skills exist. That’s how useless I’ve always found them to be.

Okay, so like the title says, I’m returning to the game after a long hiatus. I think the last time I played was early last year. I haven’t purchased Heart of Thorns yet and I doubt I will, considering that running around with a torch doesn’t appeal to me at all regardless of how cool the Berzerker name is. But I digress. In the past I was running a Greatsword/Hammer build. I like the mobility of the GS and its damage combined with the crowd control of the hammer. I tend to enjoy more group oriented play than roaming.

I logged into the game today and jumped into some WvW action and found that my old build is effective enough at what I intended it to be, but I’m kinda missing having some ranged damage. Considering my gear is mostly Knight’s, the rifle seems the more obvious choice over the bow. And I’ve even heard the rifle was recently buffed for the Warrior. Last time I played, it was rather weak.

So basically, what I’m looking for is some build advice for my preferred playstyle in today’s game. I want to be on the front line of a group while also having a ranged option for pesky wall defenders, etc. From my past experience, I’m inclined to lean towards a hammer/rifle build. Is that a viable option these days and if so, how should I build for it in regards to utilities and specializations? Or is there a better option I’m not considering? Thanks in advance for the help.

If you’re saying BG is losing now because it’s focusing on fights more than PPT, then I might just have to jump back in because that’s all I care about is the fights. There was a time when whoever had the highest PPT was also winning the fights. I guess it’s changed now into some kind of cheese system where whoever cheeses it the most, gets the most points and therefore “wins”. I’d rather be rewarded in blood than worthless rewards at the end of the week. I didn’t realize it changed that much in my time away.

I have to admit that it’s pretty disheartening to come back to find my server has basically surrendered and if I want to get into some good heavy WvW action, I’ve got to transfer. I’ve been on BG since the beginning. There used to be this sense of community we built with pride and loyalty and now it just seems dead. I’m glad I logged in first before I put out the money on HOT lol

kitten that’s sad. Had a good run though.

I haven’t played since before the expansion came out so I just logged in to see my home server, Blackgate, losing by a mile when the opposite used to be true. And we’re losing to Yak’s Bend? WTF LOL! Did I wake up in the Twilight Zone or what? Where’s Beastgate?!

I like lots of bumping

I’m never going to complete a daily now that they’ve opted with this ultra-restrictive revamp. I went from having a choice in how I completed my daily to not having a choice at all. This is on the level of Warcraft with the level of bad. So much for GW2 being the alternative MMO.

I absolutely kittening hate the new dailies and I don’t see myself playing as much anymore because of yet another needless change for the sake of change. kitten the new daily crap. kitten the “new player experience”. Fix the kitten that actually needs fixing. I’m mad bro.

An awesome guild with awesome people, part of an ever-growing awesome gaming community. Apply now if you want to be awesome too!

Thanks for this post, Denied. I was just about to give up on my warrior in sPvP until checking out these videos.

I very much do get wrecked in sPvP unless the person I’m fighting is incredibly terrible and even then, they have to not be playing one of the flavor of the month builds. Every time I fight another warrior, no matter how they build, it’s a long drawn out fight where neither of us really beat the other until someone’s team mate comes along. It feels like basically all the terribads in WvW complained about warriors and now the class is neutered in sPvP, not that they were ever in a good spot to begin with.

Pretty much the majority of forum posters for any game are either fanboys or haters. Very little gray area.

Hodor.

/15chars

I’ve spent a ton of time in ESO’s beta, relegating most of that time to AvA. ESO’s AvA does some things very well: the size of the map, the way points work, etc. But compared to GW2, the combat in ESO is horrible in my opinion. It feels floaty and unimpactful to say the least (and yes, even after the supposed combat “fix” patch). While the engine is much more optimized for large scale battle than GW2, the overall quality of the graphics and animations is much lower as a result. I was hoping ESO would be the spiritual successor to my first MMO, Dark Age of Camelot, but it’s not. While it’s better in some areas than GW2, at its core GW2 is a much better game.

Yea that makes sense. I just keep coming back when everyone’s taking a break lol. I’ll definitely be there for Season 2 though. #beastgate

ESO’s AvA is better than GW2’s WvW but ESO has floaty combat, horrible movement, and dated graphics. I’m basically waiting to see how games like Camelot Unchained and Gloria Victis develop because GW2’s WvW is fundamentally flawed and the devs don’t seem to care.

Hey I’m on Blackgate. Why’s it so dead now? There isn’t any PvE event crap going on. It seems every time I try to come back to this game, WvW is just dead on my server so I just quit again. Maybe my timing is off lol

This is the least rewarding MMO I’ve ever played, but then again Anet wanted GW2 to be the alternative MMO. Who wouldve ever thought that by “alternative” they meant never getting appropriately rewarded for your time invested. I wish it was just in WvW that I could complain about garbage rewards, but it’s just as bad in PvE.

