Guild Wars 2

I read about it all the time, I thought; well, what if we could spam Heartseeker – that would be pretty good!

Viola!
Link not working? Working on it brb
Kitten it.
Utility:
Haste
Roll for Initiative
Infiltrator’s Signet
Basilisk Venom

30 in Critical Strikes
-Signets of Power
-Signet Use
-Executioner

20 in Shadow Arts
-Infusion of Shadow
-Hidden Thief

20 in Trickery
-Thrill of the Crime
-Flanking Strikes

OR
Swap out 20 in Shadow Arts for Acrobatics (This changes also if you use Signet first or Steal first after Roll for Initiative)
-Power of Inertia
-Quick Recovery

Now, this is a rough draft, but I figure I’d explain the sequence. It’s obviously a single-target Yoda style Heartseeker build.

-edited-
So you see your target and begin the approach, here are the steps to insta-kill.
1) Apply Basilisk Venom
2) Dodge twice towards the enemy, gaining 2 stacks of Might (acrobatics only)
3) When in range, activate Infiltrator’s Signet, giving Might and putting you on target
4) Pop Haste!
5) Release ~6 Heartseekers in a row in 3 seconds!
6) Roll for Initiative, gain 6 initiative!
7) Steal to get back on target, gaining 2 more Initiative!
8) Spam more Heartseeker until it’s dead!

I gotta try this out tonight. Rough idea, I’m sure it can be refined. Hope no one stuns me.

Ran into 2 variations trying to get the link to work. Sorry guys, I’m sure you can figure it out!

tldr: yes a targeting radius is needed.

Ok gotcha, for sPvP? So the stacks stay from match to match? That seems… unstructured.

I’ve yet to play sPvP but I’ll check it out when I do if they don’t fix it.

The OP has a slight point; it doesn’t go both ways when the gaming community in the USA is much larger than Australia. The OP was mentioning the fact that at 3am Pacific, you can bet there’s a fully-awake Aussie group picking off all the tired-and-about-to-go-to-sleep late night US players.

At the same time, I like that I can be on any time and see progress. It is server-wide, meaning, an average of your server’s performance. You might have the most badkitten crewe during peak US hours only to have terrible numbers in the dead of night. So it averages into being an average server. The key will be to build guild alliances (OH SNAP, it’s GUILD WARS) and maintain organized fronts the entire time to win as a server.

Destroying 1G and rising Sigils, often? Hehe. I put the stacking Sigil on my ranged weapon to gain the stacks, and switch to my other set for whatever I have on there. I guess if you buy gold it’s not an issue, I’m kinda low on gold right now.

Yes, there are some very tough spots, but keep at it. I died like 20 times to one single encounter. Just one ‘boss’ fight. But then I learned to dodge, and evade, and maybe switch weapons, and use utilities. Upped my skill level right away.

Plenty of everyone is asking the same thing. New game. Gotta find out for yourself right now.

I have tested, for a fact, that more is better, at least.

Yes, the Elementalist has a utility that can only be used late – however if you have any friends at all nearby, a single crowd-control on anyone Stomping you and you are almost guaranteed to be revived since you can move to your friends and have them heal you up. It just takes more teamwork to pull off. Roll with a warrior, and when you go down have him use his Fear and then run away – follow him in mist form and then get revived.

Hello,

Figured I’d give everyone a heads up on the Thief Downed State. It’s not as hard to deal with as you might think. Just like the Mesmer’s Downed State, it takes some getting used to. As a Thief, I can tell you what works, and if you listen up and improve your skills, downing a Thief will only be a few seconds longer than downing anyone else.

The first note is to realize, yes, it will always take you longer to down a Thief. So, because you are owning him so hard before the Downed State, you should prepare mentally when he does go down that it’s time to look for his teleport.

The Thief has two escape abilities when Downed. The first is a very short range teleport. It moves the Thief a short distance, instantly, and is immediately available upon becoming Downed. The second is a very short stealth, which does not become active for a while after being Downed.

If you look at your own Downed skills, you will notice you have the same kind of thing – one ability available immediately and the other on cooldown. The Thief is no different.

