Guild Wars 2

Okay, having played all 8 classes to level 80…

There is no way to claim one class is only about one particular way to play. I can build really strong DPS necros. I can build ubertank necros. I can build a pretty solid support necro. That said, I’ll try to give ya some ideas and put them in a kinda ranking from worst to best.

8) Engineer. There is just no way to get around the fact that a class that doesn’t excel at anything is the worst. They can sorta tank with a pistol/shield build except they don’t have enough tricks to hold aggro and keep themselves alive while doing it. They can sorta DPS with grenades except that grenades have been nerfed so far down as to make them one of the most mediocre AoE attacks in the game (but oh, hey, you get sigils now &eyeroll&) They can sorta support with the elixir gun and healing turret and/or kit, but guardians are much better at boons and elementalists are much better at healing.

7) Necromancer. This class is ranked this low not because they’re bad, but because they’re broken. Minions flat out don’t work with anything resembling reliability. As that’s one of the unique mechanics of the class, that’s a pretty big thing to have broken. That said, necros can tank like champs. You can build a toon that effectively has three health bars to work with, self heals constantly, and can provide combo fields for teammates. Necros can also provide solid condition damage via posion and bleeding which they have to problem at all stacking.

6) Thief. At this point, the rankings are getting way into the but…but…but… part. Thieves are the masters of trashing other players in 1v1 and most mobs veteran and below. The problem is that anything that can survive the burst is a huge problem for a thief. Now, you can build a condition thief that is much more capable of winning fights against tougher enemies, but playing a condition thief is likely one of the trickiest endeavors in the game. You can’t really take much damage so you’re dependent on your own use of dodging and stealth to survive and every fight becomes about attrition so those skills will be put to constant use.

5) Mesmer. Seriously, ranks 3-6 are more a muddle mass than really one class all that much better than the others. A sword-pistol clone spam mesmer can tank like you wouldn’t believe by keeping clones in the face of their target for an entire fight. Those clones also stack vulnerability so hey, bonus. A phantasm DPS mesmer can spit out a lot of damage as can a mindwrack shatterer. Lots of options here, and the mesmer is pretty good at all of them.

4) Ranger. My personal fav w/ caveats. The biggest caveat is that ranger melee pets have accuracy ‘issues’. The pets have some cool big attacks but those attacks often get fired off at enemies that are out of position for them to work on. Even with that, the pet’s ability to tank while the ranger kites makes this the most solo friendly class out there. Rangers also have an awesome heal ability in Healing Spring which makes them useful to hang out around in WvW or dungeons.

3) Guardian. The kings of tanking GW2 style which means boon/heal spam rather than raw stats. Guardians also make decent enough DPS toons albeit not up to ranger/thief/warrior levels.

2) Warrior. This is likely the closest thing to a completed class in the game. No major power breaking bugs. Lots of room to move around on the DPS-tank continuum. Can fight nearly as well at range as they do at melee. They can even be made to have some solid benefit as support toons.

1) Elementalist. Before the big arcane dodging I win nerf, this class was leaps and bounds better than everything else. Post-nerf, they’re just simply better. No other class can build in as strong a mix of survival and damage in one package. No other class, not even the engineer, has as much flexibility, nor can they make such signficant changes on the fly. Need to heal? Flip to water. Need to boost durability while waiting on cooldowns. Flip to earth. Want to rain down fire on your enemies hiding atop walls. Flip to fire. Want to really, really show off what this class can do? Go dagger/dagger and start changing elements every few seconds creating a ball of non-stop big hits and damage absorption .

Pretty sure my signet/aura elementalist can tank better than the average warrior. My necro is definitely a better tank than any warrior and as good as most guardians.

Build and stats matter far, far more than armor. Personally, I think warriors stink as tanks, and beside which, why would you want to give up all that DPS potential to turn your warrior into a tank. Guardians are pretty awesomesauce, tho, espec as much of their tanking ability comes from boons that they can pretty easily apply to the entire group.

The only class that truly cannot tank is thief. And it’s not so much that you can’t build a bunker thief as it is the fact that part of thief defense is stealth which is ver-bad for holding aggro.

@eisberg & maddoctor

Even your examples aren’t changing the encounter enough to actually matter in the bigger picture. In maddoctor’s, even if players 1,2, & 3 switched to MF gear and all lost about a third of their damage, the encounter is still only getting a few seconds longer. This is the equivalent of AC, CM, TA, and other easy dungeon runs. You just aren’t having any significant impact on the party being able to complete the dungeon or making a run noticeably longer.

I’ve already agreed that in harder content, MF gear is bad or if a party is forming for speed runs. In speed runs, you want everybody going full DPS which means not only skipping the MF gear, but actually changing builds to buff DPS (in my case, I just switch toons). In harder content, you’d be trading out the MF part of your gear for toughness (at least if you know what you’re doing that’s the trade you make).

So why is it wrong to maximize the return on a dungeon run that you’re only going to make once a day if all you’re giving up to do it is maybe ten to fifteen minutes over the course of the run, and that much only on the hardest of the runs you’d want to do in MF gear?

This is even more of a question when you realize that in an AC run, a party of 80’s in full exotic MF gear might take 5 minutes longer per path than if they went full zerker. If that same party had 4 members in full zerker, but the fifth member was a level 60 toon win level 55ish gear, they might very well take more than an extra 5 minutes because of the way dungeons scale and the advantages of having all your traits.

@skotie,

Let me try it like this… (I’m gonna ignore a whole lotta variables, but you’ll get it)

Let’s say a dungeon champ has 500,000 hit points. And the party looks like this:
1 – 5000 DPS
2 – 7500 DPS
3 – 5000 DPS
4 – 5000 DPS
5 – 5000 DPS

The party does 27,500 DPS. It will take that party around 18-19 seconds to kill the champ. And everyone will get the same chance at reward EVEN THOUGH player 2 did more damage than anyone else in the group. In other words, unequal effort but equal chance at reward. In this scenario, what motivation does player 2 really have to put forth that extra effort be it from better skill, all exotic equipment, whatever?

