Guild Wars 2

Not another “I’m spec glass cannon and some guy destroyed me with 20k damage!”

Cut all those numbers by 60% and you’ll get the actual numbers vs. actual PvP gear. The Engineer has all Power/Precision/Crit gear, meaning he is a glass cannon, and the Thief profession is the anti-glass cannon.

I use /dance to brake down. I mean. Break down. Anyway, /dance is the best way to get out of roots. Everyone else starts dancing too, and then you moonwalk out. Or Shadowstep. Shadowstep is good.

Unfortunately the ‘suggestions’ here are way off scope. The current WvW is amazing, new, dynamic, and difficult. After a month, we have some people complaining they miss a grind. They want a carrot in front of them. They want changes so they feel better. This is just the withdrawal people experience when moving on from a game that holds a carrot above your head. When you stop and look at it, the current WvW is amazing and with some minor tweaks will be even more so.

Ask yourself, is it fun to grind constantly for gear, only to have that progress wiped with the next patch? Is it fun to be 20% more powerful than your friend because you played longer? If it is, MoP is released, enjoy. If fun for you is playing with your friends and relying on their individual skill, not gear, to pave the way for success, then this is as good as it gets for an MMO to date.

@Sky

I am here for that design decision. Still marveling with friends over TS how we can just have fun and not have to worry about being behind the grind because we take the time to go look at something we find interesting. It’s like playing Zelda games in a sense, where you’re not punished for exploring the world.

Last night I was about to go to bed, and just decided to do all the WvW jumping puzzles. On the very last one, I was jumping along and saw some warrior fall off. Just by his movements I knew he wasn’t great at jumping and it was likely his first time. I did my thing, completed the top portion, then the bottom. As I came down finally I saw him miss a simple jump – the one where if you’re too close on the branch you hit your head and fall down. Ah well, let’s go give him some help. So I just stood by that jump, waited for him to come, and told him, “You have to jump from here, else you’ll hit your head and fall down.” He said thanks, and I made the jump, and then he did. He seemed accepting of the help, so I just kept a step ahead of him, showing him certain jumps. He fell. He fell a lot. Each time I’d jump down with him and swim back and go to the top and so on. One time some enemy players came in. Three ended up downing him in the water, but I was hiding nearby and came in to rez him. Back to the jumps, we slowly, over many falls, made it to the top portion. Awesome. And then we began the much harder lower portion. More falls. I told him to hold back a little jumping across the floating pillars. And finally he got the lower portion and we made it to the treasure chest. It was his first time doing the jumping puzzle in WvW.

I did it because well, I like doing that sometimes. And I did it because I wasn’t missing out on anything. I didn’t have a grind to keep up with. Nothing to chase after. I can actually help if I want, or ignore it if I want, and I’m not punished. The reward is the friendship and the thanks. And the fun. It was still fun even when I had already completed the task.

Introduce a single ounce of grind to make my character more powerful because I played longer than someone else, and that guy would have been left in the dust. Actually I’d just quit the game completely. This is not WoW. If you need a carrot, it’s just because WoW and all the other MMOs found they could make money off you by dangling one in front of you, and you’d just keep paying to have a chance at the carrot. It’s insult to injury when in their new WoW expansion, one of the first mini bosses is a cartoon rat that blocks your way with a carrot! I’m serious!!!

Lots of people play games to chase the carrot they will never achieve, or only achieve if they play for so long and get so lucky that they get the carrot, and then they are met with another patch, another carrot, and the cycle continues. All the while taking money from you every month. I play for fun; most people do, but are so trained otherwise right now. Play for fun, and have fun, and do fun things. Don’t just sit there looking for the next grind. Get that plaque off your mind, off your imagination. The kinds of crazy fun I had last night I can’t even explain – even before helping the guy jump. I was going to go to sleep at 1am and next thing I knew it was 4am.

Fun is the endgame people, seriously. If you take a step back, you realize that’s the end-game for everything entertainment. So why do you need a carrot to hold you back from the actual fun? Just get right to the fun part, and enjoy it. That’s what GW2 gives you.