So you’re stunlocking, evading all his attacks, and finally killing that Thief. He goes down. Now what? Provided you have the health, go in for the F-inisher or Stomp, and begin the animation knowing full-well this guy is going to teleport nearby before you can finish. Some Thieves will teleport right as you begin the Stomp – and others will wait to the very last moment. Either way, understand that your first Stomp won’t kill him, so yes, you’re wasting a few seconds on the first animation. As soon as he teleports, just cancel your first Stomp animation and move to his new position and Stomp him for good. If you do this in sequence just like this, the stealth ability that the Thief has will never come into play. It has such a long cooldown, it only becomes available when you don’t react fast enough.

So, Down the Thief, begin the Stomp – cancel the Stomp when he teleports, move to the new location and Stomp him for good.

It’s that easy. It’s just a little more practice and you’ll get them every single time.

Now, let’s say there is some confusion, or someone Fears you off the Downed Thief. First, note this is called team play and it doesn’t matter if it’s a Thief or an Elementalist, either way a Fear or other crowd control on you will prevent you from Stomping the guy. But, if this happens, note that the Thief will still teleport – and then wherever he is, he’s staying put. So if he does have enough time to cast his 3 second stealth, just go there and swing at him. He’s not healing this entire time, so keep hitting him with autoattack in that area where you know he is. If you give him long enough, he will teleport again, but it’s on a long enough cooldown that a Thief should never get 2 teleports in while down unless you just ignore him.

If you are low health, make sure to run from the Thief and don’t kill him right away. That teleport and stealth ability while Downed? Casting it resets the Thief healing himself, so he’s just going to be Downed for longer and longer each time. But if you are low health, keep distance, because some Thief players will pick a trait which gives us 50% more damage while Downed. So we can actually dish out some pain to put you in a Downed state with us, and at that point, we probably win that match with the teleport and stealth confusing you enough to our position. Luckily, most Thieves don’t like being in Downed state, and wouldn’t ever pick a trait for PvP that relies on them losing in the first place.

It takes a long long time to heal up on his own, so the best thing is to ignore the Thief at first. Our auto-attack when Downed bounces targets, hitting up to 3 people. This includes that random monster that happened into the fight. So the Thief can actually kill a nearby monster and Rally back to life again! If the monster is on the Thief, there’s not much you can do, but if the monster is on you – run away! Get some distance and kill the monster, then come back for the Thief. I assure you, he is still there, still down, you just need to be aware of that.

2 weeks in, I don’t think everyone knows how to counter every class during their Downed state. Some people make it easy on you and don’t fight. The Thief sure has some awesome abilities – I wouldn’t say the best – ever see a Guardian push an entire team off a high bridge after getting Downed? That’s sick. The Thief teleport is supposed to be so he can teleport closer to friends to help him revive. The stealth is there in case you Fear off the reviving player and begin a Stomp later than normal. Overall the Thief will still be there and you have a good chance of downing him either way.

Tip: Put your camera rotation to maximum so you can look around easier. If I’m teleporting, I guarantee I’m not teleporting the way you are facing.

I think, to test, I am going to play all night ONLY using Heartseeker spam, and see if it works. My guess; no. My hands and fingers had a tinge of tiredness in them last night! That hasn’t happened in a LONG time in a game.

Just you. I consider them to be amazing.
1) Basilisk Venom; although not seemingly powerful (wtf 1 sec stun!?) note it’s a root, daze, and stun all in one. I actually wonder if people can stun break out of it – probably not – but need to test. It allows you to set up sick backstab combos – go see YouTube.

2) Thieves Guild; the force multiplier. One casts an AOE blindness and the other uses Scorpion Wire to pull in and knock down your opponent. This skill instantly turns your small group of 3 into a confusing group of 5. You can also cast this mid-stealth, allowing your minions to take the first hits from a group, absorbing damage.

3) Dagger Storm; a low cooldown, extremely high damage moving AOE which reflects projectiles, cripples and bleeds nearby foes. Combined with your poison cloud from shortbow you can add poison condition on there as well. Or gain whirl effects from other AOEs. Probably the most badkitten AOE in the game right now. Want to turn that mob of players into a crippling bleeding retreating mess? Use this.