Now, let’s take the same boss, but put player 2 in MF gear reducing his damage by a third to 5000, the same as everyone else. This takes the party’s DPS to 25,000, and it will now take the party 20 seconds to kill the champ. In this case, player 2’s extra skill or better equipment allowed him/her to downgrade their stats in order to earn extra rewards for that extra that they bring to a group, and it had a negligible effect on the party’s success because whatever extra time is going to be a fairly small fraction of 24 hours.

That’s the point I’ve been trying to make. Extra effort in this game goes unrewarded UNLESS you as a player take steps to change it. That extra effort consists of doing well-executed speed runs or high level fractals or SELF-NERFING VIA MAGIC GEAR. At that point, you do actually get rewarded for your extra effort.

And on the subject of leeching, you don’t have to see someone’s gear to know they aren’t pulling their weight. They’ll be dead. They’ll be afk during fights. They’ll be sitting in the corner just firing their autoattack. None of these things are hard to spot, and none of them require magic find armor to matter.

Heck, if you want to get down to the nitty gritty, you’ll know they’re lower level than the rest of the group. Of course, in that case of ‘not pulling your weight’ nobody on either side of the argument seems to care. Most people are perfectly willing to accept suboptimum efficiency to help lower level characters level up or to teach new players the tricks to dungeons.

jingseng.2150:

the issue can be distilled quite easily:

Equal pay for equal effort.

With MF, someone who is demonstrably doing less, is getting more.

Except that you can’t actually demonstrate that MF wearers do less. In fact, if many cases you could demonstrate the exact opposite. More than that, if you’ve read this entire thread it should be obvious none of the anti-MF people have cared one iota about equal effort resulting in equal reward.

Their entire argument has been aimed at equal time, not effort, and that that equal time provides equal chance for reward. That’s why they’re okay with low level, sub-optimum builds, sub-optimum equipment that’s not MF, etc. You also have to include “chance for” since anyone that’s played this game for any length of time has to have experience just how ridiculously random the reward level for completing the same tasks can be.

I’d be all for an equal effort loot system that recognizes the actual value someone brings to a group being the basis for buffing rewards. Such a system would definitely need to include boons, healing, time spent holding aggro, etc. It would also have to be versus a baseline, not versus other group members because you’d want excellent groups getting extra rewards for all group members. If I was rewarded for being in full zerker gear and doing a ton more damage than the baseline for a task, I’d do all those tasks in full zerker gear. That would reflect my extra effort earning me extra reward.

That’s not how the system works now. The system works now by giving full reward in dungeons and some other tasks just once per day. So as a player trying to optimize my reward, I have to maximize what I’ll get out of that once per day run, and you don’t do that by trying to make most runs as fast as possible. Yes, there are exceptions to that, but nobody is worried about those because the same people who optimize their rewards via MF gear already understand that on a speed run or high level fractal, your optimum way to earn rewards is NOT to wear MF gear.

@maddoctor

If I ran full zerker gear…like I do on my ranger…it wouldn’t change the speed of an AC run more than a minute. It wouldn’t change the run of even a fractal level 10 by more than a minute or two. And all it would take to more than offset that minute is one person in my group not knowing what they are doing. At that point, they’re slowing me down.

And the thing is, normally I’m hunky dory with that. I don’t expect people to be running dungeons for my benefit. I don’t expect them to be running perfect builds or perfect gear or even anything close. All I care about is that we’re going to finish the dungeon and have fun doing it.

That’s what I truly do not get. Why is it wrong for me to wear MF gear if I’m still pulling my weight in the group? And why do you care so much if you can shave a minute or two off of an AC or low level fractal run? You can only run them once a day for full reward anyway.

@Novalight,

You’re talking about a whole ‘nother subject than the one most of the pro-MF people are talking about. Speed runs and hard content…yes…I have 7 other toons in exotics to run those with depending on what would best benefit the group. Heck, give me another week and I’ll not only have 7 other classes to pick from with non-MF, I’ll even have a second warrior who won’t be wearing MF.

The point I’ve been making, repeatedly, is that for most content in the game, players are so seriously overpowered already, that I can nerf myself and STILL be overpowered. And the only places where I’m not overpowered you wouldn’t want a full-bore DPS build anyway because it’d just be dead.

maddoctor.2738:

It’s interesting how everyone who posted pro-MF on this thread had the exact same argument “I can pull my weight in a dungeon, I’m always the last to die even though I’m MF” etc how elitist is that? Are you serious?

Are you certain that everyone that runs MF is like you or is maybe using green/rare MF gear just to leech? The second is more prevalent IN THE GAME, apparently the forums are full of pro MF players who can compensate for their subpar gear with skill, the real world is obviously different and that’s the problem. A few vocal pro-MF players come on forums to show off their skills offering nothing on the issue at hand.

Continue being a “pro” who “rules with MF while others die” which can also mean running like a chicken, doing subpar damage so not aggroing anything and so on and so on. There are lots of ways NOT to die in a dungeon, and no way to judge your dps so posts “I’m in MF and do the most DPS” are garbage. Find some other argument this is getting very old and doesn’t offer anything, oh right out of every single thread on MF there is NO other argument for it… just “pros” posting how pro they are and MF doesn’t slow them down, find something else to say.

In other words, you don’t have a response to the points we’re making. You just have wild accusations to throw around.

Also, I’ve not once said “EVERY SINGLE MF PLAYER IN THE GAME IS MORE L33T THAN YOU LOSERS WHO DON’T LIKE MF SO L2P NOOB” cuz I don’t think that’s true. I do think there are leeches out there. I just don’t think they’re all in MF gear.

