Guild Wars 2

I don’t know whether the new rank system has anything to do with the pending nerf bat action, but I play a staff necro with wells for utility skills, see lots of numbers and rarely get drops. I have been keeping track via the WvW achievement and counting my badges, and I average 1 badge per ~30 kills (and 3 regular drops, mostly trophies). I am starting to think that the 5% dmg to a target to get credit doesn’t apply to condition damage, which is really all I do.

Yeah, I hope the mass bandwagoning doesn’t bump SBI any further. You guys have been great fun to fight, definitely performing above the numbers you were fielding. I had a great view of the fight the other night in the TC Garr 3-way. The current match-up has been great.

Will be interested to see how much of a nerf they go for. As AoE is anything with an area effect. Think of how many classes use a sword (which hits multiple targets), by their definition, those are overpowered and should be nerfed as well. No reason that a sword attack (or thief shortbow attack) should hit multiple targets, because according to A-net, this is the only thing wrong with their game.

I went ahead and redownloaded DAoC last night. I was surprised that it was still $15 a month, so $30 if I want my buff bot druid back. But I am seriously considering some Molvik time with the horrible ideas they are coming up with.

I do get the impression that the person in charge of “balance” either plays, or has a kid that plays a thief. Kid gets mad because he can’t avoid AoE to 7k backstab people, so now everyone must suffer.

Every other class gets weapon sets that passively hit everything, sword is a good example, Eng. pistol, etc. We have staff and only the wells.

Basically, they seem fine with hundred blades being a 1 shot ability, and thief 3 shot combo in under 2 secs as fine, but the fact that I dumped 4 marks and 3 wells on 5 people, and got some of them to half health is to kitten overpowered.

From the Q & A:
Q: Do you find any profession to be out of balance like Ele bunker, roamer, thief one shot combo, mesmer portal?
Ele bunker is really strong, on our watchlist
Mesmer portal is giving us problems –giving that tool onto other classes

I love that they completely ignored the thief combo in their response, I doubt that was an oversight.

They will nerf aoe into the ground, make certain classes even more useless, and leave us with kitten in our sandbox.

Smitten.3076:

while opening the door for something lovingly refereed to as the melee assist train of Daoc.

That was another reason I hated Midgard. Sooo many deaths. I may start have nightmares again.

If they nerf aoe, whether it’s the number it can hit, or by reducing the damage, they will have effectively eliminated necro as a class. Cleansing mostly negates the condition damage in WvW (a.k.a zergfest or cullfest), so you really only hurt people who are upleveled or afk. If they want us all to just run minion builds, they need to bring back the bone fiend armies of GW1 (pre-cap), cause the pets SUCK.

I like it, but it should apply to whether or not you have melee weapons equipped. I play staff and d/d, if I enter with staff it stays like it is now, if I enter with d/d up it goes to those. That would be really awesome.

It’s basically what confusion is. You just need a mesmer to follow you around and apply before hitting epidemic. Or play an Asuran for the racial.

This is where I will plug my new server name if/when server merges happen.

Come on A-net, who wouldn’t move to a server named Secret Lair of the Snowmen?

You’re going to find zergs everywhere you go. I am not to fond of them myself, which is why I tend to pick a tower/keep and stand watch/babysit the siege gear and call out movements.

I agree with etrigan above, that your best bet is just find a guild that matches your play time/schedule and run some small mans in WvW. You will often come across everyone else’s idea of “small man” which is 25 people, but you should have fun nonetheless.

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Sweetiepie.9270:

Sea of Sorrows is better.

Gates of Madness makes me think of maniacal clowns throwing acid pies. Sea of Sorrows just makes me think of sad puppies. Look at the sad puppy dog eyes…go ahead, I dare you.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_a_RKnA-5nsI/TLfS8BzbEmI/AAAAAAAAAsI/RQBWDCr-iM8/s1600/sad-puppy.jpg

“Join Sea of Sorrows, the only server that’s so emo that the grass cuts itself”

:D

Ok, I laughed.

Chuggawugga.2348:

If anyone would like to duel, PM me in-game (Chuggawugga).