I almost never use Basilisk in WvW so, it’s more for sPvP for sure. I use Thieves Guild in small groups to make our numbers seem more massive, and thus confuse and overwhelm the enemy, and I use Dagger Storm in massive fights to push an entire mob of enemies back, or to cover my friend as he runs away from dying. It reflects projectiles – not just the ones targeting you. Very useful.

@Prexxus: never thought of Basilisk with the Deadly Arts Grandmaster Trait. So it IS for WvW

I’ve noticed certain things not working on swap. I had a Hydromancy sigil in for a little bit but, sometimes it wouldn’t fire. Not sure why, just had to deal with it.

The main factor here is the lack of:
1) The need for food
2) The need for water
3) The need for shelter
4) Some other unmentionables

If I can buy all the materials for crafting an item for 3 gold, why not sell it at 3 gold? Why not do that and have the next guy undercut me to 2 gold? Who cares anyway? Why are you trying to make a profit? Do you need a profit to kill more monsters? WoW had the false illusion that you could get better gear than what you have now, and yet every time they’d throw out a new patch to invalidate what you grinded forever for. And when you thought of a single cool item, you’d go to the AH and realize you’d have to grind for days just to make the gold for that component.

ArenaNet is about fun. Is it fun going to the AH and finding the item you need listed with a ridiculous price? No. It’s fun to be able to go to the AH and find whatever you need for a ‘good’ price. There are 10,000 others trying to sell the same item as you, and you are expecting a 10% profit?

I tell you what, research the rare stuff, the hard to get stuff, the stuff that takes weeks to get. Sell that. Sell that for what weeks of your time is worth. And I’m guessing it will sell. You will have the gold, and the other guy will have the item he didn’t have to spend weeks to get. Just like in real life, where time = money, it’s the same here. And it takes 2c of my time to gather wood, or even craft an item, so it’s worth the 2c to sell it on the AH.

I agree with this summary.

You’ll probably get rezzed within a minute or two. So unless you’re going long periods of AFK, I think it’s just a matter of timing. If you’re dying at the edge of the world, and waiting for a rez, save yourself the money and just teleport to a waypoint.

They are adding a fix where you can choose to stay in the overflow server. Fix incoming.

I can see the difference. The difference is that I’m jealous in the second one.

@Paradox Angel
What he said.

The furthest back is the player. Attack it. Funny because you can be sure, be it Thief or Mesmer, that the one place the enemy is NOT, is right under you.

This makes me hope Mesmers learn to teleport right under the big Charr character to heal up.

The story mode is somewhat dependent on completing an objective.

I had one encounter where the single NPC was extremely tough in that he did a lot of damage. I knew I was under geared and yet I kept trying. Died 20 times or so, hurting my ego, but finally I learned to dodge the attacks correctly, learned to perfect my timing, and realized I got better because of it. I learned to watch my cooldowns, to use blinding skills to make him miss, and used the terrain to my advantage. It felt good when I finally got it. Learned my lesson and moved on.

Can you Abandon all the way to the last quest? Then why have it at all if it’s a debatable topic. Go level up some more, grab some better gear, and come back to finish the tough ones. Almost positive you’re just undergeared for the fight.

And if you need help I’ll gladly help out, just add me in game.

@voodoospork
Haha I am trying so hard not to be negative for this game, but you got it right. It’s a personal problem if you can’t wrap your head around the downed state mechanic.

And yes, in terms of outplaying someone, I have been very low health, saw a nearby low-health monster, taken the fall to downed state, killed the monster, rallied, and healed back up to finish the enemy. That is outplaying someone. Noticing all conditions around you and using them to the best of your ability.

Just FYI: Repair costs are there to give a tiny incentive not to die. Before this ‘feature’ players in games would death-zerg stuff. Why not? No risk. And since you’d still get some credit, and be somewhat effective before dying, the only downside was the run back.

The repair cost is a needed reminder that charging the enemy mob of players is a bad choice, and you need to find a better way to become effective.

I re-read something… as far as 2 people going out and taking points – it is very doable. My friend and I late last night – he just got back from partying at 2AM and I was tired from playing all night – we still went around and capped two supply points in WvW by ourselves. We encountered 3 defenders at the southern supply, and took them out, all the while having the NPC’s on us. We then went behind enemy lines to the far east supply, and after having a zerg come in and down my friend – I escaped and came back around to rez him – we took out a single defender there along with all the NPCs at the same time.