The point I, and most of the other pro-MF people have been trying to make is that MF should not be the end-all be-all of evaluating someone’s contribution to a group. If someone isn’t pulling their weight, you don’t need to see their gear to know it. You’ll know it because they’re lying on the ground dead during practically every fight. You’ll know it because no matter how many times you try to explain that rushing the boss before clearing trash mobs is bad, or that pulling the boss out from under the molten metal is a mistake, or that wasting time killing infinite respawning minions rather than focusing on the critter that’s spawning them, or any of the myriad other things that bad players do.

I look at being able to wear MF gear as a way to get better rewards for my better skill while running easy content. I don’t believe that I should have to do twice as much damage as everyone else by wearing zerker gear while running AC. The group doesn’t need me to, and it’s not going to save us more than a minute or two. I believe that as long as I’m contributing at the very least 1/5 of the damage or its equivalent (cuz bunker builds might not get to 1/5, but they can more than make up for it via boons, healing, tanking, etc) I’m valuable to the group and pulling my weight.

I also think that if you have such a strong negative response to the very idea that someone might be getting better rewards than you because they’re using MF gear, you should, you really should, not play with them. Simply announce when forming the group that you don’t want any MF users in your group. Problem solved.

(On the other hand, if you wait until the final boss before kicking them, then you are griefing, and you are wrong.)

I’ll play in groups that don’t mind skilled players getting better rewards. You’ll play in groups where everyone gets the same chance for reward for time invested. We’ll all be happy.

Pixelninja.6971:

Imagine the whole team would play high-lvl FOTM fully decked in MF-gear. It would be like playing with only four. Then someone got a disconnect, what would they do then? Change gear? Hell no, they would rather let the party wipe and go back to la before taking off their precious mf-gear.

Imagine a whole team of level 50 players in green level 40 gear. It would be like playing with only two. See how silly this is?

It’s pretty obvious the anti-MF crowd is anti-MF for emotional, not rational reasons. (btw, emotional is not negative…it’s just a descriptor) I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve pointed out that in the vast majority of dungeons and content in GW2, a player decked out in full MF exotics is overpowered versus the difficulty of the content. I’ve also questioned whether a player who did less to help the group would be more welcome than a player in MF would be, even though the MF player is providing more benefit, and it’s pretty obvious its the wearing of MF, not the contribution to the group, that matters.

That’s why I say this is an emotional argument for anti-MF people (and again, there’s nothing wrong with that as fun is tied to emotions as well, and games should be fun). I also suspect that’s why they choose the word ‘leech’ which has definite negative connotations even though it’s pretty obvious that a player doing at least 1/5 of the damage is doing at least their share, and hence, is not a parasite. They have negative emotions tied to seeing another player in MF gear and want a negative word to illustrate those feelings.

It’s also why this argument is going to go nowhere at this point. The pro-MF crowd can point out all the reasons why they’re wearing MF gear and how it has no significant impact on the group’s success and it won’t matter. The anti-MF crowd isn’t interested in group success as the ultimate goal. They are interested in everybody getting the same amount of reward for the same time invested.

The key part in that last statement being time, not skill, that matters to them.

Okay, I have a question now that I’ve gotten a feel for some of the specifics of the anti-MF sentiment.

Let’s say you have two players (the DPS numbers are totally arbitrary except that they allow a comparison of the two players)

Player A- Blue-Green gear. Decent skill. Does an average of 1000 dps.

Player B- All exotic MF gear. Very good skill. Does an average of 1500 dps.

Both players have no major survival issues so no drain on the group from having to rez them. All other things about them are equal.

Now, are you really so opposed to MF gear that you’d prefer player A even though he’s actually contributing less than the MF player?

And yes, the hypothetical I set up is not only possible, it’s one I play with all the time as 9 times out 10, when running my MF warrior in PUG’s, I’m the highest DPS toon in the group.

Dawdler.8521:

Random MF is random…

In my experience, it does increase the drop chance. I remember doing a dozen plinx runs while getting just crap material, when I was still getting gear. First run with MF gear – 2 yellows.

But then again, I’ve also killed a dozen dragons in my MF gear and gotten the same crappy blue/green crap every god kitten time. Getting pre-legendary from dragons? I cant even get rare

Just FYI, magic find gear has no effect on chests. It only affects drops from kills, and dragons are not technically a drop from kill. Same thing happens with dungeon bosses…sorta since they now can have drops to go with their chests.

@maddoctor,

First, thank you for the discussion. I’m very into trying to understand people who’s perceptions, goals, etc are different from mine, so I’ve found it to be very interesting.

I think based on your responses to me and others, the problem isn’t the lower efficiency. Your comments about taking new players, etc seem to make that clear. The problem is that the person is intentionally lowering their efficiency and that they benefit from the decision. It’s the intent combined with personal benefit that seems to be the problem for you and those like you who are upset about other players using magic find in groups.

I suspect based on this, you’d also be upset at someone who could wear full exotics, but choice to wear only masterwork gear because it saved them on repair bills, correct? Again, you’d have both triggers: intent and personal benefit. I came up with this while thinking about the possibility of the group sharing magic find and what wouldn’t be fixed. Same thing happens with a player who is saving up gold to buy better gear instead of buying the best gear he could get now. Technically, his choice is benefiting just himself (or herself) at the expense of lowering the efficiency of any group they are a member of.

Of course, this still doesn’t address the simple fact that I know from my own experience I can stand and melee the bosses in AC, most of them in CM, and usually am the highest DPS player in any group my warrior runs in. I don’t have survival problems which is why I can get away with using sigil of luck on my main hand weapon (off hand is earth…I mentioned bleeds, right). The net result is that I get a few extra rare drops (I think exotic drops have become like unicorns since the Nov 15 patch) when I run a dungeon compared to what I get when I run my non-MF toons.