I will. I’ll be the Asuran necro at the TC BL watergate….on the cannon.

Until they open a server named “Secret Lair of the Snowmen”, I will be forever TC.
We still have openings…right?

lolololol

Most of my gear is pow/vit/cond or pow/vit/tough, I run without food 3k power and I’ll have to check my condition. Sadly, my prec and crit is crap. 21% chance and 9% dmg.

I don’t use pets because they suck horribly. I long for the days of GW1, before the minion cap, standing at the enemy spawn with an army of 20 bone fiends…those were the days.

As for underwater, we do fine. I tested this the other day in TC BL. There is a patrol of Krait that does a big loop around the lake…about 25 if you can tag the ones that just hang out nearby too. You can solo the entire group at once as a necro. Trident 2 and 5 are awesome, and even though the utility skills underwater are meh, plague is awesome.
Grab the whole pile, circle around to get everything, as they draw near F1, than 4, just to get them bunched. Once in, trident 2 than 5 than plague…and just sit there. When plague drops most of them are dead, if you still have more than 10 on you F1 again, rinse and repeat.

Against players, only classes that pose trouble are ranger and mesmer.

So does the word kitten, but someone has decided it should be used in place of every other word that might be offensive. Cats everywhere weep for their children.

But I get your point.

There really isn’t anyway to answer this question. There is no best.

D/D eles and thieves are numerous and do well, but there are a few hard counters to certain class/builds. I run a power/condition necro built solely around making bunker builds die. Depending on the player, d/d eles kind of melt in 1v1 (although I have been crushed by a few as well, rarely is it ever a 1v1 fight though). Thieves tend to hit hard quick, realize I didn’t die on their opening combo, see their health dropping and bail (some come back, some die – or I die, etc).

Guardians, especially tanking builds, do very well. Even my upleveled 52 guardian can survive thieves and eles.

But really, it comes down to what class/build combo is best suited to your play style.

Also, you can look at engineer, if you really just want to “get away”. Go to youtube and search for Nisha the Medicat. He’s kind of funny and his videos are a pretty good indicator of his survivability.

I am stacking both as best I can. Running around 3100 power when I remember my food. My bleeds tick over 100, you can definitely tell who is upleveled or playing a glass cannon build when spamming conditions.

Those numbers seem about average to me after all the playing I’ve done, and watching all the videos I can find and comparing.

The only thing I wish they would add to this is that not only do you have to pay for transfers, but you can not transfer to a server that has an equal population to the one you are on. You must transfer to a server with fewer people (you still get to choose which one). If you are on a “high” server (daily average – not just when the server peaks), you must pick a server that is “medium” or “low”.

My first toon was a thief, played it to 80, started in WvW and decided to roll a necro. This sort of goes back to GW 1 as it was a toon well suited to my play style.

Second toon, necro to 80, no pets – they suck, amazing aoe-crap single target. Settled on staff for main and dual dagger for switch (good single target). Worked great, didn’t have much fun in WvW at this point. Was still learning and zerg surfing.

Third toon, mesmer to 80, yay for portals, actually killing people in 1v1 and surviving engagements. Missed playing the necro for aoe fights (but mostly PvE).

Guardian to 52, Engineer to 40…both in WvW, must have gotten like 50 levels just from capping quaggans and defending garrison. Tired of running into bunker eles and guardians…brb.

Have not switched off of my necro since. Full power/condition stacking, running staff and wells, and corrupt boons is your friend. I go out of my way now to find the one person who is going to wade into us with their 6+ boons (most of which have multiple stacks) to push their front line through ours, hit corrupt (sometimes epidemic after, although I don’t really like it, not as useful, so I don’t play with it often), and watch them melt. You aren’t a killing machine, you don’t hit as hard as a lot of other classes/builds, but you absolutely are invaluable in large group combat. It’s even more satisfying when the boon stacker has a tome up. Nothing breaks a zerg like a downed commander.

Another one, well of power. Great skill that can help out when things get sticky. A lot of it is timing, but with 3100 power, all of those aoe’s, both staff and utility, hit really hard.