It was awesome and we were tired and unmotivated! We pull of some awesome stuff and yes, do it as a small group most of the time. In this regard, the downed state worked against the enemies. Plenty of times I just /sit next to a downed player until he releases 2-3 minutes later

At level 80, completing an event Gold you get something like 2 silver and 60 copper. Really not an issue. I was down to 2c last night and back up to 60-70 silver by the end of the night. Oh… wait.. nevermind… yes it is hard to make gold! (keep inflation down!!!)

@Toast
If you need a group, add me in game and come to Jade Quarry. Join the TS3 server we use, and participate.

Your point, “You down a player and he’s not dead!” is correct. The player is now down, and you have to continue working to ‘make him dead’. And if you don’t feel like you ‘made him dead’ because someone can come by 10 minutes later and resurrect him… he could have respawned by then. In addition, I love camping guildies who we kill – stand away behind a hill or something, and when his friends come to rez, we jump them too!

I compared downed state to WoW before. In WoW, does the Warrior not have Shield Wall he can pop at low health to give him (effectively) ‘extra-health’ and he’s not dead even though a couple hits more and you know you would have killed him? What’s the difference between that and downed state in perspective? Warrior changes stance and pops shield wall and gets healed back up even though you were kicking his cat. Effectively he was ‘down’ used a ‘down state’ ability and got healed back up. Although not the exact same, GW2 gives this to everyone in the form of a downed state.

Again, if you need a group join up.

I think the game Player Wars 2 is that way —-—>

Guild Wars kinda, sorta entails working with a group. Warriors have no Combo Fields, and are very direct damage dealers. Pretty much no AOE besides a fear. So if you see a warrior, immobilize, stun, and keep him rooted – just like in WoW – to prevent his damage from being that high. You do have a stun on your bar somewhere, right?

Of course, if your team is a bunch of pugs and no one is coordinating, then yes the coordinated team will win.

I am a Thief, and I think it’s just fine. This is mainly due to me escaping with my life at 1k health allllll the time. One little mishap and I’m dead – the same for every Thief – and it feels so right. I pride myself on not making mishaps. Yet I run into tons of other Thief players and kill them all the time – with my group and solo – and I realize it’s just the skill everyone’s going to rage about. The difference between the downed thief and me is that I made one less mistake.

Both are heavily skill based, so take your pick. As a Thief, the Mesmer is very damaging to me, and I have to play tighter around them. They are kind of the anti-melee class. Warriors complain about them all the time. I am considering turning off my auto attack because my shots get reflected by one of the phantasms. Mesmer is the game changer, although fortunately squishy enough so far that I haven’t had too much problem with the actual killing part – I have to run away and heal more, and use cooldowns more, but overall I still come up on top. Chalk that up to skill, though; I’m sure good Mesmers can go toe-to-toe with anyone.

Thief, yes, everything experienced in the first 10 levels, and it’s the same after that – except that’s kind of good because you get to refine how it all works. There’s no top-end utility skills that are game changers really. You find your play style early and build skill upon it. I believe Mesmers have more reliance on those high level skills for different clones for different situations. I can only imagine that the Mesmer takes a lot of micro-management, and I can tell you the Thief is all about self-improvement.

I believe it’s usually the bullet that separates the skills. So it’s missing or there is some language mishap on your client. Honestly my only guess would be to do a complete reinstall, unless they have a ‘verify game files’ option somewhere in the launcher. It may just be a system font issue. Just need more info for that little error.

@Toast
Well, I really only fight poles when it’s an undergeared, and not as skilled, player. I’ve had good teams rez their friend before my stomp completes. So it’s dynamic, as mentioned above, attrition based. You can go in and kill a weak day-1 player and feel good, but his team will rez him right away. So choices matter most. Yes, while you’re stomping someone, your beach is being taken, and you have to take that into account to become better. I have to say, however, that the more people you send back to spawn, the more you’re going to be taking objectives.

As for the PvP comment, I’m pretty sure you did Player vs. Player before the guy got into downed state. I’m sure you can adapt and learn how to play Player vs. Pole if you are good enough to get him into downed state.