It’s when I put all the possible ways that players choose to be less than perfectly efficient combined with the fact that for 80-90% of the content of the game, you don’t even have to be close that makes it such a non-factor for me. I’d be much more irritated with a player who consistently makes bad pulls or tries to melee the tree in TA than I ever would with someone who is running sub-optimum builds or gear.

@maddoctor,

Again, most players are overkill versus most dungeons stat wise. And again, it doesn’t matter what stats a player has even in a dungeon like AC if the player isn’t very good and ends up getting knocked down every time the Howling King looks at them funny. They are a much bigger drain on your team than anything I’d ever be. Heck, I’d bet in most PUG’s, my head-to-toe magic find gear warrior puts out more damage than any other member.

That said, I wouldn’t run that warrior in a fractal above 20. My experience is that at that point the loss in stats actually starts to matter in how effective I can play. I also don’t run that warrior in WvW for the same reason.

Ironically, I’m actually in favor of the people who get upset by MF gear being able to know if someone is running with it. I’m a big, big fan of fun, and if they’re of the perception (regardless of the fact that the difference is meaningless in most cases) that MF gear is bad, it’s going to reduce their fun which I’m opposed to.

I do wonder about the people who stress so much over efficiency in a game tho. I mean, I spend lots of hours theorycrafting builds because I see it as a puzzle. I also have a seriously bad altaholicism problem which my theorycrafting feeds into. Based on that experience, I’m way beyond sure that there are ‘perfect’ builds for maximizing damage or defense or whatnot.

So, maddoctor, are you planning on kicking people who aren’t running those perfect builds as well? I’m not being snarky in asking. I’m trying to get a feel for why one aspect of inefficiency, magic find gear, is so upsetting when another, builds, does not seem to be.

One thing y’all are forgetting in this discussion:

A good level 80 player, even in full MF gear, is overkill versus the difficulty of most dungeons and fractals till about level 20 or so. I’m pretty sure 5 good players in full MF gear would tear through any dungeon in the game no problem, and do so faster than 5 mediocre players in the perfect gear for their build.

Then, of course, we get back to fun. If you truly care about efficiency, you should avoid playing with players running MF, and when you’re calling out for groups or members, make sure to announce that you don’t want MF-geared players in your group. That way, you and the other group members are of a like mind and hence, should have more fun.

Conversely, if like me, you don’t care as long as you actually finish the dungeon, then go ahead and run with whoever and whatever. Since there is only one run per day at full reward anyway, I’m totally okay with that.

@maddoctor,
You’re not done with the numbers, just the easy part. You then have to translate that back into damage output and damage resistance. Sure, those big numbers look like they make a huge difference, but once you factor in the actual damage formulas, not so much, and nowhere near as big a hit as getting downed in a fight which reduces your DPS to zero as well as that of anyone who stops to rez you.

Also, it’s pretty easy to ‘fix’ most of the DPS loss by building in some condition damage which ignores mob armor. That’s why my bleed-build warrior runs MF gear, but my direct damage elementalist does not. My necro could run MF given the condition spam they have available, but she’s a wells/marks bunker, and you can’t really do bunker using MF gear.

This is a great post to discussion argumentation, aka, how to better put together posts that are persuasive.

First up, 15% and 60% are completely pulled out of the kitten. Unless you have hard numbers, avoid numbers at all. If you want hard numbers in your magic find, look at comparable pieces and do that math. The difference between Explorer’s and Berserker’s is trading crit damage for magic find and small reduction in power on some pieces. There is a definite answer to how much it affects a player’s DPS and income, and the answer isn’t 15% and 60%.

Which brings up the second big problem in the post. The author is comparing exotic gear to green gear. This means any comparison between magic find and not magic find is going to be watered down by the addition of other variables. How much worse are the overall stats of the author’s magic find gear versus his exotic gear?

Bringing up Sigil of Luck actually works against his argument. Like all charge building sigils, if you can make effective use of SoL, that means you aren’t getting faceplanted regularly. I’d be perfectly happy with any party member that is on their feet fighting throughout the dungeon as opposed to players who are needing constant rezzing. And if the price that party member wants to ‘charge’ for their skill is a bump in their income, I think they’re earning it.

The prisoner’s dilemma is a fun toy for analyzing that aspect of game theory. And right now, the majority people reading this have no idea what I’m really talking about including a fair number who think they do. This is the problem with bringing up jargon-like terms. Prisoner’s dilemma is a very specific thing with very specific conditions. It’s actually somewhat appropriate here except that the author misuses it. Oh, and prisoner’s dilemma doesn’t always apply to reality as humans have a strong tendency towards cooperation which is why things like the tragedy of the commons don’t always come to pass even in situations where the prisoner’s dilemma indicates it should.

The last, and perhaps most important argument problem that the original author runs into. He’s assuming the goal of all players is efficiency. As soon as you start assuming things about your audience without evidence to support those assumptions, you off kitten knows where in terms of the effectiveness of your communication. Now, there are certainly some players who read the original post and agreed with the conclusion the author wanted them to make because they do place a high value on efficiency. The problem is that we’re talking about a game, and for a whole lot more players, the goal isn’t efficiency, it’s fun. In fact, quite a few players are actively seeking to avoid maximizing efficiency since that’s too much like work which escapist activities like gaming serve as a distraction from.

This brings me to my only point on the topic at hand rather than argumentation. There is no way to ‘win’ this argument. Efficiency oriented players already agree with everything the author said and don’t need to be persuaded. Fun oriented players don’t really care at all what gear other players are wearing. You can’t bring those two groups of players to a consensus without changing the goals of the players. Since I’m firmly in the ‘games are fun’ category, as long as I can complete whatever it is I’m doing, I don’t care if it takes me a few minutes longer than someone else.