Another thing that helps is total health. I have 0 trait pts into vitality and generally have 24.5k health in both weapon sets. 30/30/10/0/0

I will duel anyone who comes alone to the TC Garr. watergate…and, I may even get off of the cannon.

I doubt they will do a retroactive, and I have no idea how they will handle it if they don’t. If you primarily dps (and aoe at that) you are favored in almost every rank system. If you are curing, buffing, healing, etc, you usually get screwed. They can’t even balance out the drops average now, so I don’t have high hopes for a random number that will determine my “rank”.

Badges…I get one for about every 30 players killed. I am usually on siege, cannons and ac’s mostly, and I’m a necro running power and condition on everything with staff and all wells for utility skills. I’m easily hitting tons of players and more than meeting the damage minimum, yet rarely see a drop and when I do it’s a trophy item. So, I really don’t care what they do with the currency. But I can imagine in either case, a lot of people will be kitten off.

Good thing I enjoy standing watch at towers/keeps because the loot is nearly non-existent. Personally, I would like to see simple changes that somewhat make sense.
There is no reason why the aoe cap should be 5 people, as a necro I look forward to this being changed, although I fear is means they will just nerf the kitten out of us (and likely leave everyone else alone – for “balance”).
Having to stand on the edges of walls to hit people below you seems silly.
Make holding structures actually worth it…and not 360 karma every now and again, and only if you found someone to hit with a stick during that 3 minutes.
Change the way waypoints are contested, and maybe even remove swords from the map altogether.

Eh…I’m done rambling.

I used to despise it, but since I am almost exclusively playing my necro again, underwater combat is great. Rangers are annoying to fight underwater, because they just outrun you, and mesmers can be, but as long as you stay on the person and not illusions its ok.

From what I hear, most people hate it though.

My post was mostly with regards to people flock to who is first in a tier. No mention of the new SoR guilds, as I read what had been said, they were already planning on joining, so good timing for them, and hopefully it helps round out SoR’s great play and improves their coverage.

What I was really wondering, which is why I posted what I did, is how long it will take certain BG guilds to jump to another server, who is first in their tier, whether it is T1, 2, 3, etc.

There are a few guilds, that used to be on TC, FA and CD that I’ve seen on BG before the upward move, that bandwagoned (imo) so I posted wondering how long it would be before they moved on.

Sorry, I took a tangent when I read the word bandwagon, guess I derailed the converstaion a ways back.

Yeah, I was wondering how long it will take some of BG’s guilds to bandwagon elsewhere. Was thinking it only takes 1 week of losing before a lot of guilds jump, and when they do, it is always to a server in first place on their tier. And, if paid server changes are coming, kind of puts a time table on the bandwagon.

Could you imagine a siege if rangers could cap one of those Risen Eagles. They would just fly around above the walls crapping on everyone. This would be hilarious.

MattMesa.8401:

Esoteric.5490:

Portals being limited to 5 people would make them worthless, though. AoE does damage or heals which is hugely effective in large engagements. The portal does no damage, it is entirely reliant on teammates who come through it. Without players to go through the portal, it’s a gimmicky escape/movement skill. Portals are still entirely reliant on organized groups.

I think the AoE cap should be raised or gotten rid of entirely. If you want to break the meta of zergs, and give smaller forces the actually ability to use tactics, you take away AoE caps and you make the maps larger. This forces players to split up into smaller battlegroups or they lose objectives because they can’t cover a whole map, even with a waypoint. If there was no AoE cap for damage, heals, or boons, you’d see an entirely different style of play, one where people can’t just mob everywhere because they’d get blown up. You could take the limit off portals because if a server wants to put 40-50 people all in one place, they could be my guest.

I agree 100%. I think taking the cap of AoE’s would make things way more interesting and fun in general. I also think it would add a much larger and useful distinction between classes, and even build choices within classes.

Totally agree. The AoE cap is pointless.

I don’t think the problem is portals or mesmers. The problem is that anyone (mesmer) will run down a hall where I have set all the wells, in a fashion that they have to trigger at least one to get by, and next thing you know there is a portal down, but none of the wells have triggered.

The culling is soo bad, that they have walked through traps and wells without setting them off, because the game hasn’t bothered to have it all take place at the same time.

