Guild Wars 2

That’s truly endearing to hear. Congratulations to both of you!

Jemmi.6058:

Dagger main hand and spam death blossom.

Or sword/dagger main hand and maintain Black Powder. Or do what Snow did and go with the Short Bow. Plenty of options available!

I will admit that my warrior does seem hardier and more lethal than my thief, but she just doesn’t have the je nais se quois of running P/D in PvE.

Karizee.8076:

Most likely a 24 hour special for the fan sites. I’m sure it will be all over the official forums tomorrow

True, but how much could it hurt to throw up an official post saying ‘hey, look at what our fan sites are saying’?

That said… QUAGGAN GUILD RUSH!

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Calae.1738:

Journalists pay good money for information. Arenanet really needs the cash.

What makes you say that?

You can’t make proclamations about how the game is doomed because you’re not doing what I want you to do and also stand by the claim the game is actually succeeding.

killcannon.2576:

Giving scoops is fine. But there is no reason why the GW2 players should have to search for the info. The forums are one of the easiest ways the GW2 dev community has to communicate with it’s players, and there is no reason why the forum mods or community managers can not link pertinent sites and interviews in the News section of the forums.

Players ask why the devs don’t communicate more with the forums, and are told time and again that they don’t have the time to. But yet we see constant interviews, feeds, news stories appear on other sites that the devs have spent hours on. I’m not sure if anyone is asking for exclusivity for the forums, but keeping them in the loop isn’t too much to ask imo. Forgoing your official forums for face time on other sites does more to alienate people than it does to bring a community together.

The one thing that does disappoint me is that it seems that community management is rather lacking on the boards. Having devs pop in threads unannounced is pretty awesome, but it wouldn’t hurt to have dedicated CMs waving the pom-poms a little more. I checked the Announcements forum and there wasn’t even a link back to the IGN or Massively articles, I know other game communities where pretty much every favorable article got a link and its own post.

I mean, sure, there’s Twitter and Reddit, but it seems a little self-defeating not to use all the tools at your disposal.

Kaiza.4618:

I get it that ANet needs to make some cash on Gem sales, I really do but if the common player like myself or a new player is unable to even buy bag or bank slots for a reasonable value with what he/she earns, this game is going to die a quick death Imo.

I’ve only been playing the game solid for a month or so myself. Thanks to the high rate of gold for gems, a couple days back I was able to cash in 100 gems and score a full Tier 1 cultural set for my main. Now he’s rocking the Sylvari pimp coat. If the rate stays high today, I’ll cash in another 100 gems so I can shore up the crafting materials he’ll need to make his level 40 gear. I thank everyone glutting the market with their excess gold, its coming in handy for some of us up and coming crafters.

And new players having to spend cash for bank and alt slots is a bad thing? We already paid $40 plus to get in the door, and its not like we’re already paying $15 a month. Its a cash shop, not a grind shop.

Reikou.7068:

Anyone who performs worse than the top 50% of the population is a bad player by definition of being sub-par.

The reasons why they perform worse than 50% of the population is irrelevant, and the game doesn’t recognize this anyway. Only the fact that they don’t perform up to par.

Its also nice to know that by your own definition there’ll always be a segment of the gaming population that is ‘sub-par’.

To me the definition of ‘shallow’ combat is “Press rotation, receive loot.” Throwing a challenge every now and then to break me out of my comfort zone – and giving me the tools to break out of said comfort zone – really is something refreshing to see out of an MMO.

Sovta.4719:

It’s funny cause you fanboys seem to play this game only on forums

As opposed to all the ‘anti-fanboys’ who claim the game sucks and say they don’t play it yet show up in thread after thread after thread.

Starbird.4029:

If this game is designed around all classes being expected to switch weapon sets constantly, why can my guardian just roflstomp through everything with a greatsword or x + shield while my thief has to either juggle weapon slots to be close to similar in terms of power?

Because you can roflstomp with Sword + Pistol or Dagger + Pistol.

If it’s a matter of ‘thieves are just designed to be harder’ than I go back to my Balance 101 statement.

