Guild Wars 2

That’s so pretty.

WvW Invisibility Fix
There are only a couple ways ArenaNet will be able to fix this:
1. Increase the rate at which players get updates to armor colors, so you can see that the enemy Charr Elementalist you are fighting has green and pink colored armor. This will increase the lag, as the server has to send out all that data more often to more players in the same area. Cool, now you see the dead Charr Elementalist with green and pink armor. But now you are rubberbanding, your skills take 3-4 seconds to cast, and the game becomes unplayable in many situations.

2. Remove enemy dye colors completely. Only send position, weapon, and race. Standardize all armor to the PvP set. Cool, now you see every player standardized in a way. The dyes have no meaning, and your guild emblem on your backpack is never seen by the enemy. Your choice of having no hat or shoulder armor visible? Not important anymore, as the enemy sees the fully armored you. In other words, it would work, but it would break the customization for WvW. Most people like knowing that their pink and green armor is seen by the enemy. But at least you would see all the enemies, because it wouldn’t matter their customization; that data would never need to be sent, and thus latency wouldn’t be affected.

3. Show nametags along with the location information. Saving the best for last. If people can at least see name tags, they can still play and be cautious of the incoming zerg. It does not require any major code overhaul, as the nametag can be defaulted in with the position code which is working perfect. Tie the nametag to the position, and you can at least see there’s 100 enemy out there, rather than seeing nothing except all the particle effects. The downside is that, well, it is not a fix, but a bandaid to the problem which is latency/lag, and rendering.

I love culling! Some games only have 32 people per map as a standard. Battlefield has 64 on some massive high end servers (and maybe more but, still mostly laggy). The whole idea is genius. It is the only way to keep the player customization meaningful while maintaining a lag-free play environment. It works flawlessly in all but the largest fights, where granted is where seeing the enemy can matter a lot, but where more than likely it also doesn’t matter at all. It does suck to get run over by an invisible zerg. I have fallen prey to this as well once, going to the center island and finding there were 50 enemy standing there. Insta-death. But I had no lag going to the island, had no frame-rate drop due to going to the island, and had no issues seeing all the particle effects exploding my character.

y u no visible? Because it makes the game smooth and always playable. Run a smaller group and enjoy it, or run in a zerg and sometimes get invisible enemy players. Either way, no one is complaining about lag, and that’s a step in the right direction for game design.

WvW Invisibility and Why

Reason #1:
GW2 has a ‘culling’ system which does not load every single character at the same time as it comes into range. This stabilizes client-side performance. This specific method does not affect server performance.

Reason #2:
GW2 culling affects the client showing the enemy/friendly players. It only renders the full enemy player after it loads the armor and specific dye colors and weapon the enemy has. Compared to a game which sends location and armor/weapon type, GW2 sends a lot more information between clients; mainly armor, and the 3-4 colors on each piece of armor, a backpack maybe, and a guild emblem. You don’t see the player, but can target him easily, because the location is always sent and you can always target the player, but until you get info on his fancy armor, you do not render him. This specific method of sending data in small packets and only rendering characters who you have received full information on affects server performance as it does not have to flood you with data during large fights to give you information regarding the pink colored armor of the Elementalist who just died.

Reason #3:
The last patch increased the amount of culling to combat some of the lag. A lot of people on HoD/JQ/SBI last week ran into lots of lag. The whole culling thing is to reduce lag. For the few who don’t know, lag is the time between sending data to and from a server, i.e. getting information about what is going on around you, NOT frames per second, or FPS, which is how much money you make IRL which is converted into good computer components! As we had major lag spikes, which makes the game actually unplayable instead of playable but, eh I can’t see the zerg, not that it matters because I can only range-attack at this point, and I’m not useful in many other ways otherwise, they upped the culling to send in player armor dyes slower. This fixed the lag and this week has been smooth as butter. One thing no one can complain about is the lag. There is no lag 99% of the time now. You have 50 vs. 50 players and, although sometimes a lot of them don’t load their character graphic, you are not rubberbanding around the map, and anyone you are fighting, visible or invisible, is not rubberbanding. It’s smooth gameplay. Compare to any other MMO large scale battle where people warp all over the place and you will see this is a huge achievement which steps back to old games where position matters most not the armor color. Remember, you see all enemy positions, if not their fancy armor color. You can target them all just fine, you just don’t see the graphic, because the server is working some amazing networking code to make sure you at least get 100% of player position if not 100% of their armor color.