It’s actually not a bad idea, just needs some tweaks. Letting it be an upgrade anyone can get is not a good idea. Otherwise winning servers will get those benefits on all their towers.

However, saying “The <npc group here> has come to aid you in your time of need!” is more appealing. In other words, when you get the Outmanned buff, NPCs of boss level, even roaming friendly NPCs, come to aid in defenses and offense. Boss level patrolling NPCs around your towers would just mean it takes longer for the enemy to cap a position, and as soon as you take a tower, you get an instant defensive buff with the boss NPC, making it much harder to re-cap instantly. The key is to increase the time between caps for the team which has the most numbers. So while it takes a full raid 1 hour to cap a single tower, a group of smaller players could cap two towers in that time frame.

Plus it would be cool to see awesome NPCs like Dragons and so on in PvP

Edit: Last night my group of 5 capped a tower by ourselves. We did this by baiting people off the walls and killing them, and preventing any enemy trying to run into the tower from getting in. So we turned the tower into a defenseless nothing, set up a catapult, and made our way in. There was some good fighting during the time it took 1 Catapult to kill a wall, but the enemy was Outmanned and us 5 with coordination were quite the force. So, my suggestion would break this style of stomping, and reduce this kind of fun to be had, however it wouldn’t break it. We could still Catapult a wall from a further distance, but we’d have more trouble getting inside and taking it with such a small group otherwise. The boss might take us 15 minutes to kill, or longer. And we’d then have to deal with guards inside the keep and the Lord. So this kind of suggestion would be very doable and very cool in terms of bringing some variety.

And Master Martym, you fall into my above post. “Durr I am glass cannon but for some reason I can’t hold up in melee!” Like most issues, this is a Learn2Play issue, and part of that is learning to pick the right gear. If you want to have a specific spec tailored to bursting single targets down quickly, then go all Power/Precision/Crit damage gear. If you want to be able to go toe-to-toe to warriors and guardians, you will need toughness and vitality. It’s akittentrade off people. You can burst down light and medium targets all day, and not be good in a melee fight where you’re taking lots of damage, OR you can do less damage and survive longer, letting fights play out more than just ‘haha I 2 shot that non-80 player!’

And for all your “Should” remarks, you ‘should’ make your own game, or l2p

To everyone crying about getting one-shot and crying ‘But I have 20k HP!’ You picked Power/Precision/Vitality gear didn’t you? Be honest. You have lots of HP but still get crit on like you’re a level 1. There’s a reason the PvP gear is Power/Vitality/Toughness. If you’re not using it, I don’t care your profession or build, you are going to take burst like you’re an innocent rabbit. So stop crying, health does not mean you live longer if you don’t back it up with some toughness. It just means we have to crit you one or two more times to kill you.

Kabuki.9103:

saurus.8290:

ofc thieves are not op

all this dmg in less than 2 seconds and run away from 20 ppl

would kill me in less than a sec but i dodge roll 2 times and lighting reflex

You fought a thief. He pulled off 6 moves and you pulled off 7 moves.

Him with dagger:
1) Steal
2) Cloak and Dagger
3) Dancing Dagger
4) Dancing Dagger
4.5) Swapped weapon to shortbow
5) Trick shot (lucky to trigger a lightning sigil for 1,658)
6) Trick shot

Your moves:
1) Dodge (no endurance)
2) Dodge (no endurance)
3) Dodge (no endurance)
4) Dodge (no endurance)
5) Dodge (no endurance, you know you need endurance to dodge right?)
6) Dodge (hope you’re not standing still while you’re still trying to dodge with no endurance)
7) Crossfire

Against someone of your skill level, I can take you down in Moa form. Will you then say that Moa form is op?

EDIT: add original screenshot posted
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/7444/gw021.jpg

Hahaha… so awesome.

Combat logs tell no lies!

“Why am I not constantly dodging!!!!”