There really is no reason why every class shouldn’t get a passive 25% run speed signet.
It’s kind of silly not to.

Yeah, the ability lag is getting a little ridiculous. Had a great 3 way going in TC Garrison last night, right before SoR took it. Someone put an AC on the side of the roof between 2nd and 3rd floor, so I had the entire fight to just rain arrows on people without being attacked till it was over. Sad thing was, it would take 10-15 seconds just to get an attack off. Which, kind of negates the whole point of the arrow cart. Was great watching SBI try to hold the 3rd floor after I died. Great fun guys, let’s keep at it.

Next they will add in ML abilities, the Sojourner ML9 and 10 were awesome. Well, I doubt it, but they were nice.

I’ve hit groups both on the other side of a door and in open field, where a group of 25+ was bunched close together…I have NEVER seen a catapult hit more than 5 people. And yes, there was definitely more than 5 people in range to take damage.

One guild comes to mind with regards to killing your own teammates. I won’t name them, but I can picture that little Asura setting off the traps in EB JP just to kill the lowbies from our own server trying to get to the top. Sadly, I did laugh a couple times.

I’m not worried about forum posts, I’m wondering where they all went this week in WvW. This week I have seen fewer players on average everywhere, but especially in BL’s.
There are a ton of names that I see everyday, but probably 2x that I used to see regularly in T3, that this week are missing.

I’m hoping it’s just vacation or flu and not a sign that people have given up hope for the Toast.

I have spent most of my time recently in WvW, where getting downed is no surprise, neither is death. But I noticed after several fights where I was never downed, I would get back on a wall and had no stacks (I use corruption).

I’ve been trying to duplicate it, but it doesn’t seem consistent. I have done about 10 test runs so far, with stacks ranging from 5 to 25, and the only time the stacks just vanish without being downed or killed, is when I come out of Plague. If I switch to my offset (dual daggers) and come back my stacks stay.

Has anyone else seen this happen?

My wife and I both play, she about an hour or two avg. per day, where I avg. sadly about 6-8 hours a day (would be more but work and such…lol) If you exclude the exotics gotten from zone completions and the karka chest, I have gotten 5 exotics (only 1 lvl 80) in the nearly 1000 hours I have logged. The lvl 80 exotic was in Eternal Battleground off a dredge and I about crapped myself. My wife has gotten 1. Same could be said of rares for the most part, as I get maybe one every second or third week, usually from a fractal. I get tons of trophies and crafting mats have increased some, but the drops are horrid.

spartanx.1364:

@Coldviper we did actually http://www.youtube.com/user/PainTrainChooGuild

WvW reset night.
I apologize in advance for the cheezy transitions and poor music choice. My first video ever hehe. Also I accidentally through in 2 Vale scenes.

Thanks soo much for posting that video. That is awesome. That was a great fight. I’m the lvl 28 Charr Eng. who pops into the screen at 1:18…and dies soon after. I had to send this one to the wife. Soo much fun.

Thought of 3 simple things that would help some.

1. When you transfer maps (so from EB or a borderland to another) you come out the other side with 0 supply. No reason any team should be able to, for example, drain supply from Lowlands in EB at 15 carry and bring it to a borderland to instantly dump tons of siege where they haven’t been and have no supply already.

2. Goes with 1 really. If you go to Lion’s Arch, you have 0 supply when returning. So, anytime you go somewhere other than the borderland you are already in, your supply goes away.

3. Matches start with camps at 0 supply. Since 1 and 2 will apply, the match won’t start with any server dropping 4 golems on anothers garrison 1 minute into the match. There is no reason for the way it is now really. You need to get on a map, set up supply lines and feed your keeps and supply. Until they make it so you can just run from one borderland to another, the above would be a welcome change (in my opinion).

This is probably the biggest problem with WvW atm. I started dropping wells, traps you name it to hit the invisible mobs so that when they go off I would at least know “something” is coming. Problem is, that the invisble mobs go right past them without setting them off, because the game doesn’t register everything that is going on. Later, after I have been trampled, and no one is around, they might go off.