And for the “F-inisher” comment: in my groups I will usually call out who is going to finish the target – usually the warrior – and we all switch targets right away. Everyone still gets credit for the kill, and we don’t group up on the downed player. Strategy and tactics and skill.

Find warrior, make friend.

What defines skill? In my mind the key skill is making the right decisions. So if you make the decision to walk up to the downed player and “F” stomp him, you live with the consequence of taking more damage, or going down yourself. It might be the wrong decision for the circumstance. Only skill will help you know which is the right move.

The act of the stomp, which you may not feel is skillful, is quite skillful in learning how to deal with all the tricks. As a thief I know the guy is going to teleport away, so I end my stomp early and look for his teleport. For Mesmers, I know this is a clone, so I’ll end early and fine the real one. Or I’ll stand back and attack, because I am low health and don’t want to go down.

If you are a warrior, you can use stability to resist the Necro fear on down state, maybe even the knockback from Guardian. I don’t know how that works but there is strategy and choices to be made. I understand not everyone likes it, but it is a step forward for those with skill.

Plenty of times I will run after downing someone because I am outnumbered. I got him down, I can do it again, and he knows I can do it again. So let his friends chase me away; fine. It’s not the end of the battle just yet.

Seems like an exploit that needs fixing. I didn’t know you could move the Orbs, personally, so I can see how someone could sabotage the enemy by switching servers, giving the Orb to their friends, and then switching back.

It -might- go away with paid transfers, but there is probably a better fix.

http://bit.ly/9MoOFa

Elder Dragon!

Honestly, I’d prefer this be the General Discussion, as right now there isn’t any, and it’s much more in line to help out players rather than to troll. It gives a good excuse to not troll, gives good conversation, and I’ve learned a lot reading the conversations. I agree locking stuff is not good; even rage topics have plenty of help in them.

This topic, has tons of help, for example, a new player coming along looking for the General Forum now knows there is no such thing so far! There was in Beta, however, so we can expect it at some point I think.

I believe Amazon.com has the book you are looking for.

There is gear with every stat combination at level 80. Doesn’t matter which one you join unless you are die-hard trying to represent your order, in which case, you made your choice based upon that in the first place.

As someone mentioned anyway, you can transmute the order gear appearance to gear with the stats you like. I don’t think this is an issue, pick which one appeals to you the most and have fun instead of hating the dialogue and questline options because you picked something due to future gear which doesn’t matter.

It is done right, everything screams “They thought of everything!”

One disagreement/agreement.

Strangers being helpful for 0.1% of their bar in experience? I really think it’s done because it’s good, not tedious, gives a minor reward, and usually sparks a tiny bit of dialogue.

Compared to a game where there is no reward for rezzing – say a battle rez for a Druid in WoW – there’s no experience and in most cases the Druid iskitten he had to waste his rez on a DPS.

GW2 delivers in that the tiny insignificant experience gain is kind of like the happiness you get in real life when someone drops their books and you go to help them pick everything up. There is no reward besides the good deed, a bit of character improvement, a brief dialogue, and it’s over.

I’m sure that you don’t remember the last guy you revived in GW2, but I can almost guarantee you remember the last time YOU were revived in GW2.

Spear does more damage IF you can land the hits. Which you can’t do so well in most cases. So yes use the Harpoon Gun and learn it’s tricks. Very powerful skill set.

Zero initiative.

Swords also hit all frontal targets. So it’s much better vs. Mesmers and other stealthed Thief characters, as you’ll hit them more often than not with the auto spam.

I personally don’t use the sword because…. Well I don’t know why. It is good and has it’s own merit, but there’s something about Heartseeker spam and Death Blossom which make daggers so nice. It’s not that they’re more effective than the sword, but just more suited to what I like to do… like Death Blossoming into a large group of enemies before stealthing out.

And yet, I can sell that item from anywhere, getting it out of my inventory, for a “15%” convenience fee. I don’t think I have a problem with that.

I was going to say what I see has already been said. You can DPS and drop AOE/heal/whatever at the same time. I know a lot of people want to zone out, target a single tank, and spam a single heal button for 4 hours on raid night, but GW2 isn’t made for that kind of gameplay.