Having now completed the jump puzzle using an Asura, a Norn, and a Human multiple times, I feel pretty confident it doesn’t freakin’ matter.

It’s hard in a muddled mass even if you are twice the size of everyone else. But you have two choices to make it easier:

1) Be faster than anyone else. If you’re out in front, you can see your feet just fine.
2) Be slower than anyone else. If you’re in back, you can see your feet just fine.

Also, don’t stop to wave at the people who already fell and are now watching from the balcony. You just cannot make up that much time (I know…I’ve tried)

Seod.7924:

I feel your pain brother. I played Ultima Online for many years and still would if the player base was bigger and the graphs a bit better. Anyways, i miss the good old days, where you always had to watch yourself for player killers (PKs) and a chance of being looted.

Thy gold or thy life, knave.

Romany Fox.7496:

Tempus, you don’t deserve pie, you have to actually level a toon past 25 for pie!

and nobody should join this guild if they don’t want a lot of amusing yet insulting banter or mind having a guild leader that is half dwarf and half muskox

Wait? I’m half dwarf? I get the half muskox part…but dwarf? Seriously?

Also, for a limited time all new members will be given a complimentary peach pie. Because pie is awesome.

And because I have 300 of them in my bank that need to go away.

Xav’s Guide to Not Needing Gold

1) Don’t make alts.

I totally fail at this step, and hence, if I wrote the rest of my guide, it’d be a complete fabrication.

Much better off learning how to make gold.
-In WvW, just run with the zerg. You make decent coin completing the events that are tied to both taking towers and defending them. Also, instead of buying siege, run the jump puzzles which gives siege blueprints as a reward.
-Harvest all possible resources. Even if you’re not into crafting there are hundreds of thousands of players who are. And while it might not seem like much to be selling copper for 10c or whatever, if you sell everything, it adds up pretty quick.
-Dungeon runs. Prolly the best return versus risk in the game.
-Fractals. Very good return once you get above level 10, albeit harder than normal dungeons
-Map completion of high level zones. You get 2 exotics. Those exotics will often have very valuable runes. You also get a pile of good crafting mats.

So while I suck at not needing gold, I’m really good at accumulating the gold I need to feed my altaholicism.

The problem with that study is that people that run dungeons will have deaths that aren’t based on character class, but overall party success. I know for fact that running my warrior in Orr or whatnot by herself she doesn’t die at all. However, running dungeons sometimes she doesn’t die; sometimes she’ll die a dozen times.

My ranger runs a lot of WvW. Same thing happens there but for different reasons. I tend to run in the small packs raiding supply camps and killing dolyaks. Sometimes this goes well; sometimes you run into the enemy zerg and get steamrolled.

Young toons die more than level 80’s. Young toons just don’t have as many survival tricks available to them, and unfortunately, there is a lot of content that is completely out of whack difficulty wise. Add those two up and young toons will have higher deaths/hour than established ones that again has nothing to do with class or even player skill in many cases.

I can go through the situations for all 10 of my toons, and invariably, it’s things other than class that lead to death. Now, I know from experience that my thief is much more likely to die if I make even small mistakes compared to my guardian who doesn’t die at all unless she’s stuck with a bad party. My necro is almost as hard to kill as my guardian, but if I respec’d her, I could make her far more deadly with the caveat she’d be a whole lot easier to kill.

The only exception to that last bit is engineer. There’s not much you can do to make them as tough as a guardian or necro, nor is there anything you can do to make them as high damage as thief or ranger. They’re just pretty meh all around.

Oh, ya, we’re on Yak’s Bend.

Might be an important detail to know

Crossroads of the Lounge (CLVG) is a friendly, ultracasual bunch of goofballs who primarily want to run around having fun. We’re looking for more members to run dungeons, WvW, events, whatever. We’re extremely helpful as we have a bunch of people who’ve been playing the game since beta, and we don’t mind lots of questions.

Again, the primary goal is fun.

The guild is made up of people who’ve been around MMO’s a very long time. Some, like myself, got started in MUD’s and then Ultima Online and everything that followed. We came together on the very old Crossroads boards, and when that finally went belly up, we moved on to the Lost Lounge (hence, the name of the guild) where we’re still friends. And while this means some of us have known each other online for 15 years or more, we’re always looking to meet new people.

So, if you’re looking for a guild with no pressure, just fun, send me or any other Crossroads member a message asking for an invite. We’d be happy to have you.

Those of you who think you need pink/purple to recognize mesmers would not like Champions Online at all. It allows you to completely change the color, and sometimes even the effect, of attacks.

However, it doesn’t actually take all that long to realize that red lighting still shocks and that green fire still burns. Besides which, if you’re waiting until you see the particle effects that the attack creates, you’ve already waited entirely too long to decide how to deal with the incoming attack (in other words, learn character animations, not the pretty FX).

You do realize that most thieves run builds that optimize their 1v1 ability, right? For the most part, they have no choice since thieves suck for pretty much any other kind of fight. ANet has also stacked the deck towards 1v1 builds by giving thieves some pretty cool choices in how to go about completely ruining the day for their opponent.

Next, most thieves (well, at least the ones you need to be afraid of) are very choosy in who they pick to take down. Rangers and warriors with greatsword are very high on that list as they are almost always glass cannon type builds. On the other hand, dagger elementalists, shield guardians, and the like will be avoided like the plague as most of them are bunkers.

Anyway, countering a thief is usually pretty easy. Just stun them or spam AoE’s in their general vicinity. This will wreck most thief builds as they rely very heavily on a carefully orchestrated attack sequence, and most are the glassiest of the glass cannons out there who use stealth and movement to make up for the near complete lack of defense.

side note: if you want to get better playing your main toon, learn to play a thief alt. You will be forced to learn dodge timings, circle strafing, etc., or you will die a lot. Those same tricks work even better for warriors who actually can sneak things like toughness and regen into high damage builds.