JQ doesn’t get demoralized. We’re just playing for fun, but playing hard for fun. And playing to win, even if we don’t win. Attitude is everything. ET has some of it. HoD lost it all because one guy and a guild decided to give up in WvW.

It does happen. A Thief walking on enemy Caltrops, you can see the blood. Not sure about other stuff because the graphics are so splashy, but it does show on some things. Would be a good set of videos to show. Just hard to see when your character is right in front of the action.

If you are all Power/Precision/Critical% gear you will get stomped by not only Thieves but any player who catches you. Not sure the complaint really. You are trading off survival for more damage. If someone is spec’d the same way and catches you, you get owned, and if you catch them, they get owned. It’s a coin toss, and although that Thief got you this time, I’m sure he died to a tanky Guardian 5 minutes later.

Get Power/Toughness/Vitality gear. I post about this all the time. I wreck groups of players using this. You have to find what works with that gear, but I guarantee something does work. I’ve seen tanky Guardians dish out more damage over time than their bursty counterparts because they don’t die as fast = more damage output. Wrap your head around this! I am not sure why I should give away this super obvious secret but, PvP gear has a certain stat combo for a reason!

Just a reminder; 45 cooldown 1.5 second stun that does not take up any utility/survival slots. Meaning your build does not change by selecting this Elite over any other ability, whereas some classes, for example Mesmer, loses out on Mass Invis for the Moa. Meaning, a stealth build Mesmer loses out by going Moa. We don’t lose -anything- by going with Basilisk.

Dagger Storm is a ‘hope this does lots of damage!’ skill. It’s not necessary in any fight, it’s just fun. It’s not critical, and I don’t know of a fight I just had to have that skill available at that time.

Thieves Guild is a ‘lol you thought you could solo me!’ skill. It’s not needed to down that warrior who has a hard on for your death, but it’s tons of fun popping it in stealth and seeing him get wtfpwned by the confusion, blind, scorpion wire, and so on. It is more critical than Dagger Storm as it makes a small group much more effective at whatever they are doing by spreading DPS and tanking some damage over the spawned Thieves, but it’s not a critical gameplay choice. Fun, and useful, but you’re probably going to do OK without them in most situations. Not to mention 4 minute cooldown.

So, back to Basilisk:
1. You’re sticking on a <class> melee autoattacking or otherwise doing damage – even Short Bow… you see his arm go up and some light – he’s casting his heal which takes a few seconds to cast! Pop Basilisk Venom and stick on the guy → your next hit interrupts his heal at the perfect last second timing.
2. Your friend goes down to a group, and you see a warrior about to stomp him; he buys time by using his knockdown/teleport/other mechanic, but you’re not close enough. You run over to rez him, pop Basilisk and melee the guy who is now mid-cast on his stomp, interrupting him and going right for the rez to get your friend up.
3. You see an <AOE class> casting a channeled spell. Denied.
4. Someone is running away. Denied.
5. Encounter a good enemy player; deny his rotation and/or pre-planned attack with a 1.5 second stun.

I could go on, but it is much more useful, and up much more often, than the other Elites. It’s just people like Dagger Storm and Thieves Guild for the gimmicky times you get to use them. It’s effort and timing and perfection of your gameplay that will make Basilisk Venom more useful. This is the reason I am going to begin using it exclusively. Sure, I’ll switch to Dagger Storm when I’m about to go attack a zerg, or Thieves Guild if my group is only 2 people (maybe, debatable actually), but it makes sense that if you want to improve gameplay by either setting up sick backstabs or by utilizing it’s stun and interrupt ability without losing any utility/survivability, it’s just the way to go.