You’re not the only one getting upset. But, you’re only getting upset because you think in terms of old style gaming. Health bar goes down and you win, gg. But GW2 has expanded that. Think of the downed state as a health-bar extension, and you won’t be so mad. You can switch to ranged and sit back for 10 seconds and kill with auto-attack, or go in and do a stomp and kill them with risk of taking damage.

I’ve taken 6k or more damage from a downed player, but they are helpless during that time, you can go out of range, heal, and come back to finish them off. It’s a dynamic new way of doing ‘death’ and it’s really good. I expect every future MMO will deal with ‘defeat’ in a similar way.

I recommend just auto attacking if you’re having trouble with stomps. Even if he gets you into downed state, his health is going to be lower, and you can duke it out on the ground. When he dies for good, you will rally up, and can go back to whatever.

I love LFG because in WvW I can see enemies who are, which means they are alone, and a free badge

Thanks for not revealing our most important secret! Good video.

Try crafting, you can get quite a few levels with crafting in a short time frame. It won’t level you all the way but, it’s good to see a couple levels shaved off for clicking a single button on a stack of items.

Killing someone is <gasp> not just seeing the health bar go down. It is a little more, and yes some classes seem to not have something ‘cool’ to prolong their inevitable death. I can say that as a Thief, those ‘cool teleport and vanish’ abilities have saved me like once or twice in WvW, and -never- in Story Mode quests. Only rarely in PvE where I’ve been able to rally – but that’s because I was doing damage, not using those skills.

So, it comes down to how you play with a team. I know my group can get better at rezzing downed players, so we’ll work on that. And as for you, keeping a ranger away with an immobilize is pretty good for that, while not so good for a melee class who is right on you. Maybe they need to make it an AOE immobilize to stop Mesmers etc. from getting to you sooner (maybe the single-target catches the clone instead), but there’s going to be a use for it as gameplay develops.

Edit: Also, the fun part is that 5-10 people will try to stomp you at once. So delaying that in any way is fun because so many people will waste their time. It sucks that you don’t have a keep-away skill. An AOE immobilize would be fitting.

In private chat – meaning whispers, party chat, guild chat – you’re fine. Say bad things in /say /map /team etc, yeah you’ll get in trouble.

They do have a profanity filter for those who want to block the occasional bad words.

And by the way I’m 99% sure any bans were due to people raging in /team chat in WvW. I’m sure you can roleplay away in /say where the casual passer-by isn’t even going to notice you telling your girlfriend that her Charr derriere is sexy.

Blocking, from what I’ve seen, is a channeled ability that blocks – I think – all incoming damage, be it from the side, back, or wherever.

Advice for WoW players: buy this game now and stop wasting monthly fees for a gaming experience that is lackluster. You won’t understand until you play GW2 how good it is in comparison.

Just a quick note for WoW players: Legendary weapons have the exact-same-base-damage as exotic gear bought on the auction house for 2 gold. It’s not about gear, your skill can actually matter all the time instead of only when you’re fully geared and about to buy the next panda-expansion.

This is the biggest thing for me right now – and the funny part is it’s so minor it’s not really an issue.

I dislike staring straight down at my character. The camera is a little off. The angle, not the FOV, is the problem for me. I don’t see the sky in this game. It’s a constant horizon at the top of my screen. To be able to tilt the camera upwards a little would be a big improvement for me.

Camera needs work and I’m sure it will come along. One of the big pluses I’ve seen with WoW was the camera pivoting when it touched the ground instead of sliding underneath the character as it does now. The camera kind of the only non-polished thing that sticks out in my mind right now. I’d like:

1) A further out zoom distance
2) Adjustable floating camera pivot (not sure why they added left/right adjustment and not up/down, lol)
3) Camera-Ground pivot so I can target up walls and so on without losing all position relationship

A note, though, so people understand: they only ‘load’ and only give you networking data for whatever is in front of you. This is kind of how they control lag. If you’re fighting in WvW attacking a tower, and the enemy is flanking behind you 100ft, you can turn right around and run at them and not see them for 10-15 seconds. Then the entire mob starts popping into view. Combined with the limited viewing options it can be very troublesome.