Guild Wars 2

Kind of depends on what your playstyle is.

When you’re first starting out low micro self sufficient pets like Bear are ideal because you yourself are still getting used to the game and trying to formulate your own playstyle. But once you’ve gotten the hang of things, you’ll find other pets suit certain playstyles and strategies better than others.

That same ‘fire and forget’ quality of Bears that makes them appealing at the start also unfortunately makes them a bit shallow. There’s more possible applications and depth to interacting with your pet when the family skills also affect enemies/allies/the playing field instead of being purely inwardly focused.

I think after you’ve gotten settled, you should start playing around with the different families and see what compliments your approach best.

GG etiquette is weird.

Because you never know if you’re playing against one of those oldies who originally used it in the chess-inspired good sportsmanship way, or newer folks who are used to the sarcastic incarnations. Though, context helps, because no matter what side you’re on a faceroll is rarely a good anything.

But for more clarity you can put a modifier word after it to help identify the intended sentiment. For example ‘wp’ (for Well Played) can help you seem more genuine.

Karma comes around almost neigh instantaneously.
Unless you secretly adore the process of autobalancing and delight in scattered prey, it’s actually really hard to be a prick in hotjoin. I’m kind of wondering how many people complaining about quitters are just social inepts who don’t quite get the whole ‘my actions have consequences’ thing yet.

I have some longbow induced ennui myself. Aside from trying to learn to free aim the thing (oh god), I kinda’ feel like I’ve hit the ceiling on it in PvE.

Kinda’ depends on your definition of fun.
I could spend ages picking apart Pet AI and building around abuses. Seems like every pet has some hidden quirk to it once you start looking past the F2s.

Except Bears. Bears are boring.

Generally speaking, no. There is an optional keybind called ‘Lock Autotarget’, but it won’t keep you from targeting something accidentally with the right mouse button.

However if you are using the camera to turn, how do you feel about perma-mouselook? You can use your local Fancy Schmancy Mouse software or AutoHotKey to put Mouselook on a toggle, thereby producing the functionality you’re looking for by virtue of simply never clicking the right mouse button during combat at all (because it’s technically being held all the time.)

I don’t know where posting AutoHotkey scripts lands on the sliding scale of kosher-ness for the official forums, given what that program is capable of, but if you google ‘Guildwars 2 AutoHotKey Mouselook Toggle’ you can find a couple.

I do believe you have to be in a party to Call Target, though sPvP and Dungeons seem to automagically assume you’re in a party.

Pressing T will target a Called Target. Or, you can change it in the hotkey menu under ‘Take Target’.

There isn’t quitting in a Hotjoin Game.
However, I sympathize insomuch that this isn’t exactly the most stable hotjoin experience I’ve participated in.

Out of 10 games you might get a 2 or 3 game streak where the points start getting in that sweet spot of a close exciting match and the population stabilizes. But the remaining vast majority of your games are just bland featureless experiences with warm bodies bleeding out of the room to some insane 250 point discrepancy.

And, granted, I could think of a thing or two to tweak on the backend systems to soften the frustration moments a bit. Maybe autobalance can’t happen after a certain point? Maybe give people points for pressing “I Volunteer” if there’s a major point discrepancy because, let’s be honest, that’s pretty altruistic?

However, I’d be remiss to point all the fingers at the mechanics. I see alot of instability that’s purely socially constructed. There’s a surprising amount of people treating this like it’s a matchmade game, and then they turn around and seem to wonder why they’re suddenly alone and getting autobalanced everytime they blink. Newsflash to the uninitiated, in a room structure there’s a much lower threshold for ‘putting up with other people’s kittenfluff’. This should go without saying, but if frustrates you, don’t do it other people. Just exercise a bit of the Golden Rule and god forbid maybe even a little bit of politeness and you’d be surprised how much better a room can be.

I certainly gave Spirits the old college try.
Honestly, I kinda’ think it’s straddling an awkward line between glass buffs and walking traps not managing to be especially satisfactory at either.

I can’t really identify with the hangup, because I totally wanna’ snipe somebody with rainbows and flowers.

(They shoot rainbows and flowers, by the way.)

I’m also having problems.

There’s a dire lack of visual consistency among skills with a similar effect. Not all instances of Stability have a consistent visual cue, not all instances of Invulnerability have a consistent visual cue (or even a consistent name), not all Heals telegraph a consistent visual cue, not all Elites have a visually consistent element that persists for the duration. In order to simply be aware of even just the important overarching elements of combat, it requires committing to memory a spilling handful of unique animations and particle effects for each and every class. The Zerg only serves to overlap various visual cues and effects on top of eachother which makes matching which cue goes with what effect and committing it to memory all the more difficult.