Although I’m not actively seeking a Legendary, that would change if it gave a custom stomp/finisher in WvW……

Ah what the heck, I’ll just do it anyway.

You move slower in Stealth, and slow due to combat, while they may have Swiftness. Try using Signet of Shadows, it helps a bit but still the movement difference is pretty noticeable and you have to adjust. It basically means using a Dancing Dagger before going in for the C&D / Backstab.

That, or you could be stepping through your enemy, or you have Melee Assist still turned on in the options – turn it off, and be in the sweet spot ‘inside’ the enemy’s collision range.

Good write up. Basilisk is now only useful if you pre-meditate someone’s heal at a critical moment, and time it perfectly, and in which case, it kind of didn’t matter anyway. Maybe some other minor uses. It gives us a stun though, and I can keep all my main utility survival skills. So the fact that Dagger Storm and Thieves Guild are not critical component skills in any fight, while your utility skills are, means that the stun is actually useful.

I plan to use Basilisk Venom now. I know that’s weird and contrary to the way things are going, but I see Dagger Storm and Thieves Guild as being good in certain circumstances, where a key stun on someone who is about to stomp a teammate is more important to be at this time.

I think you can’t compare; one is used to stun, to interrupt and deny the enemy his intended action. Immobilize is useful for stopping a fleeing enemy, or to keep someone put to apply more damage, but does not prevent their heal, condition removal, or usage of their own Elite skill to turn the tide of the fight.

When people get better and learn all the class animations, they will probably use Basilisk Venom more, because shutting down that enemy’s casting of Thieves Guild or their heal skill is more important – and available more often – than other Elite skills.

Toughness does indeed cut it, it is awesome, and the best players will learn how to stack it and still do damage. Too many threads downing it’s effectiveness, but I can tell you as a Thief who plays for 6-8 hours a night, that death is not something I experience often. Skill is a factor, but I couldn’t do it without making all those attacks do so much less damage overall, and not being a target dummy to burst spec enemy players.

Power/Toughness/Vitality is PvP gear for a reason, and you still hit like a truck if done right.

Yeah glad you got it fixed; rebind those keys to IJKL or OKL; and enjoy the extra key real estate. Bind skills/utilities to surrounding keys.

I spam it against bad targets to make them rage about it in the forums. Anyone else do that? It’s on purpose to just spam it 4x on a 20% health player who is already being killed by 5 others just so they remember the Heartseeker and come here to complain.

Counters To Stealth Thief:
1. Moa when you can target him for a second, even if he is not rendering, the ability will still hit
2. AOE knockdown or knockback
3. Use a mace instead of a greatsword, you bandwagon tools
4. Use AOE damage abilities – yes it hurts just as hard when stealthed as when unstealthed
5. Talk with your teammates over voice comms and plan a burst attack the moment he’s targetable (oh wait, you’re not on voice, you’re unorganized and crying about dying to an organized group?)
6. Get any kind of immobilize/stun which you should already have anyway
7. Dagger Storm? Run in and melee the slow-moving spinning free target who is not dodging for 8 seconds
8. AOE fear → Immobilize → Burst the Thief
9. Walk backwards while autoattacking (the bare minimum effort you need to do)
10. Cast any sort of invisibility/stealth on your teammates and surprise the Thief who now has no target with 5 people jumping him from stealth, reversing the role

The best Thieves are patient Thieves, and you just need to be patient too. Just like when fighting every class, you have to play slightly different tactics, the same with the Thief – it just requires more thought to fight them, something skilled players take advantage of.

Yes, just buy the high-end Alienware and you won’t need another gaming computer for 5 years (maybe a video card upgrade).

People…

Please get Power/Toughness/Vitality gear.
As in, all of your gear uses these three traits.

Now go duel a backstab spec’d Thief in your guild in sPvP.

Let him equip all glass cannon gear, and see how well he is able to kill you.

Then come back and post your screen shot of how you won or lost the duel.

Then discuss if you still think it’s a problem.

The PvP gear is there for a reason.