Game play has to be both fun -and- rewarding. The reward is what you have to show for the fun you had. It’s not enough for it to be fun alone. People want something to show for their time invested. I’ve been playing this game for over a year and I don’t have anything to show for it.

They couldve given us special skins only obtainable from the Season 1 chest, distinguishing our characters forever as participants. But instead they went the route of “crappy chest filled with random junk”. It’s beyond disappointing and it’s killed any drive I had left to play this game.

I absolutely hate crafting in any game; I don’t care if GW2 has made it less annoying than other games, they still haven’t made it fun. No game has for me.

You either like to craft or you don’t. With ascended gear, they’re forcing us to craft essentially because if there’s a stat increase anywhere in the game, players will go after it, not only for competitiveness but also just general character progression.

Defenders of this design decision like to say, “Oh it’s just a small stat increase. You really don’t need it..” Well, in the grand scheme of things, none of us even need to play the game, right? Character progression is a critical goal of every player whether they realize it or not. It’s fun and makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something. But when they only give you one path to achieve that goal, if you don’t like that path, you’re going to feel forced to do something you don’t like in order to progress your character.

We need multiple ways of obtaining every single piece of ascended gear in the game. Putting it solely behind the crafting wall like they’ve done with weapons is not friendly towards those of us who absolutely hate crafting. I don’t care if the materials drop like candy off champions, etc. There’s no way they’re ever going to make crafting something that I want to do because it’s just not fun. I want to be out in the world doing cool stuff like playing with my friends. I don’t want to be sitting in town crafting.

I don’t care what kind of time consuming grind they put ascended gear behind as long as it’s not crafting. I’m completely fine with it taking awhile to get. ANet has to provide us with more HORIZONTAL PATHS OF PROGRESSION!

wcker.2516:

Thankss guys, i enjoyed the conversation… really! But about the hammer, if i want to keep roaming i will need to get back to my GS – SW/WH or SW/SHIELD?? But after this patch anything will change about these 2, or same old stuff??

Nothing’s really changing in that department. I think the horn is more suited for roaming than the shield, although the shield is not without its uses.

Lucentfir.7430:

It actually works in the opposite you’re likely able to find more individually skilled players in lower tier servers. T1 is all zergy and group roaming. T1 doesn’t mean you have higher skilled players. T1 means you have better coverage and a lot more people to cover PPT. below T1 and lower you’ll gradually find better players because there isn’t a huge assortment of bads clumping and rolling everything over.

This is what everyone who isn’t in T1 says; sounds like excuses. Are there good players on every server? Sure, absolutely. But if you think that all there is to being in T1 is coverage and big zergs, you’ll never make it to T1, let alone have what it takes to stay there. But before more non-T1 players come in here trying to make themselves feel better for playing on weaker servers, this thread is about the Hammer. Let’s keep it on topic.

I’ve been playing on Blackgate for about a year now. Sure, there’s blobbing but non-T1 servers like to claim thats all that it is, as if thats all that it takes to reach the top tier. T1 servers have just as many roamers and havoc groups as any other tier. And being a T1 server attracts T1 players, people who want to play against the best competition the game has to offer. Of course it also attracts a fair share of bad players for similar reasons, but you’re more likely to run into higher caliber players than not. I consider myself mediocre at best yet I felt like a big fish in a small pond before I transferred to Blackgate and started playing with and against better players. That’s all neither here nor there though; the hammer hasn’t been the best roaming choice for warriors and it’s about to become even worse. The weapon shines in the blob.

mini.6018:

Tyr.1965:

Tammuz.7361:

hammer for roaming is dead post patch

Hammer sucked for roaming period. Maybe against terrible players it was good, but I’m on a T1 server; people know how to dodge.

People in t1 are the worst roamers.Blob 24/7 sucks out any skill from the players.Check lower tiers if you wanna see some decent roaming action .That’s basic knowledge by now .

Uh, no. The best roamers I’ve ever encountered have all been on T1 servers. Break away from the blob sometime; you might find that out.

Tammuz.7361:

hammer for roaming is dead post patch

Hammer sucked for roaming period. Maybe against terrible players it was good, but I’m on a T1 server; people know how to dodge. The hammer has always belonged in a zerg where its damage is harder to telegraph, which is why it’s getting nerfed. They had to do something to derail the Hammer Train. But Hammer aficionados will still do their thing in the zerg; they’ll just be relying on the rest of the group for the kills. Pointless nerf is pointless.

For roaming, nothing is more annoying than GS/sword+horn. It’s probably the most mobile build in the game. But if you’re still dead set on using the hammer, you better get used to only running in bigger groups. The hammer will be even more worthless for roaming/solo than it already is. The hammer has a very specific role; anyone wanting to use it for anything else is going to be disappointed.