Its not harder, its a different playstyle. A class with less HP, less armor, and more trickery skills isn’t the class to look for if you just want to facestomp mobs. And even then, you can still do stand-up fighting as Sword + Pistol.

P/P is not viable for leveling. Possible =/= viable. I still don’t get why you don’t think it should be buffed.

Because it’ll never get the AoE you’re looking for. And what sort of buff? Making Unload as loltastic as 100 Blades? If you thought the cries of ‘OP’ were loud enough on the PvP boards now…

I’m not talking about signet/hide in shadows/weapon skills here. I’m talking about traits and utility stuff.

You mentioned heal, so I mentioned the best heal you could ask for. I’m remiss to think of any other low-rank utilities that provide heals.

As for utilities, I mentioned Caltrops, Roll For Initiative, and Blinding Powder. For traits go 10 in Deadly Arts and now your steals damage and poison – or get Pistol Mastery for 10% more damage. Go 10 in Critical Strikes and convert some of your precision into vitality. Go 10 in Trickery and get a free bevy of boons with every steal. I’m pretty sure there are more veteran thieves who can point out even better traits to pick up. But at the early levels, traits don’t mean much for any class, really.

Coldtart.4785:

P/P is not for single target because SB does that better while also being aoe.

Maybe its just me, but it looks easier to pull one at a time with P/P than with Ricochet.

Starbird.4029:

But okay, let me bounce this back to you.

What would the disadvantage be to letting key self healing and surviveability traits/skills unlock a little earlier for thieves?

You start with Hide In Shadows, that’s a heal, a regen, and a condition remover all in one. Its the best heal you have. One skill point gets you Blinding Powder for instant blindness and stealth. Another skill point and you have Roll For Initiative for an instant get out of melee power. Eight skill points and you have Caltrops, which is your AoE equalizer.

What would the disadvantage be to making key aoe abilities available earlier for certain classes?

I already mentioned Caltrops, but how hard can it be to plink around Shaemoor to unlock all your weapon skills?

What would the disadvantage be to buffing P/P, and other poorly designed sets?

I think this is where the problem is, so don’t take it as ‘L2P’. Take it as ditching WoW-instilled notions of MMO combat at the login prompt. Here weapons were not designed to be one size fits all. P/ kitten le-target ranged. Short bow is for AoE ranged. Swords are for AoE melee, dagger main hand is for single target melee, pistols are defensive offhands, daggers are more offensive offhands.

You can level as P/P, you’re just going to have a hard time of it. Black Powder is the best mitigation a thief has against most anything, however using it at range means following up with Vital Shot or hoping Unload or your auto-attack procs the finisher. You’ll be eating through initiative like mad to blind one ranged target at a time. If you really do want to stick with dual pistols, then I recommend either S/P or short bow for your second weapon set.

I run D/P and S/P myself, one for tearing through single targets and the other for when I’m expecting more. Use Black Powder liberally, toss out a Hide In Shadows, Shadow Refuge, or Caltrops as needed, and you can pretty much tank your way through a lot of leveling content. And frankly firing off Black Powder with a blade in the air is as badkitten as Unload.

Coldtart.4785:

I think this thread is just full of thief haters. Give me one good reason why Thief P/P should be worse in every possible way than every other weapon set for every other class.

Mesmer Scepter / Anything just had a good laugh.

clay.7849:

It’s not that outrageous, you just think it is because you don’t like it.

Saying a game is losing players on that game’s own forum without any facts backing it up isn’t outrageous? Prove it.

Aeonblade.8709:

Forum PvP 101? I think we could make some money of courses on it here in the GW2 forums.

To be honest, just reading for a couple weeks should give them all the experience they need.

RebelYell.7132:

How’s that the “victim card”? This is a forum, not a court of law that demands objective evidence of a claim. If it were, it would be a pretty unjust court, as the burden of proof always seems to be on the non-fanboys.

See, we’ve even had a display of Forum PvP 102: Claim there’s no victim card, then play one of your own in the very same paragraph.

clay.7849:

I don’t need to prove anything. It is MY OPINION that there is a declining player base. Nothing I stated was intended to be stated as fact – just opinion.

Step 1: Make an outrageous claim without any verifiable facts.
Step 2: Get called on for making said outrageous claim.
Step 3: Play the victim card about how you’re merely stating an opinion.