All the backstab videos, all the big crits, all the whiners, all come from a fully burst spec Thief attacking a fully burst spec other player. When you get the jump on those Thieves, you kill them in 2-3 hits too; the difference is the Thief gets the opener more often, so you cry about it instead of picking up the gear specifically put in for PvP. I encounter plenty of burst Thief builds and each time I see them hit me hard for that initial burst, I focus fire them and down them in 2 hits – with Power/Toughness/Vitality gear. I still hit just as hard, just don’t crit as hard, and go figure they die almost as fast as if I were fully burst spec.

Class unique skill nerfed to mediocre same-as-any-other-stun skill. Elite none the less. With a 1 second cast time and an on-hit requirement and a cooldown.

I’d much rather have seen it become a 6 second chill than a normal stun. I’d actually use it in WvW in that case.

Quitters never win. 48-0 proves we are in it for the long haul.

Name Rank AvgTallyPast12Hr Deviation StatisticalNumber
Jade Quarry 1 460 0 0.99
Henge of Denravi 2 280 0.1 0.93
Stormbluff Isle 3 174 0.1 0.91

Those are my numbers for the 48-0 win we just had.

Only works against Thieves, since they’re the only ones that can teleport when down. The Mesmer down state makes a clone and invis, so the stomp never lands first attempt.

But, you can use this if there are two people down, one too far to run to or who is inside a zerg. Begin your stomp on the close on, and teleport to the second one to finish while your friend finishes the first guy.

Edit: Actually you can use this against Mesmers, by starting the stomp on their Clone and finishing on them when they appear. Just a slight change to how it works.

As the leader of a Jade Quarry small group of Ascendancy [RISE] members, I want to announce that with our unstoppable 400+ tally point lead right now, we have won the game. It is obvious that this kind of record is unmatched, and that our competitors are just out of their league. At this time, many members of Jade Quarry will be quitting Guild Wars 2 for other games, transferring to other servers, or reforming into new guilds.

This doesn’t mean Jade Quarry won’t have a presence in WvW in the future, just that some people might switch servers or go elsewhere. The current members of Jade Quarry may or may not stay under the same membership. The main point is that some people will seek doing other things sometimes.

I want to thank all the other guilds who made this happen. I’m sure you have a guild tag, but because I don’t play at this hour, I don’t know your guild tag. But good job whomever got us this win. With this 400+ point lead going on for multiple tallies, it is just no longer fun anymore to win so hard for a lot of people. And due to the lack of attention to theorycrafting armchair home game devs by ArenaNet, we feel its time to put our attention elsewhere.

Thanks again for this massive point tally lead and putting us in first place. We are the undefeated winners of the past 48 point tallies, going 48-0 is amazing, and at this point we will retire from the game. This accomplishment goes to all the players, guild or not, zerg or not, who have played for the past 12 hours.

48-0 is good enough, and we will go down in history as the best server of all time because of it. Good job Jade Quarry 48 to 0!

Look at that point tally for JQ! Well guys, I want to let you all know that Jade Quarry has now won. We have over a 400 point lead. Our entire server is going to disband because we have proven that we are unable to be matched. We are just able to stomp our enemies so hard, that we are now going to put our efforts into other games. Some people will still stay in Jade Quarry, but no longer under any leadership. We have an outstanding record of 400 more points, and I’d like to thank all the guilds that participated in capping everything the past hour. Some of our members will be transferring to other servers, and some will stay, but let it go down in history that with this 400+ point lead, we are now the winner, which no one can dispute, because I made a post about it.

It’s a pathing issue not a line of sight issue. You can use the shadowstep mechanic to get somewhere you normally could walk, so it is possible to do this, although it seems not all mechanics work the same – Steal for example seems not to fire without LOS. Shadow Trap doesn’t worry about LOS it seems.

Bleeding is calculated on a per-tick level, not over the whole duration of the bleed. If you apply a bleed that does 1200 damage over 10 seconds, and you use this Sigil of Agony, your bleed now adds one tick, doing 1320 damage over 11 seconds. It’s a 10% increase in damage in this case, but a zero increase in DPS.