I got the achievement first day (back when it was a real achievement…that you had to walk uphill for 20 miles to get…through twenty feet deep snow…while being chased by man eating chihuahuas).

While it’s potentially a lot of fun, there’s effectively no reward for what turns out to be a very long event. This reduces fun. Then you add in no friends allowed, and fun goes down even more. The final fun killer is that its entirely possible that Toxx gets it in her head to just make a beeline for the dolyaks and no amount of attempting pulling will change her mind. This means that you could randomly just lose the game cuz, kitten you, that’s why. So, even more fun lost.

When you finish up that equation you end up with negative fun. Since most players play games to get positive fun…not as many players running the event anymore.

For Great Justice – 8 seconds of fury then 25 second cooldown.
Signet of Rage – 30 seconds of fury then 60 second cooldown

Not sure what you meant by 82%…fury is always 20% to crit. But even alternating the two fury granting abilities carefully, you’ll have holes in your crit chance whereas the 5 signet build never does.

Now you could go 6 Superior Runes of Rage to fix the holes as well as get slightly more crit chance while under the effects of fury, but doing that gives up whatever else you could have slotted instead (like ruby orbs…). Always give and take.

Also, Healing Signet is an excellent heal for someone who doesn’t just try to go toe to toe with everything he or she fights. It works out to about the same healing as Mending if you were to spread Mendings heal out over its cooldown. It’s lower than Healing Surge, but since it’s pretty easy to sneak adrealine regen into a warrior build, that gets you right up there with that level of healing.

The way I play it is to melee as much as possible (cuz moar damage) while circling and dodging to protect myself. If I do end up hurt, I back out and pull out the rifle (or against certain bosses I just start with rifle) which I have slotted with Sigil of Earth for bleeds (cuz precision warriors might as well since its easy to buff bleeds) and stay back until I’m healed again. This works out to exactly the way I play toons that have non-regen style heals except those toons don’t get +40 precision all the time with their healing.

Anyway, the whole point is that 5 signet is just fine. When you factor in what the signets do on top of the 40 precision each, it makes for a pretty well rounded warrior. It’s not the highest possible burst DPS. It’s not the most survivable build. It’s just a good solid build that lets you focus on your enemy and not on your cooldowns.

Wethospu.6437:

True, that Soldiers backpack and Karka Shell gives like 60 Vitality and Toughness. And 100 more Vitality from traits and 100 more Toughness from Cavalier Ring. So yes you are right, not a true glass-cannon.
And by the way, Signet-build just sucks and has nothing to do with being a cannon.

WvW actually gives that high stats.

Signet build is awesomesauce for warriors. You get 290 precision (200 from Deep Strike, 90 from Signet of Fury) on top of the 300 for going full Arms which put you way, way ahead of other classes in terms of crits. I also use a main-hand sword with Blademaster trait for an extra 10% crit chance. Needless to say, I crit a lot with my 5 signet build which means I have my choice of all those shiny weapon sigils that proc on crit for whatever effect I want.

The downside, as I mentioned before, is that I don’t do much for my teammates the way you can with shout and banner builds, and I’m pretty much toast versus condition built enemies. But nobody (well, except elementalists) can do everything.

@digiowl

Three bar bunker necro = normal hitpoints + lifeforce bar + downed health bar

Necros have lifesteal as their downed attack and can trait to both boost lifestealing and increased downed damage. My necro is actually higher DPS when down than when up and can outheal 2 trash mobs beating on her while doing damage.

@mulch

When I look at my warrior, I don’t think tank. I have 30 points into arms for precision and bleeding. That’s pretty much standard for any 5 signet build. I also intitially went full-on glass cannon with 30 points into strength. The last 10 I stuck in defense so I could get that +200 when cc’d trait. This worked pretty well, but left me in the lurch versus condition damage and AoE’s.

So I tweaked the build a bit because of that 15 point adrenaline regen. It was just so close. And at that point, it was pretty easy to talk myself into another 5 points into defense to get the other anti-cc trait. I also changed my strength adept trait to adrenaline based damage because I knew I wasn’t going to be using bursts which would screw up my regen.

Gear is all power precision stuffs. That’s why I look at this as a glass-ish cannon build. Those 200 points of toughness are all I have.

It’s a pretty decent build. I can outregen 4 stacks of bleeding + poison, or 7ish stacks of bleeding without poison. In the ice fractal, I can get to 8 stacks of freezing before I start taking damage that matters. And with the high crit rate, I can proc any sigil I want very often (currently using earth for extra bleeds…prolly going to go back to fire for splodies).

The downside is I have no speed buffs so it takes me a while to run places, no way to clear conditions when they get beyond what I can regen, and can’t really recover big chunks of hitpoints at once because losing my big regen is just as bad, if not worse, than trying to duck and weave with low hitpoints while I wait to recover. I also provide no boons to my teammates. This means as a teammate my only real value is DPS, which in most groups is enough, but there are times when I kinda wish I could do more.

’Course, for those times when I would like to help my teammates, tank, and put out good damage, I just play my elementalist.

mulch.2586:

200 toughness with double regen and + 200 healing with warrior’s base hp isn’t hardly a glass cannon. Add in “extra armor while over 90%” and 2 other defensive traits…

Compared to my necro who actually can stand toe to toe with champs (well, some champs) it is. Plus, my necro has 3 life bars to play with and lots of life stealing.

The flipside is no DPS. Well, for her anyway. She’s marks/wells so she sets up nonstop combos for teammates.

All the toughness and vit in the game doesn’t matter a bit if the player doesn’t understand that GW2 combat is different.

The vast majority of time I spend playing the dungeons in the game is with my 5 signet build warrior (ie. constant high damage). I did put 20 points into toughness which is my entire toughness investment. I got that since I’d already gone to 15 to get my second regen (the first being my healing signet).