Don’t ele’s have a mist form, a fast lightning teleport, a lot of powerful AOE to throw on the ground, some shields – one of which reflects projectiles, and some other stuff I dunno about except it hurts?

For PvP, Short Bow shines with 15 points in Deadly Arts and 30 in Critical Strikes. The rest put wherever you feel is beneficial.

The 15 point Deadly Arts combined with Choking Gas is good for PvE as well as PvP. It stacks Weakness on everything in an AOE, meaning you and your team are taking 50% less damage from non-crits. It’s extremely useful and does turn the tide in large fights, especially if you have any healing on your end of the stick.

Skill. Skill just happened.

Slightly skewed in that Scholar is only doing that above 90% health, whereas Divinity is always static. It’s the best overall rune imo. Constant all around benefits plus crit damage.

Well, your main role is to do damage, whichever class you are. So if you are not, you don’t get badges. Siege is great and all, and can yield badges if done correctly, but if you could farm badges by sitting at a 100% safe spot inside a tower or keep, everyone would build siege there and get free badges for doing no work.

So yes, you get rewarded for engaging in tough fights and winning, and you get less reward for sitting in the rear with the gear, as they say.

You still get credit for a Tower or Keep capture if you’re one of the guys who helped siege the walls/gate. So that’s rewarding. Badges are rewarded for killing players. Go kill players.

Last night before the patch we were in a big fight and I caught a guy in the back at low health. Heartseeker – miss! I thought, well ok, at least this next one will hit. Heartseeker – miss again! Ugh.

Story short; I didn’t down/kill the guy, and had to fall back with my group due to the numbers. If those both landed, who knows.

Glad to see it’s fixed as ‘General’ and not ‘Thief Buff:’ Hehe…. Stealth buff!

Guardian lasts forever.

Keyword: lasts.

Still dies.

Hahhaa…

SBQQ!

The worst part is enemy players can see your Outmanned buff. Meaning, “Ah he’s got no backup push push push!!”

Random. 1/5 kills is a good estimate. But join a zerg/commander and you should want not for badges.

Shoulda used a Mesmer portal =/

WoW invented the gear treadmill as a design option. It was in other games – Asheron’s Call had better gear, Shadowbane had better gear – but it wasn’t the primary focus of the game. It wasn’t the carrot held in front of you. The gameplay was, in those older games, and GW2 is bringing it back. They dangle fun in front of you – and let you eat it up!

I just read through some dev responses, and botting was one thing that was mentioned but ‘we are dealing with more important things first.’

I have to say, the dozens of botters I have seen, the numerous reports, the many videos posted showing hacking and botting going on at the same time, across all servers, is ridiculous. These folks aren’t just botting, they’re selling gold outside the TP, and flooding the TP with items. The psychological hit to many players who see these botters and who realize they are ‘missing out’ on tons of gold that they could have otherwise if they started up a botting program themselves while they sleep is pretty bad. The long-term inflation and large-scale third party gold selling also damages the economy and playerbase as a whole.

So not sure how this is not one of the top priorities checked every single day.

Maybe it’s not ‘the most urgent thing to fix’ right now, and I assure you I am very much accepting that there will always be bots, but the lack of having a single employee go around each server to the common botting spots and /ban all the folks who are doing it – easily doable in a single work day – is discouraging. I don’t mind weapon clipping, or any of the other bugs, but blatantly allowing botters and now telling them ‘ehhh not a priority keep on botting, hope you make it profitable enough before we ban you’ is not good.

Probably the worst thing is the immersion lost from seeing players every day teleporting around and botting. I’m surprised that at this level of lack of attention, there’s not more people using it in WvW.

Even if you’re working on it, allowing it to happen long enough to ‘make it profitable’ for them is too long. Security should always be a top priority.

Hmm. Yes, got this on my Thief in WvW. I can only say that it was after some very intense combat where I made it out by my teeth. Multiple stacks of everything on me. My Critical Strikes Quickness buff must have hit and stuck. It lasted just a few minutes, enough to kill a very quick kill in on someone. I tried to preserve it but it did die off inexplicably with me not doing anything different (maybe the next proc of the skill made it reset, and I should have removed that trait as soon as I noticed it).