The thing to consider is each tick, or second, of bleeding is the same damage. You want it to last longer because eventually it turns into massive DPS when you have 18 stacks of bleeds on someone each doing 120 damage, you’re doing 2160 DPS, and you want that DPS to last longer.

My tests have shown that with the 25% Signet, my warrior friend and I both hit a mob at the same time, putting us in combat, and ran in a straight direction away. I was noticeably faster. Unless there has been some change since then, this is the case now, and you can easily test it yourself with any friends.

It’s pretty simple.

On Friday before the WvW reset, you transfer 40-50 people over to your enemy server.

You then go into WvW with those 40-50 people, and sit in spawn doing nothing. Actually no, you go PvE the entire time, and camp the jumping puzzle, so any of your actual server’s players that try to PvE get stomped and don’t come back, forcing them to actually take the entire map. You then rotate through each map, displacing the fighting force with do-nothing players, and win. You will have to make sure no one AFK’s for good, or find some of the ways to avoid being kicked for inactivity (mobs attacking you every now and then works I believe).

I swear it could work!

Fun.

I suppose if you run solo to a far away camp and die to a zerg force, it’s no fun. But if you’re doing anything with friends, or your own team zerg, it’s fun. Fun is the key here, it’s what you’ve been missing in other games that they’ve tried to blind you from by offering you point progression and ‘rewards’ for playing, instead of ‘FUN’ being the reward for playing.

Mind BLOWN.

souldonkey.9534:

Feranor.2053:

Hi Jon.

Let me offer a rebuke.

http://i.imgur.com/czv8b.jpg

That is all.

Way to exaggerate by getting the camera as close as possible and making it look like the issue is far worse than it is. This is not how the game looks at all times so stop pretending it is. Your post is worthless at best and doesn’t help or contribute in anyway other than to advertise your childishness.

Yet, it does look like this when you’re assaulting the walls at a keep, a critical gameplay moment.

I have to say, looking at the ways to change FOV which are within TOS and outside of TOS, I am going to start playing around with each to find a good one. Using a custom resolution just might be the fix I am looking for. That video of 100 FOV vs. 65 FOV is just amazing. Can see the heads of mobs, and see the sky. That’s sweet. Looks 100% better IMO.

Feranor.2053:

Hi Jon.

Let me offer a rebuke.

http://i.imgur.com/czv8b.jpg

That is all.

I guess… nice haircut? Maybe you’re in the battle of the year, and spectacular events are happening all around; I sure as heck can’t tell. But that hair! Bro that’s stylish! Who needs to see your friends nearby when you can stare at that head of hair!

Ouch bad response!

People with 3 monitors get a huge FOV increase! Are you going to ban them for using 3 monitors so you can preserve the game’s balance?

For those who don’t know, people with a large FOV i.e. 3 monitors get better awareness, for one, but also can fire Siege and ground-target abilities where people without 3 monitors can not even see. I run into this a lot being a 1 monitor user who Anet doesn’t care about. I have to literally put my camera angle to extremes to shoot into some Tower fights where I know if my FOV was better it wouldn’t even be an issue. This and camera distance are my only complaint, and although you say giving people the option to increase FOV leads to poor performance or other gameplay garbage, you allow 3 monitor players full access to that feature while denying it to the rest of us.

I love your strict stance on a lot of things, and the way you guys quip right back at some people’s comments. Put people in their place and what have you. But by not allowing a dynamic FOV, you are telling people, “Buy 3 monitors and a GTX 680 if you want to get a better FOV, but we’re not going to allow it to our mainstream players!”

Wow thanks for showing us how to fail the jumping puzzle and how to get 2 shot by a necro.

Don’t you hate how long it takes to stomp someone? Down them in 3 seconds but takes 4 to stomp. So annoying!

How To Counter Dagger Storm:

1. Melee the crap out the Thief who cannot dodge for 8 seconds while channeling this attack (but can break channeling to dodge, yes I know).
2. F-key stomp after he’s down

Aww.