‘Grind’ used to be plowing through repetitive content to unlock new content, as in Asian MMOs and a certain World in days of yore. Now I’ve noticed that there are those trying to redefine ‘grind’ as ‘not getting optional shinies as fast as I want them.’ Its a recurring trend I’m seeing all over.

garyoak.7284:

What can I do differently?

To start you have Caithe and Tiachren riding shotgun against four courtiers and… you abandoned them and tried pulling in the opposite direction. You tried alternating between long wind-up shots and random uses of mace/shield taking on trash mobs one on one and, uh, well…

In that situation, I would’ve loaded up Axe/Shield, let Caithe/Tiachren draw aggro for a moment, then swoop in and start hacking. The AI isn’t smart, but it can still be useful. Trash mobs in large numbers is bad news, but they’re easy to overcome as long as you wipe them out quickly. Axe is great for that, it has a nice wide swing, mixing up Axe 3 never hurts, and you still have your shield. Shield blocks are kinda useless, however, unless you can take advantage of pairing the block with a Regen.

Its also been a while since I dusted off my warrior, but I’m pretty sure Banner of Strength is a tier 1 utility. Load it to slot 7 and drop at the first sign of trouble. It’ll cover your partners in crime as well.

… Man, now I want to roll up a Sylvari warrior and give this one a shot.

I switched to S/P for leveling. Its great for taking out the trash and you look downright kitten blasting away with Black Powder while your sword’s raised.

Yes, yes it is.

Jemmi.6058:

Personally, I think that they were planning on an expansion, and still are. However, I think they did not give any details and continuously say they are not working on it, so that they can delay it as long as they need/want without ‘looking bad’. I also think that the playerbase is increasing, I believe I read that somewhere.

It was Korean analysts that were predicting an expansion this year and Arenanet that said ‘Uh, no.’ So I think you’re more on the money.

Oh jeez, its this thread again.

Nick.6972:

Have you ever wondered why it’s called HOLY TRINITY?
Has anyone ever tried reinventing a wheel?

640k of RAM ought to be enough for anyone!

Matt.3284:

I know I’ve personally slain quite a few skritt who wanted nothing more than to stare at something shiny. I’m certainly a villain to the skritt populace.

And then you do the Skrittsburg hearts and events and now you’re a skritt hero!

Morrigan.2809:

The fact that sometimes you are so very glad to see another player and you think " not this day" and just proceed who wipe over whatever tried to chew your face off a moment before..

Or you’re seeing someone getting their face chewed off and think “not this day” when you come flying in for the assist.

RebelYell.7132:

There are many reasons to be subjectively contented with a subpar profession. Maybe you have godlike reaction times, so that you never get downed when others do. Maybe you have four friends willing to carry you through anything. Maybe you’re the one that’s always happy to use a bundle item required for an encounter instead of using the skills you rolled that profession for.

And maybe they and their friends are actually content with how their class performs.

clay.7849:

He has reached level 80 fanboy.

And as often as you follow him around the forum, some of us are inclined to think you’ve reached level 80 hater with Ascended and Legendary.

Teracide.5137:

It’s true that there’s only about 15-20 people in the thread acknowledging the imbalance of the classes, but there’s only about 2 people (you included) in here saying that everything is fine. That test-sample alone should at least hint something to you.

Yes, it says you’re using a test sample of the Complaint Line Open Mic.

Vayne.8563:

You guys are all very smart, I’m sure of that. But that doesn’t mean you have a monopoly on an opinion or that you know what’s best for the game. If I was going to put money on Anet’s way or your way…I’d probably bet on Anet.

I’d probably bet on metrics myself. Lacking personal access to that, its in Anet we trust.

Khai.6435:

“It’s costing me money if only get in 5 runs in an hour vice 6.” Well, that is the fault of the designers making you run the same dungeon 1000 times to get … a 1% ring upgrade… not the ranger and his pet.

Its the devs fault for not catering to just those who most efficiently minmax?