I’m pretty sure I survive much better than most bunker built necro and guardian players because I learned how to play using my thief. See, no matter how bunker you make a thief, it cannot go toe to toe with anything. You have to dodge, use stealth, etc to get the same kind of survival that warriors and guardians have by default. So, learning to play as a thief is a wonderful way to learn how to survive with just about any build (maybe not a glass cannon engineer because then you’d have no armor to go with your nerfed dps).

And let me tell you…playing a warrior with heavy armor and dual regens ticking while using the same tricks a thief does (minus stealth which is iffy at times with mobs anyway) makes for a very durable glass cannon.

You obviously have never bothered to look at Razer’s Synapse software. You can make as many configurations for games as your heart desires and change which one is active with just a couple clicks. They even moved saving those configurations into the cloud which means you can move your Naga from computer to computer without having to recreate your configurations.

Then again, like a few others above, I just let my Naga’s side panel be a numpad which means I don’t change anything for GW2. I then used GW2 keybinding option to make my middle mouse button F1, the Naga’s top index fingure button (the one at the top left of the mouse) be F2, and so on since GW2 recognizes 5 mouse buttons, and the non-numpad buttons on the mouse happen to be those 5 buttons.

Heck, if you really want to go crazy. Learn to use the open source program AutoHotkey. At that point, pretty much any input into your computer can be configured to mimic pretty much any other input (ie. your gamepad’s #3 button can be set to type the letter ‘a’). Just make sure you don’t break ANet’s guidance on one key = one function.

Heh. I like that people who say they have no problems with the toys aren’t killing them, just coming up with creative ways to run away

Random presents around the world
This is a bad joke, right? You create these toys who are tough in a 1v1 fight versus most builds and classes, and then you dump 6 of them at once on players. Oh, and then you make some of the most NOTFUN decisions with how they work. It’s NOTFUN being forced to run in circles waiting for 12 stacks of confusion to wear off. It’s really NOTFUN being chainstunned until dead (honestly, the whole idea of crowd control in all MMO’s needs to be rethought because making players not play their character is pretty much the opposite of playing a game). And in exchange for these extreme high risk to most builds fights, you get a present that likely has nothing but an ugly wool sweater in it. Ya, cuz high risk no reward is always so popular.

Trading Post RNG boxes
I will never buy these. Ever. In any game. I’m sure there are people who do, and they prolly spend way more than they should which is good from ANet’s standpoint if their goal is short term gains. However, it only takes getting burned once to not only lose that players future purchases on RNG boxes, but quite likely everything else. The fact you stuck account bound minipets in them is even worse. Not only is your purchase random, but you can’t even trade around to get what you actually want. I mentioned my desire to collect minipets dying. Ya. This is why. I even went so far as to cancel my suggestion to my relatives that they get me GW2 gem cards as I was going to splurge on lots of minipet 3 packs. Now, not so much.

Mystic Forge Endless Tonics
I’m just as much not a fan of the RNG here. I like games where I’m working towards a goal and can achieve it. I don’t play games to get lucky dice rolls because there is no sense of accomplishment there.

Anyway, overall I’d rate the Wintersday event at a 7 out of 10. There was plenty of silly fun, no game breaking technical issues ala Lost Shores, and the complaints I have tend to be more with overall design, not specific to the event.

Figured since I’m pretty much done with Wintersday stuff (except daily jump puzzle and grabbing presents around the world before running away screaming like a little girl) and have all the achievements, I figured this would be a good time to give some feedback on all the stuffs.

Winter Wonderland Jumping Puzzle
I liked this one a lot. Sure, it was easier than Mad King’s, but I don’t think holiday jump puzzles should be the hardest things in the game. Places like Skipping Stones work for hard jump puzzles (and ya, I know it’s easier than Mad King’s as well). Big kudos for making multiple paths. Still hasn’t completely fixed the whole following a Norn or Charr in a longcoat problem, but it’s an improvement. Maybe make everyone the same size via some magic trick or something next time? Also, since the rewards reset daily, I’ve been running it every day. Good balance of challenge and reward.

Snowball Mayhem
Again, this was silly fun. The problem cropped up with player behavior and the achievements. It became very common for players carrying the gift to drop it before getting downed to prevent players from scoring or working towards their achievement. While being a good defender makes sense for scoring, it needs to be keyed to something a little harder for the opposition to avoid. For example, instead of requiring downing the gift carrier, maybe make it so you only have to do 25% damage to carrier and then get credit if the gift touches the ground for any reason.

Bell Choir
My personal feedback was very blech because I play with an ergo keyboard that absolutely did not line up with the keys (split between 6 and 7). That said, so many people really enjoyed this I suspect it’s a good choice for coming up with future versions. Can you maybe just tweak it to use default home keys for typing, ie. ASDF – JKL; since that will work on any keyboard (well, any keyboard in the US)

Tixx’s Infinarium
These were just right in terms of challenge for a holiday event. They weren’t so easy you could just complete them by showing up, but not so hard you couldn’t pull them off on the first attempt with a PUG. Like a lot of players, I was disappointed I couldn’t get all the pets via the event, but whatever. I’ll end up with all the tonics and maybe buy the other pets…maybe not. My whole desire to collect all the minipets is pretty much dead anyway.

Plushie Griffon
He gets his own section of feedback cuz he’s awesomesauce. I lurves my Snugglyclaws.

Toypocolaypse
I had fun doing this, but then, I like tower defense games. On the other hand, the no premade groups was a horribad shortcoming. One of the major projects for the proggies should be creating new code so that premades can do activities together. I mean, this is “Guild” Wars, right? Side note: I’m pretty disappointed the achievement is getting nerfed. It’s entirely possible to get right now with even a basic bit of strategy. No need to nerf it.

The very first time Toxx pops, get two players to intercept him and drag him off somewhere very, very slowly killing him.