And I’m sure that’s delightfully deep for the dedicated, but for the rest of us it makes combat only so much senseless sparkling until you’ve stuck it out for a fixed period of time.

Granted, it’s probably unreasonable to expect any sane company to manage that kind of clarity en development, given how often skills functions and the functions themselves must have been shifting wildly. But once the dust has settled, I think it would take down a massive barrier of entry to sPvP if the major movements of battle were given some structure. Don’t have to throw flavor to the wolves, or anything, just include things that can work in tandem with the existing animations and particles (like, growing the character model a bit).

Gunk is an aimed Ethereal field, Venom Sack is a ground-targeted Poison field.
He’s more on the de-buff combo-y side of supporting, but Rapid Fire and Gunk wrecks things.

Allies can, enemies can’t.
But on a practical level allies whom are strangers rarely will, which makes Pig a bit of a red headed stepchild of the porcine family. Boar, Warthog and Siamoth you can take command control of their Forages if nobody else feels like playing along and it ends up working out just as well. Pig’s Egg and Elixir kind of depends on other people scooping things up off the ground when they need them to have the best effect.

Have you tried Warthog? His ranged combo fields makes him an awesome buddy if you’re using a Longbow.

I like Spirits as a concept.
Spirits seem to be these glass cannon buffers whose placement on the field is more about ensuring the longevity of the buff by ensuring the survival of the Spirit, and less about making sure you encompass all your allies in the effect range (like banners and turrets). There also seems to be a bit of risk/reward at play with their glass cannon nature and the buff range being larger than the activated effect range; you have a choice to endanger the duration of the buff in order to allow additional functionality.

That all sounds great on paper, and putting it into practice I feel clever finding a new hidey hole and executing map awareness. But there’s alot of little hang-ups in the execution that cut down on my enjoyment of the process.

1) The buff range is a bit on the small side (900-ish).
It’s making me feel less like I’m operating a mechanic that has an alternative emphasis on the placement, and more like I’m suffering under two restrictions; not only can my buff die, but I have to get it within midrange of people. It limits my options for clever hidey holes in a way I find more limiting than challenging. It can’t be infinite, obviously, but at least 1200.

2) (As far as I can tell) Line of sight counts for the activated effect. It’s a bit of a skill-ceiling when using spirits, I can’t use cover to get a mob within the astoundingly small range of the spirit’s activated effect.

3) Spirits aren’t consistently summoned at a particular location relative to character making utilizing cover intelligently difficult. I think they should appear in the same manner traps do, exactly where my character is, and less in the manner pets do which is randomly somewhere to the left or right.

Spirit Traits are kind of lackluster.
The additional proc-rates trait seems dissonant with the internal cooldown on procs, and Spirits following you seems more like a work-around to combat the high summoning cooldown and meh range and less something I actually want my glass cannon buffs to be doing. Don’t follow me, I’m dangerous, godkittenit.

Since we are a pet class, I think our ‘additional ally’ mechanic would be better served trait-wise by being included in some of the options we have for Pets. For example; the ‘Training’ traits such as ‘Speed Training’ and ‘Malice Training’ could be changed to affect Spirits as well. Other traits could also be looked into like; Natural Healing, Beastmaster’s Bond, Enlargement, Fortifying Bond, Companion’s Defense. Not only would this make the Spirit mechanic better in a way that’s kind of ‘pet-class-y’, but there’s also an opportunity to improve under-performing traits.

Well that was a bit of thesis. TL:DR; I think spirits would be improved if they felt more like pets and I was rewarded more for clever placement and using cover.

Well, I can’t say much about fun or how well it works for me. I already have a build that works around my playstyle and that I find fun, so deviating from that to test yours probably isn’t going to work for me or be much fun for me. But, I can still try to give advice.

Since it seems like you’re using Brutal Charge and Paralyzing Venom as your primary defenses; Can I recommend grabbing Zephyr’s Speed in Beastmaster over going into Nature Magic? Being able to swap your pet and use their control skill quickly can be pretty clutch sometimes, and the additional burst of quickness for yourself isn’t all that bad either and seems like it might be right up your alley. As somebody who uses Pigs, I wouldn’t leave home without it.

With the remaining 5 points, can I recommend grabbing Hunter’s Tactics? Since you are popping quickness and then flanking the enemy in order to get the bleed from shortbow, you should be able to abuse that additional 10% damage fairly often.

Oakheart Salve and Shared Anguish are fine for PvE when you’re just getting started, but as you get better you’ll find yourself dodging things proactively and positioning yourself more wisely instead of needing to rely on passive defenses like these. By the time you get high enough to use your tier 2 traits, you might not even need things like this anymore.

I think I’d like Spirits alot more if the game considered them Pets, but they weren’t command-able with your profession mechanic and they weren’t affected by swapping.