There will always be a most efficient FOTM path to gaining loot. This is almost as ironclad a law of MMOs as there can be. Players will theorycraft, they’ll test, they’ll run all the dungeons, and soon the conventional wisdom forms that running certain setups will get you the gold faster. And then comes everyone who wants their quick route to the best stuff.

You want your gold in 5 runs instead of 6? Roll a zerk warrior. Then switch to the new FOTM when a quicker path opens. Its how its always been done, and how it always will be done for the foreseeable future.

Aaaaaaaaaand we’re back!

Same here as well, the game crashed just as I had finished my new engy’s tutorial and I haven’t been able to log back in.

Chaba.5410:

“I make a pretty good team.” sounds so arrogant. Cracks me up every time.

Rather fitting when you’re a nightbloom too. XD

Lockboxes are such a disaster that almost every game this side of Warcraft has them in some form or another.

garyoak.7284:

I finally killed Renvari after reading all of your advice! I even gained a level from repeatedly killing so many Nightmare Courtiers so I’m a level 9 warrior now!

The problem now is that I exited to desktop when I came to deciding between protecting the village or continuing to rescue Ysvelta. Now it looks like I have to kill the Nightmare Court and Renvari all over again!

Is there a way I can avoid having to do it all over again?

Ah, this mission is the one I thought it was. It was difficult the first time around for myself, I didn’t realize Renvari would be invulnerable until I finished mopping up his minions. And by dying and going back to the start, I wound up with said minions waiting for me at the front door. That was fun.

If you have to restart – ow – I’d recommend starting by pulling them one or two at a time.

I took a look at the daily options today and it didn’t look too easy for me to pick up my five. I decided not to bother and I went about my merry way leveling up my thief.

I hit the daily kill one easily. Got the gathering one not too long after. Got the condition removal one, hooray for Hide In Shadows. By the time I’m done running around stabbing bandits for the evening, I hit a stretch of river full of skelks, hylek, and salmon. A few extra minutes swimming up and down and there’s the aquatic and ambients. Bam, I’ve got my daily just as I’m ready to call it a day.

And that, IMO, is the neat thing about Dailies. I never feel like I have to horribly go out of my way to complete them. Now, whether this will change once I’ve finished my primary goal of getting 100% map completion and start settling into other in-game pursuits, I can’t say. Right now, though, it does fit a nice balance with my leveling progress.

ScottBroChill.3254:

the term “equally skilled” is hypothetical in most cases because yes, it’s nearly impossible to have. I’m just saying that, that shouldn’t be an excuse.

Its not an excuse. You’re basing your argument entirely on your hypothetical. You want to talk about power creep and you have numbers, that’s a good start. Now show us examples in game.

And if you take it personally when I say people who ignore facts and actually numbers in the game are ignorant, than yes I believe that to be true. That is exactly what ignorant means.

Yes, I do tend to take it personally when you lob around something insulting like calling people ignorant. We’re human beings here, not NPCs.

ScottBroChill.3254:

Whether your opinion is that power creep doesn’t bother you or it does, it’s still there. It’s factual that equally skilled players, the one with ascending gear will have the upper hand over someone with exotics. You can’t deny facts, it just seems plain ignorant to me.

Because where you keep repeating ‘equally skilled players’, I have yet to see anything here that shows that the difference between Legendary, Ascended, and Exotic covers the potential variance in skill of the player behind the keyboard. I can arm myself with a baseball bat and give Bear Grylls a stick and I’m pretty sure he’s still gonna beat me silly. Likewise I can grind my way to Ascended, but there’s probably kids half my age in exotics who could pwn me in a New York minute.

And using words like ‘ignorant’ isn’t a good way to get people to join your cause. Just sayin’.

ScottBroChill.3254:

In this game it’s like they can’t decide between hardcore or casual, and mixing the two usually won’t work. You can’t play casually and be on par with everyone else.

…

And this is my opinion so I wish others wouldn’t tell me I’m applying to everyone and everything. I feel like people are just accepting it because they don’t see a way it could be improved. I know it could be way better with such simple things, that’ why i get a little kitten about it.

The problem is that by ‘simple things’ it sounds like sacrificing hardcores in favor of casuals. That’s kind of a bad idea there, honestly.