Then everyone else builds siege, hires skritt, etc. You have only the one mob, Toxx, and all those building materials just waiting for you, and with Toxx off getting plinked to death, you’ll end up with a virtually impregnable fortress.

Toxx rips right through walls and siege. He’s pretty much a reset on your construction.

Best trick I figured out was to build mini forts away from the dolyaks once you get decent stuff around them. Set up a megacatapult, a couple snowmen by the catapult, then a couple ballistas watching the catapult and snowmen from behind. This setup totally distracts anything that gets within range of the catapult, so lots.

But as for Toxx…no idea…he just goes where he wants, and if that’s into your dolyak fortifications, well, that sucks.

Add me to the list of people saying “This is not griefing.”

Jumping puzzles in WvW areas reward siege weapons. Free siege weapons in the hands of the enemy is bad. Hence, do not allow the enemy to get said free siege weapons.

Makes perfect sense other than the 30 people guarding since that’s 30 people not defending or taking forts, and you can guard a jumping puzzle with just 5-6 people who get into a good strategic location with knockback attacks.

bluedeltawolf.3759:

Nice thread and i totally agree, i was so pleased to get my plushie griffon, erm.. as you called yours Snugglyclaws, mind if i call mine Cuddlesbeak

I’ll sell ya the rights to the name in exchange for one tiny snowflake. I think that’d be an appropriate payment for both the season and the extensive amount of work I put into creating that name

By the way, my previous comment about burning heretics was made in jest. I do not actually condone violence towards my fellow players no matter how amazingly wrong they may be.

Unless, of course, I come across them in sPvP or WvW in which case, and provided I’m playing my guardian or elementalist, I will in fact try to set them of fire.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

But to be honest, the charr toy solider is my top toy pick so far.

BURN THE HERETIC!

I don’t buy RNG boxes ever in any game. Plus, I have this crazy dream where other players quit buying them as well at which point the game devs will switch to selling me what directly at a price that lets them earn a fair profit and maintain the game.

I look at Champs Online. I spent a TON of money buying costume and power skins there because I knew I was getting exactly what I wanted. I’d happily do the same here (well, provided they were actual armor skins and not more silly town skins).

In the meantime, I’m playing a game without paying anything additional. Good deal for me, but not so great for the devs.

Okay, now that we’ve seen the toy golem, I think it’s safe to officially declare the plushie griffon the mostest bestest Wintersday toy.

Not that there was much doubt after their debut, but it was only fair to wait for the golem to make its appearance before making the formal announcement.

Appreciation?

Appreciation is such a weak word to describe the cuteness awesomesauce that is the plushie griffon. It needs a better word.

I mean you appreciate that pair of wool socks your grandma knitted you for Christmas before you buried them in the back of your sock drawer. Or you appreciate the way the ice scraper clears your windshield before heading off driving somewhere.

You do not merely appreciate the plushie griffon. You bask in its snuggliness. You deify its cuddliness. You venerate is fluffiness.

It is so much more than mere appreciation.

Doggie.3184:

It’s cute but Quaggan is still king of cute in GW2. .-. Coo

My plushie griffon Snugglyclaws would tear the stuffing out of your Quaggan and then eat him.

You can get a plushie griffon. That’s way more than enough to make it worth doing.

And there are now thousands of cute cuddly little plushie griffons running around Lion’s Arch.

And, while all those adorable little things running around are awesomesauce, they are not as awesomesauce as Snugglyclaws because SNUGGLYCLAWS IS MINE!

Garambola.2461:

Tonight I am not doing Tixx again. Why? Because I cannot bering myself to kill more adorable, squeaking griffons.

I’ll harden myself up for tomorrow and the Toypocalypse. I will only run again the earlier instances without griffons, however.

If any of the people who actually ran the group with my warrior, Asyntora, read this, they’ll be able to confirm that I was crying and apologizing the whole time I was slicing the stuffing out of them

VoxShatterfall.5470:

Enabled artic removing magnificient undulous facial finery
E.A.R.M.U.F.F

Forgot to add the rest > this is what an Asuran would wear to keep their ears warm

You need a better thesaurus for coming up with words that an Asura would actually use when naming EARMUFFS. You also need that S at the end.

Based on this, I’m guessing you’re actually Charr.

I’ve been pretty meh towards the minis so far. I’m not playing the RNG game for the cash store minis, and the Tixx minis have been either creepy (Princess) or lame.

But the griffon…the griffon is awesomesauce. So as soon as I finished Tixx, I ran back to bank where my trusty mystic forge anywhere toy was stashed, grabbed that as well as the mats to make plushie griffon and NOW I HAZ SUPER CUTENESS OF GRIFFONDOM!

And I’m going to hug him and squeeze him and pet him but NOT name him George. Because George is a stoopid name for a griffon. A griffon needs a powerful name. A griffon needs a name that strikes fear into its prey.

So I’m going with Snugglyclaws….or maybe Cuddlesbeak. No. Definitely Snugglyclaws. That’s an awesome name for a vicious killer like a griffon.

What’s more, Snugglyclaws has inspired me…

Ode to a Plushie Griffon

With mystic stuff and claws of fluff
The beast stands tall and proud
It lifts it beak and gives a squeak
But one that’s not too loud

And Snugglyclaws flies across open skies
Soaring to amazing heights
And as it soars past mountain scores
It seeks out fantastic fights

For Snugglyclaws knows how his glory grows
With each foe he treats rough
With his cuddly toes and his plushie nose
And his body full of fluff

I’m so thankful I went and finished my monthly yesterday when the OP mobs just had retaliation since it meant I could take my level 80 in full exotics to a newbie zone and kill them dead and more dead.

Since those stupid presents are iffy on rewards at best and have very OP mobs in them, I’ve decided they don’t exist anymore. It’s just a weird graphical bug that comes up as I’m running around.