Hehe… there’s a few Norn Thief videos I’ve seen. They have pretty cool animations I think. My Asura, I can’t see anything except damage numbers.

Waaaaiiiiitttt aaaa seeccoonnddd…

So you’re telling me you don’t position Thieves on the flanks of your attacks to alert you when enemy zergs are coming?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Portal_Entre

Sounds to me like it is a matter of getting out smarted and out played. Get better, get better organization, and get better understandings of all profession mechanics.

All you need is for that Thief to say ‘Enemy zerg portalling in everyone AOE the portal when it spawns!!" and you have 40 dead enemy players. We’ve countered this plenty to know it’s a learn2play thing not a ‘zomg the phasing in breaks the game’.

Edit: now with more a’s!

No one expects that large, lumbering, twirling Norn to be a Thief!

Asura do flips instead of rolls for dodge. So much more fitting.

Racial skills, it’s a toss up as most aren’t used anyway over Elite skills.

I think the despawn is kind of lame. I’d prefer the Storm to do damage to the siege and kill them over time, with a repair option build into the action bar that will slowly repair the siege item instead of being able to fire. The despawn is just an overlook on the game designer’s part.

On the other hand, if they never despawned, you’d have 50 Ballistas in almost every Lord area, and everyone would just hop on when they’re being attacked. Still, some design balance could be made here to make them get killed off over time, or to have some kind of system that tells you how long is left on each weapon, so people can choose to reactivate them or not.

Waaaiiiittt aaa seeecconnnddd..

So, you’re telling me, the enemy zerg was more organized, and portaled into your zerg before you thought of portaling into their zerg, and you’re complaining about it? And you’re a mesmer? It’s like a mind trip trying to figure out how bad you have to be to blame others for your lack of skill and coordination.

If they can do it to you, you can do it to them, so get better.

Seeing as how quite a few guilds have a big PvE influence, including crafting and trading on the TP, generating gold to then infuse into Siege weapons in WvW, it makes sense that the gear matters. It’s not a separate system from the actual game as sPvP is, it’s an extension of your server as a whole. It means even the guys donating to the guild bank are helping the server win. And as they win, they become more effective in the PvE pursuits. It’s very well done overall.

This works with Steal too. You don’t even have to look! Only useful against other Thieves, but if your Steal is off cooldown and you have no item already, you can hit Steal right after he teleports away and you will land your stomp on him.

I also use Steal vs. Guardians; first jump away from a Guardian who is down, wait for his AOE to knockback your friends, then Steal to get right on top of him and be the first one to stomp him.

A note on the server hopping – the server ‘winning’ also has the most buffs. I would expect a merchant guild is server hopping to gain the highest buffs from the most winning team to get more useful crafting done. So it’s not all just about the actual WvW gameplay. People will hop for whatever advantage it gives them. I wouldn’t hop because those queue times are way too long.

It IS for D/D builds, but not as a main attack, that’s all. I still use it at the beginning of fights as the enemy unloads a large amount of damage/skills, and so the evade is worth the initiative cost. I’m a back-end damage Thief with Power/Toughness/Vitality, so I’m not worried about killing in a couple hits – that’s what my warrior friend’s HB is for – I’m there to confuse and dodge and pick out the squishy target and call next targets. I get behind the enemy, get them to focus me, and stealth and escape, so they drop target and my teammates can clean up. I dish out good damage when I need to, but it’s not my main goal against a skilled enemy.

In a small group, I find C&D has to be used sparingly. I’ve only recently realized when I make the enemy lose target on me – they target someone else! And that’s not always good for my warrior buddy who has less escape mechanics. So I try to keep visible more than is good for my HP, but it helps the group.

Can we get a points update / screenshot?

Why remove an awesome strategy that is hard to pull off? This game is about skill, it’s not ‘easy’ to do this, and the people spending 6+ gold and 600+ supply on Golems should get a chance to use them any way they can organize how.