It would open up all sorts of crazy synergy with Shouts, Traits and Signets.
I know I’d give a second glance to Signet of Renewal, Search and Rescue, and other support-oriented options I’d previously written off if I could achieve them from multiple anchor points on the playing-feild. And some pet enhancement options that just couldn’t quite eclipse it’s neighbors in value would receive a boost; Natural Healing, Speed Training, Expertise Training, Malicious Training, Signet of Stone. There’s a ton of ways to approach Spirit Survivability with all those options opened to you, and you can speed up the casting time and manipulate the efficiency of the activated abilities, plus it make for more interesting trait options insomuch that suddenly a ton more traits are on the table.

There’s some oddities like Sic ‘Em and Hilt Bash that are attack focused and would only work with Storm Spirit’s activated effect, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing in and of itself, just incredibly niche.

The casting time on F2 for Pigs ends up bothering me for an unusual reason. I actually don’t mind how long it takes, but it bothers me that the pet doesn’t root itself in place to complete the cast. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve shifted ever so slightly and the Pig’s interrupted itself to madly dash in front of me.
Annoying in PvE, crazy irritating in PvP.

I prettymuch agree with this.
I think the real headscratchers for me is that Skirmishing has the Trap, Shortbow, and Axe traits and raises neither Malice nor Expertise, and Nature Magic is supporterrific but doesn’t raise Healing. Something about that just doesn’t seem right.

I do actually like Bountiful Hunter in Nature Magic, though. If anything weirds me out about that line, it’s Two-Handed Training. What the kittenfluff are you doing there, Greatsword and Spear? Go trade places with Offhand Training. I want a better Greastword in Survival and a better Warhorn/Torch in Support.

While I think it would make sense to move Nature’s Wrath if you move Healing, I also think it’s a pretty lame grandmaster trait all around and wouldn’t mind seeing it get axed completely. Surely we can think of something niftier for the pinnacle of the pet line. Faster F2 skill casting? Lord knows I’d go 25 deep for that.

Kind of depends on your circumstances.
I generally agree with any strategy that centers around ‘burning his initiative’.

To add another option to what RJ said.
The thing with thieves’ initiative system and the skill queue system is that it’s incredibly easy to accidentally spam yourself into a corner, and a Heartseeker strategy encourages exactly that. So while your kneejerk reaction might be to try and use an invulnerability state or stunbreaker when you first start the engagement to keep your health above the ‘burst zone’, there’s something to be said for waiting until the fight has progressed a bit and then activating your plan letting the thief accidentally spam themselves into helplessness.

While some skills outright say they provide invulnerability, also look for anything in your arsenal that says ‘evade’, ‘block’ or ‘distortion’. That’s effectively short-term Invulnerability under different names and depending on the skill can work while Immobilized and facing the wrong way.

Also, it may not top the death recap charts, but be mindful of the other stuff. Backstab is another attack on the same weapon that does alot of damage from behind and is only available while a thief is invisible. Assassin’s signet multiplies an attack by alot and is good for ‘softening you up’ or ‘finishing you off’, but it’s used up if the attack misses and has a long cooldown. Invisibility isn’t invulnerability so keep manually swinging.

….not broken exactly.
But something can be entirely functional and still not fluid or comfortable. After a while the targeting should start to seep into your subconscious and be a thing of muscle memory you just don’t think about. But I still hollar indignantly at my screen like it’s some blonde trick walking down a dark alley in a horror movie, when comparatively at this point, I’d reached that autopilot state of mind in WoW, LoL, and TF2.

I’m actually wondering if we can swap some Autohotkey or Fancy Programmable Mouse advice over here or is that sort of thing just not kosher on the O-boards? I don’t want to condone waltzing on any kind of slippery slopes, but putting some basic jerry-riggable control options on the table might help some folks get comfortable.

The targeting and camera drives me up the wall in this game.
I kind of wish there was a more Action-RPG alternative to the control scheme.

I will say, though, taking off ‘Autotarget’ and instead binding the ‘Autotarget Lock’ hotkey added alot to my quality of life for this game. It locks the targeting onto whatever is being blue highlighted by the center of your camera, for however long you hold down the button. If you hit something else during this time, you’ll still keep that target. When you let it go or click it while hovering your center screen over an empty space, the target clears.

There’s still some kinks, (esp: it’s range limit), but for the most part I like it more. It’s a very ‘binary’ targeting system, for lack of a better word. Your default state is targeting nothing just throwing skills off the hip onto whatever has the grave misfortune of being in your way, but once you do commit to a target you can’t accidentally shake it for nothing. Since adopting it, I no longer find myself randomly unloading a burst skill onto a mob minding it’s own business on the horizon while kiting something nasty, or trying to leap away from trouble only to go sailing back into the fray.