There will be a segment of the populace who actively want to grind for better gear. There will be a segment of the populace who actively do not want to grind for better gear. Arenanet tries to thread the needle by giving a grind for better gear without making the better gear necessary for everything but the high level grind content. No system is, however, perfect, for there are those who will still complain because someone with more time still has better gear than they do. C’est la vie.

My guardian is straight Male #1, which is OK. He’s very Arthurian. For my thief, I went with Male #8, made the mouth and lips smaller, made the eyes bigger, and went with a dark red skin to off-set his green face leaves. He has the perfect look of youthful wide-eyed wonder.

lupercaleb.6041:

this thread is essentially a petition to add pointed ears for humans

In that case, I’m reserving the name ‘Spock’ right now.

Concerned OP is very concerned.

Dante.1508:

Are people so blind…

Sylvari = Guildwars 2 Elves

Pointy ears – Check
Slender Appearance – Check
Tree hugging plant lovers – Check

Sylvari = Good Elves
Nightmare Court = Drow/Dark Elves

Just because they are ugly as sin and are vegetables doesn’t hide the fact that they are still Elves…

OK, so what’s the elven counterpart to the Dream? The Pale Tree? Ronan and Ventari? The Wyld Hunt? The sylvari are Arthurian-inspired, what’s Arthurian about elves?

And, frankly, my sylvari are better looking than almost all of my other alts, save the asuran with the hair buns.

legion.7518:

Charr are pretty much ripped straight from the Tauren of WoW. And I’m pretty sure they are one of the more unpopular races in that game. Not sure why a developer would choose to make that a playable race. A better alternative would have been Ogres. Again, you want more people to play your game then give them cool races that they want to be. Who wants to be a cow?

Congratulations on making sure nobody here takes you seriously ever again.

Let’s ask the girl from the Old El Paso commercials. “Why not both?”

Right now, I’m just a Lazy leveling mesmer.

Rodantho.6890:

Uruz Six.6594:

Rodantho.6890:

P.S. I prefear to pay a monthly fee and have an epic gaming experience like World of Warcraft, than play for free and get bored in a month.

If we’re just too casual for you, well… bye.

You are leaving? Bye, I won’t miss you

btw, a monthly fee is both beneficial for company and players. They get more profit, we get more content and this is undisputed.

I’m sorry, I already stopped taking you seriously already. Enjoy ranting “Stop Having Fun!” at clouds, I’ll be busily enjoying the game.

Rodantho.6890:

P.S. I prefear to pay a monthly fee and have an epic gaming experience like World of Warcraft, than play for free and get bored in a month.

If we’re just too casual for you, well… bye.

RedSpectrum.1975:

I will admit, I was scepticle of an entire server RP’ing. I thought people were exaggerating……..my god was I wrong. Bravo to you guys, bravo.

Coming from CoX’s RP server, I’m a little used to it. It is nice to walk into the hunting lodge or somesuch and find people there RPing away. All I need now is just to build up my courage to join in!

Karizee.8076:

In GW2 you can do this:

http://i.imgur.com/dvC9gfG.jpg

Now if they were doing a more henshin pose, that would have been a complete win.

prodigy.1023:

Ultimately this translates into tedious and unforgiving PvE gameplay. Kiting fast moving mobs? Welcome to bow GTAoE spam where TTK is eternity. A split second late with dodge? That’ll cost you 80% of your HP, sorry. Wanna play melee? Oops, you have no defensive moves. And so further, and so on.

I have no defensive moves? Let’s see, my D/D is not even level 30 yet and I have a team stealth utility, a heal ’n stealth, an attack ’n stealth, a throw ’n slow, a bleed ’n slow, a bleed ’n evade, and my standard dodges. Hell, two Death Blossoms, a Caltrops, and a stealth, and I can just stand there and watch centaurs bleed to death. I also have P/P in my secondary with a blind and a slow for kiting if I really want to, or I could switch to S/P and have my black pistol and the blind in auto attack.

L2P is too trite, so I’ll put it this way instead: Know your class. Know your skills. Know how your skills interact with how the enemies act and react. This isn’t last decade’s MMO, you’re going to have to do more to stay alive than just hiking up your stats, setting your rotation, and avoiding red circles.