I was thinking this would be a guild exchange, where you can change servers and not lose all your guild stuff by swapping guild leaders on each server…

Sure, you have to take their name, but you keep all the benefits! lol…

Great vid of bashing sub-80 new players……………………………………………………………………………..

And running from a 2v1…………………

It’s a blur, not a stealth, when dodging that the large characters get so they don’t have weird animation clipping through terrain etc.

The Asura do flips. They front flip, side flip, and back flip. This is completely unique to the race, and is awesome. Gives it a nice class feel when combined with Thief, and is only possible due to their size, where an upside-down flipping Norn would be ridiculous.

Generally accepted arena mechanic, right? Not an all-out anything-goes mechanic? It would be odd if my physical presence caps a point, but the added mechanic of stealth means I am not capping the point. I would imagine there are some backstab built thieves in sPvP who are annoyed that by doing their main damage they lose points. Different beasts, they are. Quite happy with C&D’ing around bad players in WvW, and fighting the few good Thieves who manage to pull it off near me and killing them.

Edit: Wait a second, this the WvW forums, right? Could have swore someone compared WvW mechanics to sPvP somewhere. Must have been a mistake.

Don’t compare sPvP to WvW and you can see the reason why. WvW lets you explore your potential to it’s highest. sPvP allows you to pit your balanced team against another. They are two different beasts and I wouldn’t ever look at one in any regards to the other. sPvP is like a totally different game; which is awesome considering it fixes the biggest problem other games had when mixing arena and PvE.

I really don’t know if stealth inside a sPvP point means you don’t cap it during that time frame. If you drop Shadow Refuge on 5 players on a point in sPvP, the point does not get capped?

… is the one you end up playing.

In WvW my build has changed a dozen times, slightly tweaking it here and there depending on where I see weaknesses and where I can give up some strength. I’d love to say I’m settled on a single best build for my play style, but I know I can tweak it even more. I haven’t ever fully changed it, but I constantly find new ways to use traits in certain situations which benefit me most. Another Thief I know has a completely different dodge and condition damage build, and he’s just as effective. So it comes down to how you want to play and constantly refining your play style. For those looking for a direct build answer, I promise it’s better just to go with what looks good to you, and start developing from there.

Hi SBI at the far north Camp. I had rofl fun keeping that camp from rolling over to you guys for 3 minutes or more before the points ticked over. I think Henge came in and cleaned you up towards the end, and they were in dismay as well.

Yes, solo I was able to prevent you from capping the point by staying inside the circle, which is a valid and intended game mechanic. I will let you know the ‘trick’ because it’s not easy to pull off by any means. There were some close calls for sure.

You guys had like 20 people running all over the circle – this made it so easy for me to hit Cloak and Dagger on every person I passed by as I ran in circles myself. I’d hit pets, players, Mesmer clones, whatever I could to keep inside the circle and keep the point. I held it until Henge rolled on you guys, and then held it until the points rolled over to the next countdown. Promptly left and rejoined my group.

If you think there’s a Thief nearby, use AOE, knockdown, and autoattack constantly, especially if he’s stealthing like I was. It’s not easy. Constantly counting down and watching the Stealth icon to time my next C&D on a moving target at the perfect time so I’d instantly re-stealth. Assuming ~4 seconds between hits, I must have used C&D around 45 times, along with Hide in Shadows heal/stealth when no one was around, and in addition to Shadow Refuge when I got hit too much and needed to re-assess the enemy layout (and when Henge rolled you off). Absolutely no one attacked the Shadow Refuge with AOE or knockback or anything while I was in it.

For those who don’t know, the de-stealth graphic and sound still plays even if the player is not on your screen for the split second between stealths like this.

I plan on streaming soon, and will be glad to demonstrate what goes in to something like that.

Points R Pointless! Dur I went to college and the teacher said my D was for Degree!