Hexin.5603:

If there was a deadliest class, everyone would play it, and we wouldn’t need the other 7. Play what you want, they are all fun in there own way, all deadly depending on the driver.

You’re not supposed to state anything reasonable in this type of thread. You have to cry about [insert class here] being vastly more powerful than every other class in the game.

Yea, the guy has a commander tag too which is even worse. Screenshots have been taken and reported, yet he’s there week after week doing the same thing. He’s even in a guild who’s name reflects his love for constantly placing random ballista. This person is proud of their exploitative behavior. Anet needs to start openly and harshly banning these types of players to put a stop to it. People will keep doing it if they know Anet will ignore the problem, as they have been doing since release. Now there’s actually going to be rewards for winning so cheating and exploiting is going to rise to an all-time high. Or is this all part of the recent statement that the WvW dev made when he said that “WvW isn’t supposed to be fair”??

I’m on Blackgate in Tier 1, a highly competitive tier obviously, and we have had to deal with someone from an enemy server who transferred here with the sole intent of dropping ballista build sites in the middle of our offensive efforts, causing us to reach the siege cap. This person has been reported countless times yet Anet has done nothing to counter this exploitative tactic. Now that leagues are coming, their competitive nature is going to encourage even more of this type of behavior. Is Anet going to finally stop sitting on their hands and do something about it or will winners continue to be decided by who can cheat the most?

Seigfried.5938:

Don’t blame the server, blame the crazy PVE events which can yield tens of gold every hour. That, along with all the orr exploiters have pushed the prices of everything up. And mostly, people are stacking up on materials for ascended weapons. Expect it to be like this for at least 2 more weeks.

As soon as this event is over, Anet will have another carebear PvE patch ready to go. And then another one after that. And another one after that. It isn’t going to end. As soon as everyone grinds out their ascended weapons, Anet will release ascended armor and more mindless zergfest gold farming events. Their entire financial plan relies heavily on cranking out these stupidly boring grindfests disguised as “story driven events.” There’s no end in sight.

The incentives to PvE keep rising while they’ve yet to give us any reason to keep PvP’ing. Why can’t WvW be just as lucrative as any other aspect of the game? Why aren’t there exclusive skins that only drop from npc’s in WvW? There’s so much they could do, so much they need to do, that they haven’t done because they’re too busy milking the whales with their living story pseudo content. The fun of WvW obviously isn’t enough to keep people interested or we wouldn’t be seeing a sheer drop in participation. Anet needs to do something to offset the imbalance in rewards and content. PvE has plenty of carrots dangling; now it’s time to dangle some carrots just for us.

Seigfried.5938:

Well you have not played as long as others, so you don’t get to complain. Many people need to take some rest and replenish funds.

Except when I was active, I practically lived in WvW for months on end just like many, many others on the server. Of course back then, mindlessly farming champs for massive amounts of gold wasn’t a thing. We had great coverage for every time zone. Now it’s a ghost town half the time. Replenishing funds? For 3+ weeks now? I think that’s part of it but also a plethora of other factors like other games and burn-out with GW2 in general.

I’d rather see a one of our heals become a Shout instead of a physical skill. It would make Soldier’s Runes and the Shout healing build viable again.

If youre having trouble against a hammer warrior, you really need to learn to play. Sorry to be blunt, but it’s for your own good. Hammers are incredibly easy to telegraph. When you see the warrior slowly lift his big hammer high in the air, try dodging before it lands. It’s so easy that even the PvE kids can do it. Also, invest in Stability, which you should already have some form of in PvP anyway. Hammers are easily countered. This isn’t a balance issue; it’s a L2P thing.

dwahvel.7356:

What happened to BG’s SEA this week so far? taking the week off? I can tell by the lack of chest thumping by BG trolls.

The entire server is taking the week off. Plenty of people zerging in PvE though. People keep telling me, “next week it’ll go back to normal.” I’ve heard that three weeks running now. But Anet isn’t going to stop releasing new PvE crap to grind so Blackgate is going to have to decide what they like more: massive amounts of gold or WvW. I prefer WvW so I’m not sure how long I’m going to stay on BG because I want to play with like minded players who are passionate about WvW and absolutely bored by PvE. That used to be Blackgate, but I’m not so sure anymore…

Shifty.4985:

it saddens me that your numbers have declined :’(

It saddens me too. I’m on Blackgate and it seems the server is too preoccupied with PvE farming than WvW and it’s been like that for weeks. Maybe we’re tired of the match-up and bored with winning; many people have been saying that. My guild still has the same amount of people online as it ever did, but 95% of them aren’t in WvW anymore; they’re chasing Scarlet across Tyria. We’ll see if this dismal trend continues after the event’s over.