I don’t anticipate that even with changes the tiers will ever balance out. The free server transfers pretty much ruled out that there would ever be stable (balanced) long-term match ups in any tier. Yes, there are some guilds/players that will remain loyal to the server they are on (e.g. I have been on TC since the first beta and will always be), but there are too many players who will transfer at the first sign of greener grass elsewhere.

I saw several guilds last night that were on FA just 2 weeks ago and on TC 4-6 weeks ago, who are now on BG. The funny thing is, the servers that are winning their tier, don’t even need to recruit, because people would rather win than lose (kind of human nature I guess – not to mention getting 100% map completion to get the gifts for legendaries).

I hope that Feb. is a complete redoing of the tier ranking structure, and that they get rid of the server transfer. Sadly, I wish we had a real persistent WvW zone, that was not server based (old frontier style). I won’t hold my breath, but I can always dream.

I don’t imagine the puzzles will change much in the future. The biggest trouble I see with them (besides being timed), is that other toons block vision upping the difficulty, and anyone with slow camera turn speed or that keyboard turns will be horrified by them (assumption, I know). Fortunately, the JP’s are one of my strong points. Took me about 3 hours to get Halloween done (mostly bad timing, my keyboard is sticking, and large toons blocking my poor little asuras). Christmas took about 30 minutes, as the quaggan path sucked and I kept getting it.

Thank you so much for this. I tried an engineer early after release and felt I was just too squishy. Tried again this past week (after reading this) and wow, what a difference. I’m only lvl 22, and upleveled for WvW, but it was awesome.

Just cruised through the zerg pouring out of Bay last night, and back to where some friendlies were still alive. Was too much fun.

The solo vid made me laugh. Definitely going to be working on this toon some more.

Thanks. :-)

1. Auto-loot – meaning, it just goes straight in my bags, not just nearby on the ground. I don’t have time to pick up loot half the time, and keep repairs/upgrades cost money.

2. Disable breakout events for the team in first place in a tier. Why, when a server is up by the combined point total of the other 2 servers do they need it?

3. Give siege weight…yes like DAoC. There is no reason that one person should be able to carry and deploy that much siege. Maybe add a trait line with up to 5 pts available, that can increase how much total siege you can carry. And yes, I am one of those people running around with like 10-50 of each item in my bag. In doing so, also give us a place in our storage vault to store our extra blueprints, since we won’t be running around with all of it. This makes choice of siege and placement that much more important.

Go Hibs…wait, I mean…

You can’t really laugh when 30 guys get 3 breakout events in 30 minutes. Wait…that’s too many 3’s. LOL I guess. That’s some pretty heavy strategizing there.

Hell, yesterday I ran up to and died on the SoR treb at Astral just so there would be a blue dot on the map for the mortar to aim for. Although, forced respawn, I am not opposed to. Would just need to be a timer. You have 5-10 seconds to res somewhere by choice, or we will be able to force respawn your to you entry spawn.

Having a thief, mesmer and necro (all 80), I understand the issue, but tend to fall back to DAoC as a reference for everything. Can’t recall being one shot, although close, in this game, but can think of many occasions it happened (from a real perma-stealth toon – in this case mostly Nightblades in DAoC).

I don’t wait for toons to render as I am constantly spamming the closest enemy button, and attacking it. I have just as much trouble with (if not more) with the zerg rendering than thieves alone. At least with the thief, I hit closest target and have a red circle on the ground to attack. With the non-rendering zerg, hit closest target (to see how far the wave has pushed in) and you still have a guy 1200 away with 10 guys 5 away killing you.

For those asura getting beat down by thieves. Take pain inverter, hit it first, than heal, laugh etc.

I look forward to being killed by most of you.

Puru.4217:

There’s a easy way to fix the economy.

1)Buy an item from the tp
2)It’s account bound
3)Bye bye traders, you won’t be missed.

Should’ve happened at release though, along with the anti bot campaign.

This should definitely be the case. Item is gotten as a drop and can be sold on the trading post. If you buy it, it becomes account bound. No reason a few people should be able to buy gold from the farmers, turn around and buy up mats/items on the auction house just to screw over the economy. Yes, I get that it’s like the real world, and we see how well that is going don’t we?