The number is simply for matchmaking. HoD has tons of players, and is 1st in rank because of it. Does that mean they’re ‘better’? I have the same kill/death ratio against them as with anyone else I’ve faced. The only difference is they’re much more bold in attacking – actually tends to help because it’s easy to lure them into a trap. They zerg just the same as anyone else. They send 40 people across the entire map to recap a single camp. It is server vs. server, so even if you’re amazing during your 2 hour play window, it doesn’t mean your server is amazing. So you can either switch servers and feel good because the server is amazing and you’re amazing, or you can just play and be amazing when you can be, and hope others do the same during different hours.

I have a strong feeling that given time, and expansions bringing in new players, and friends grabbing other friends to play, that the time zone issues will balance out.

Ok well let me answer you.

I use Power/Toughness/Vitality everything.

My end-game crit will be ~28-30%, I am not all the way there yet as Badges of Honor are still a restricting gear factor for this type of gear (ring/accessory, 3 more to go).

The crit is from 15% with 30 in Critical Strikes, around 7.5% with Emerald gems for Accessory items, a Sigil of Accuracy on my offhand dagger, and usually at least one Orb.

Crit damage will end up being 30% due to Traits alone.

Power will be only 90 less than someone who went full Power/Precision/Crit damage gear.

This is the key point actually. Your power is about the same. Your raw damage output is about the same. Add on top of this the Backstab build, where really, crit chance doesn’t matter, and you’re hitting only slightly worse than a Berserker build. Now, a Berserker guy will have higher numbers based on the + 70% crit damage, but is that worth dying to every two hits? No.

The PvP gear is there for a reason. For a Thief, it’s for 100% Backstab crits, being in the mix, keeping stealth and downing targets left and right. If a Backstab is 2000 damage, a Backstab crit for you will be 3600 vs. 5000 from someone with +100% crit damage. I don’t want for crits, and I enjoy surviving huge fights.

You also get to play around with Rune sets to suit your playstyle as each one will give a benefit which doesn’t impact your overall effectiveness. For example, a full-damage build who picks a tiny bit of toughness with Runes will not see any benefit. However if all your gear is Toughness/Vit, and you use some damage or utility Runes, you will see a large benefit with only a small loss in survivability.

tldr: PvP gear is there for a reason.

Someone said it right. In WoW and other MMOs, you just played a waiting game for one raid a week, maybe two if you were ‘casual-hardcore’. I remember hours on end in WoW sitting there flying. No point in doing anything. The game was avoiding as much content as possible. Hated killing random mobs. Had to keep in mind the 50 daily quests to run and do, or not, and if not, ugh, what a waste. Stupid flying simulator.

In GW2 just about everything you are doing is downright fun. That’s why people stay. Now, statistics show the initial burst of players playing is gone, but the fun level is going up for those who stick around. The game is deep. I’ve only begun to chip away at the meta game in WvW. It’s insanely good. For PvE players who need a long term carrot to make them keep playing, there are other games for that. And I agree, GW2 is not that game. Fancy gear cosmetics only go so far. But then you realize, that’s all you were doing in WoW or other games. Getting the gear to look cool and represent your higher stats. In GW2 you can get gear to look cool, with the only change being it doesn’t make you better than anyone else because you played for 200 hours. It just means you have a cool looking item. You can still be complete crap when it comes to actual gameplay, and that turns off the bad players a lot.

I keep playing because the game is deep, and the meta game is insanely complex. It’s where my mind can pull together all the diverse possibilities and chain them together into a working strategy against my enemies. I MAY go off GW2 a little with Planetside 2, but that’s because they’re doing F2P, however point and click and then die to a tank can only be fun for so long. Fun is the redeeming factor and GW2 delivers, and will continue to do so.

To counter the panda lovers…

Nearly every night on Teamspeak, everyone in my group is saying how much fun we had, and how awesome the game is, before going to sleep. “See you tomorrow,” is every night as well, and I’m talking about mostly strangers here. We’ve melded together and there is something special in the mentality here. I can’t even explain last night’s craziness, but I assure you it is going to be the #1 gaming memory for a long time. And this has happened more than once. GW2 has given me more than one #1 gaming memories. It keeps beating itself in how awesome it is.