The fact there is a ‘Oh Shkittenit’ moment where you have to spam chat for everyone to come right the heck now and defend or else you lose is good. Good teams will respond just in time, and bad ones will get rolled over.

The ONLY problem, is after all these buffs, you will post another thread saying how there is no reward advancement beyond these buffs, and we should get more buffs and advancements.

This only hurts new players. It does nothing for you except satisfy the grind mechanic trained onto you from every MMO to date. The fact that I was able to level up maybe half my levels in WvW and just enjoy the fun makes this game so amazing. Try to discipline yourself away from the ‘I need something to grind on!’ mentality. That’s what she said.

I 2-3 shot Level 1 players who just joined WvW too. The big numbers just make you feel good in between the /rage a glass cannon build has when facing any decent opponent. Try your glass on a Guardian. No dice. Even a decent Mesmer who knows to get his clones out before you stealth.

A level 1 WvW newbie, and a level 80 glass cannon, have the exact same stats in terms of Toughness/Armor. So yes, you can hit the same damage on 80’s. Because, level 1’s are scaled up to 80. So it’s the same thing. Doesn’t mean it’s broken or over powered. It means the guy is squishy and needs to not be engaging 3 people solo.

Yeah kinda implied but didn’t state as a non-condition build, it’s not a primary 1v1 skill, as autoattack combo does like 3-4k damage.

Commander = Zerg = Badges

Not sure why people wouldn’t follow the Commander, regardless. Even if he sucks, the zerg will get kills, and you get fun. Or run off solo and cap Sentry points. Your call.

Pretty much every target was sub-80…

So… we roll them alllll day too.

Edit. One thing though, we also target the warrior in every group, and use him for a Shadowstep back + axes to whirlwind everyone. It’s tons of fun. Poor warriors are like walking DPS buffs.

I laughed out loud when I read one of the problems is, “Keep defense being too skewed in favor of defenders.” I guess defenses are supposed to be skewed more in the middle, favoring offense a little more? lol

And play for fun, not for a gear grind such as in Panda Warrior. There is a good community building in pretty much every server. My server is coming together very nicely. I’ve met some new folks who have joined my group, and we’re kicking kitten our own style.

I noticed other attacks missing as well. Maybe it’s due to me not using the ‘Melee Assist’ or whatever that doesn’t allow you to push through targets. So I’m not ‘running forward’ into what I’m attacking all the time. Thus, the range might be off my 1 unit sometimes.

Cloak and Dagger has missed a couple times where I’m right on the guy – no Blind on me either unless it was right at that instant. So who knows, maybe it favors people who use the Melee Assist.

I build for Power/Toughness/Vitality and Death Blossom is still great. I’m not using it to insta-kill anyone, but come on, even with -zero- Condition Damage, it hits for ~600+ raw damage, and then 3x 10second stacks of Bleed, meaning, ~1800-2000 damage to each of 3 targets you hit, over 10 seconds. I use it plenty because of the evade and the disorienting effect on the enemy. IF you are using it as your damage skill, you’re doing it wrong. And if you’re using it to down single targets, same response. Best for times where you’re engaging superior numbers. You ARE attacking larger groups, right? I sure hope so.

Against 3 targets with a combined 60k health, you do 3 of these to them and dish out 18k damage in 10 seconds. If you have even 1 competent player helping you, you are killing off that enemy team of 3 who decided to stack up.

If fact, I love Death Blossom specifically because I’m not traited for it, meaning when they cure the bleed conditions it’s not that much of a damper on my DPS.

Just a quick note besides the fact that the OP is just /raaagggeeeee. I know he’s a warrior btw. They always rage when their HB didn’t get an insta-kill and they couldn’t run away.

Short Bow is amazing. It’s crazy DPS if you use it right, and has some of the best utility in the game. The DPS is not single target, that’s the only catch. My favorite uses are against Rangers and Mesmers, because the shot bounces off their pet/illusion and back to them – doubling the damage they take from each shot. Combined with Quickness procs, you get some crazy good numbers.