Nothing’s really changed about gem prices. Sure, the cost in gold for 100 gems has certainly gone up, but so has the amount of gold you can make in the game. Before champ farming, people were grinding T6 mats or whatever for their gold. Either way, they were spending time playing the game to make gold to buy gems. In the same amount of time it used to take to make 10g, you can now make triple or more. And gem prices reflect that. But time is the real currency here. All the other numbers are meaningless. Either way, you’re still spending about the same amount of time to make the gold to buy 100 gems whether those gems cost 1g or 10g. Of course, if you’re not willing to grind events like everyone else, you’re screwed, but the lazy will always be poor in this game.

Beard color does not truly match hair color in this game. It seems beards are a slightly lighter shade than the hair. I don’t know if this is because of texture issues but it’s incredibly annoying because I just bought a total makeover kit with gems that I purchased with real money, trying to support the game. Yet you can’t get this seemingly simple thing right. My Norn’s hair color is dark blond but his beard’s color is slightly lighter, a discrepancy that becomes even more apparent under various lighting effects. I feel like I wasted good money to alter my character’s appearance just for his appearance to change depending on the zone and time of day. It’s these types of inconsistencies that will make me reconsider ever spending real money on this game again.

Unfortunately, PvP is the only part of this game that doesn’t completely bore me. And how are all these PvE events lucrative for Anet? They just jacked up the gold circulation in the game so nobody’s spending real money on gems.

I play on one of the top three servers for WvW and every time there’s a stupid PvE event patch, WvW becomes a ghost town because Anet makes the gold gains absurd so everyone’s mindlessly grinding npc’s for easy cash and WvW becomes a ghost town. Maybe my server’s just jaded with being one of the best WvW servers for so long, but it’s really stupid and unfair to people who only enjoy WvW. I feel like I might as well not log in for the duration of these events because not only do they have no crossover in WvW whatsoever, but they also take entire guilds and players out of WvW. Maybe I’m just mad because all I wanted to do today was sack some towers, or maybe the PvE rewards in this game have become far too lucrative to justify spending time in WvW. Does anyone else feel the same way right now?

Yea I hear people complain about the class a lot so I wanted to make one to see what the fuss was all about. The pet UI immediately stuck out like a sore thumb. I guess I could get used to it over time, especially since I’m not a clicker, but I definitely think it could and should look better. I’ll try to bear with it in the meantime though. I’m sure there are much bigger issues the ranger community would rather have addressed first. Thanks for the response!

There. I figured out that the little button with the crossed swords toggles and swaps with the one behind it, but the whole thing just looks ugly to me. I hope it’s not supposed to look like that. Considering how clean the UI is for all the other classes, I was kinda taken aback when logging into the Ranger for the first time.

Then I’ll never use the Greatsword because the mobility is garbage if the one ability that does good damage is a stick in the mud with its situational uses. I’m not going to use a glorified stat stick just for a couple movement abilities and easily telegraphed and avoidable damage. I’d gladly have the damage be on par with the Guardian Greatsword’s #2 in exchange for similar mobility.

I just made a Ranger, level 1, and entered the game to discover that my pet bar is hideously overlapping the F1, F2, etc abilities. It’s a jumbled mess. Is this only an issue with the beginner pet or does this persist all the way to lvl 80? And if it’s like this at 80, why hasn’t it been fixed after 11 months? Or am I the only one experiencing it?

I didnt see any threads suggesting the change I proposed. Lots of troll threads though.

I love my Norn warrior in cultural tier 1 gear. He really channels that big hulking barbarian archetype that defines the class.

My only complaint about Greatsword is Hundred Blades. The damage is great, but easily avoidable. Being rooted while channeling is counter-intuitive to what melee classes are all about. Even in PvE, it sucks when you think the boss is done moving just for him to move slightly to your side and out of range of the attack. The bulk of Greatsword’s damage comes from Hundred Blades yet it feels incredibly situational and fundamentally crippled majority of the time. Perhaps movement speed during the channeling of Hundred Blades could be reduced so we can’t run at full speed, but it would still allow us to adjust ourselves as enemies turn and side step the attack. That would make life so much better when using the Greatsword in all aspects of gameplay. What do you guys think?

This shouldn’t be about Tarnished Coast because the bigger issue at hand is the intentional failing of an event so champs can be farmed. This is an unintended side effect and will be considered as an exploit by ArenaNet when the dust on this settles. At the very least, it’s going to get heavily nerfed, but some of worst offenders are probably going to get banned.

Chain weapons, like a medieval flail. A large spiked ball swinging from a chain. I can’t recall a single MMORPG with this type of weapon and I’d love to see it implemented.