How many times did you go on TS/Vent/Mumble in WoW, and your friends said, “Yeah I’m just grinding X for the raid next week.” Or grinding X or Y or Z thing? And they didn’t want to play with you because it slowed down their grind. And they didn’t want to do anything else because if they didn’t come with 4 hours worth of raid materials they wouldn’t get a raid invite. WoW and all it’s clones trained you to think about gaming that way, and GW2 enlightens you in a way that hasn’t been around for years. It comes down to fun, and comparing the fun in GW2 vs. any other game, it is a smashing success. Ask yourself as you play Pandas and see cartoon graphics and simple animations if you are having fun grinding that mob. The most fun you have is in group instance runs, and you know it. GW2 does all those things better, without punishing you for playing with others.

I dunno I feel I have to give this secret away.

All those ‘safe’ treb and catapult spots? The Cluster Bomb arc along with extremely odd camera positions can allow you to hit almost all those safe spots on enemy towers and keeps. The Cluster can be fired in such a way to land where no other AOE will hit. This allows you to be very effective in killing off that which cannot be killed off in terms of siege. You’re not supposed to bring D/D into a Zerg attacking a keep. Find other ways to be effective.

There is an NPC at the entrance when you first zone into WvW that tells you a little about what’s going on. As far as telling everything in detail, no. Gotta figure some stuff out on your own!

Heartseeker is Leap finisher, but yes grants healing.

Also, note the Tree does condition removal on you. Free cleanse of all(I believe) conditions the moment you hit it. Soooo… it’s OP if nothing else. AOE condition removal on your group? Please.

Good that finally someone is noticing D/P. It is good, however Initiative heavy and just has to be used right. It’s a 7 point Backstab setup compared to a 4 point C&D Backstab setup, with the 2 init on stealth trait. The trade off is you get an AOE blind and a Heartseeker hit. But yes, practice. We have learned to use this well when we use it, but I can’t say I like it for long term. As I’m sticking to targets as much as possible, I find the setup literally takes too long. There are times I wish I had a pistol offhand, but more often I want my dagger offhand. I carry both and switch out as needed to satisfy both.

Binafus.8153:

If it was not for night capping every server would beat HOD, is this really how every server feels except HOD?

Don’t matter that SBI got pushed off the map in EB during NA prime time last night, it is all becuase of night capping.

Daoc had 24 hour 3 way matches and many people still think it was one of the best games for WvW and back then people would say you guys only got a relic becuase you had a raid at 5am. The response would be “Well yea that is why we scheduled a raid at 5am.” People did not say they need to change the rules of the game where you can not take a relic at 5am.

There is a set rules in WvWvW on scoring, there is a ladder that is transparent the way it works, if you can not beat someone look at your team.

It seems to me the games have not changed it is the players, they seem to want to blame someone or something if they can not win.

Take some responsibilty, put on your big boy pants and stop blaming others when you do not win.

Well said man, and excellent DOAC reference. Same can be said about EVE where similar tactics ensue.

Hate to say it as this is a game, but there really is a liberal mindset plaguing the lands, overflowing into the gaming world. No longer should you have to actually try in a game. They want continues and save points and progress not lost because of a mistake.

GW2 gives plenty of the ‘casual’ environment in the PvE world, but when it comes to the PvP they are unforgiving as it should be. You step into WvW knowing there’s going to be people using every single ability they can find to beat you. That means tons of QQ from those folks who are still sucking at the kitten’s teet. A word to those folks; become better. Become more than you are. Practice, develop tactics, recruit others for your cause. Or fall into the same cesspool which is ‘participation awards’.

SBI enjoy the 2nd tier but I think ET is going to own you next week.

Maybe I am getting this wrong too. Using Moa’s to test Daze is not preventing me from using Shadowstep. It only prevents skills with a cast time, or AOE abilities. I can still use Steal, Shadowstep, even Sigils. So it’s not a complete lock-out for all classes. This reduces my position on this quite a bit.