But also, 15 points in Deadly Arts makes your Poisons apply Weakness. With Choking Gas from the Short Bow, you have the only apply-on-demand AOE weakness in the game. That means you can reduce a team of 5 to a 50%-less-damage team of 5. I often start a fight with Choking Gas spam all over the enemy and then go in with daggers. They’re hitting for 50% less and your whole team is hitting full damage. Easy numbers game there.

Damage is still 50% less with no cooldown, and a life saver, and the Stealth is on cooldown now. Pretty decent change which prevents the Stealth abuse. Lock thread please.

Yeah I agree, he should have charged my original location and not turned, but I was glad I had the return in that case. It does need to be fixed.

Yes, the differences of traits are so balanced and varied that any change will force you to have a different play style. I recently removed the + 1 second stealth from my build and I notice I have to be much more proactive in escaping the enemy. The trade off is 20 in Deadly Arts instead of 15, giving myself a little more power, and 5% added dagger damage. So I also run with daggers more than Short bow. Very interesting how 5 points changed my attack and retreat ability so much.

Good post. To compound the negative outlook on Thieves, their role is very specific in making people pay for being alone or in a small group out in the middle of nowhere. So you usually encounter a Thief on his terms, and that makes it so much more noticeable.

Engineers like you said are awesome for sieges and throwing AOE into large areas of enemy troops. They’re also pretty darn good underwater with grenade spam.

Necromancer is actually super good. They are highly durable with some amazing escape mechanisms. But no one has really played top notch on them right now. I’ve seen 1 single good enemy Necro. I want to level mine just to be the guy that makes everyone go ‘wtf’. So although you didn’t like it, I’m sure someone else will make it amazing. And yeah, that’s the good part of the game, finding your niche class and sticking to it until you get good at it.

I only noticed this last night. A charge came at me and after I Shadowstepped the guy made a 90 degree turn and kept charging me – and stunned me. The beauty of Shadowstep is then I had Shadow return, and thus escaped the stun and watched as he Hundred Blades the air.

Roll for Initiative isn’t the same. It’s not a long range escape mechanism. Shadowstep gives a stun escape, and then another escape back to the original position if needed. I’d probably use RFI in sPvP but not in WvW.

And yes the first cast of Shadowstep removes stuns. We’re talking about the Utility skill here. You don’t have to use it twice, you can just use it once to get away. It takes some discipline not to spam the key twice. But it’s very reliable.

Well, those guys are still there today. I guess I should get whatever program they’re using and start botting while I sleep then. I mean, if it’s going to go unchecked, why not!

Hey, there are a group of 5-6 characters at the Straits of Devastation quest line on Jade Quarry who are obviously hacking and botting at the same time and have been doing so for days without any recourse. Who knows how much gold farming they have going on.

They’re in brown armor, and teleport all over the place attacking mobs instantly at the same time. There are certain teleport locations they warp to and even teleport on top of mobs they kill – as a group – to loot. It’s so blatant. I’ve never seen anything so blatant in an MMO to date.

I caught most of the names in the screen shot, but there are a few others. The guys in brown armor. Just completely obvious. I didn’t expect to see them after a day or two, and now they’ve been doing this for days and days. What is the course of action on your guys’ part for this? Do you not have anyone to go through and monitor this activity? I’m in Bellevue, I’ll work for free doing quality control for you guys keeping the game clear of this kind of stuff if you don’t have anyone else doing it.

Short bow farms just fine imo… my main problem is getting enough targets together to make it ‘worth it’. They’ll reset after a short distance and are spread out well enough that only in specific spots can you gather 6+

Try different weapons, and constantly move. Killing stuff is not the fastest way to level up, however. Go to events. But if you want to stand there and kill stuff, grab a Pistol offhand and use the #5 Black Powder to blind enemies. You can time it to always have your enemy mob miss you. You can fight mobs which are any higher level than you this way if you do it right.