Guild Wars 2

Caffynated.5713:

3. Make lingering elements work the way every person who ever read the description thought it would.

Agreed x 9001. Anet are masters of misleading skill/trait descriptions.

You guys say they are strong in pvp, but are they really? You go 0/10/0/30/30 or you go home. That’s the only build that is even remotely viable in pvp, and I don’t think that build is really strong anymore after the recent nerfs. Other classes have at least some variation. For a “jack of all trades” class they don’t seem to have very many trades.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

replace fiery aura with plasma aura, makes you invulnerable for 5 seconds+burns foes. That way the current (30% longer fire fields) would be way more useful and the ’ fire aura’ on the focus would be way better because the currect focus fire skills are crappy. Plus this would allow elementalists to give better group support while being offensivly specced.

We already have 2 invulnerability spells: Mist Form and Obsidian Flesh. Not to mention auras can be shared, and fire aura can be procced off signets. So you want to be able to proc a new invulnerability shield that lasts 5 seconds, can be shared to allies, and can be procced 4 times from signets plus 1 more time fro the focus? Thats 25 seconds of shared burning invulnerability shields shared across up to 5 people. Lol.

I don’t agree with your fix ideas, but I do agree that the “jack of all trades” direction Anet is trying to take is terrible. If they design the class to have no specialization, then when you try to specialize in something, you fall short of what other classes can achieve. At that point, wouldn’t it be more effective to roll a different class?

Guess I’ll throw in my peanut gallery ideas.

1. Make attunement swap a flat 10 second cooldown with no reduction from arcana, other than maybe -2 or 3 seconds on a grandmaster trait.
2. Remove Elemental Attunement and add it’s effects to the respective 5 point traits in each line.
3. Make arcana use a new mechanic. Remove the Arcane Shield skill and Final Shielding trait. Instead, give the elementalist a passive effect called Arcane Mastery. This effect grants a shield similar to Aegis but only blocks projectiles (unless otherwise traited, probably a grandmaster trait). The shield is always active and blocks 1 attack before going on a 90 second cooldown. While the shield is active, the elementalist deals X% additional damage. At 10 trait points Arcane Mastery blocks 2 attacks and adds slightly more damage while the shield is up. At 20 it blocks 3 attacks, and 30 it blocks 4, etc.
4. Make grandmaster traits in fire, air, and earth about 900x better to bring them in line with water and arcana.
5. I feel like all water skills should have more vulnerability and chill, fire skills should add a little more burning, air should have its critical damage increased, and earth should have a hell of a lot more bleeds. I think mechanically as a crit/burst ele you should be setting up your target by dowsing them in water and spiking them with a lightning strike since water conducts electricity. And as a condition ele you should be combining fire and stone to blast foes with molten slag. The elements feel too disconnected and yet homogenous as they currently are.

Curo.2483:

Orangensaft.7139:

Screenshot from all the pipes:

http://imageshack.us/a/img29/2306/gw021ti.jpg

we tried to jump on the pipes but we got teleported back down

How did you get up there!? I’ve been trying, but keep hitting invisible walls and unclimbable slopes!

Also, not sure if it’s relevant, but I found this Scratched Tree.

That would be a reference to the infamous 55 Monk from GW1; a build which took advantage of having a tiny 55 point health pool protected by a special buff reducing all damage to 20% while maintaining healing buffs.

I agree with the OP on all except that water probably could never be turned into a pure healing element. It would either have to be horribly kitten or it would turn the ele into a dedicated healer which is in direct violation of Anet’s intentions. Instead I think they should add more chill effects and vulnerability to water spells. Chill would vastly improve synergy with fire and earth as aoe and attrition elements respectively, and vulnerability would improve synergy with air as a single target spike element. The different attunement spells as they are now are pretty homogenous.

antimatter.2579:

Honestly I would just like for enemies to not attack the Bone Fiend so often first… The Flesh Golem has the most HP and still make it a bigger threat to the enemy AI.

Yes, I watch my bone fiend get 1-shotted all the time even with the extra HP trait. I stopped bringing him in favor of the flesh worm as it is much more reliable, sturdy, and provides a stun breaker.

Bas.7406:

Xenon.4537:

I played sPvP yesterday trying several different builds. I tried a straight up minion master build: 20/0/30/20/0 with all of the minion related traits of course, and a staff. During most engagements (and I mean 9/10 times) my minions would stand around watching me fight. I had to activate their abilities to get them to inflict anything on an enemy player, and sometimes the flesh golem and shadow fiend would simply disengage as soon as they were finished with the skill. Bone minions were extremely unresponsive, taking up to 30 seconds to finally start chasing an enemy player. I pretty much had to lure enemies to THEM so I could blow them up.

The only reliable minion is the flesh worm. It works perfectly. It spawns, it instantly attacks targets, and doesn’t stop until it or the enemy is dead.

Your problem was you used the staff. For some reason even auto attack with staff is wonky with minion. Run Axe/Focus or Dagger/warhorn and you will see better results. Also did you use their abilities to force an attack. I have never seen Bone Fiend unresponsive. Flesh Golem, Shadow Fiend, and Bone minions are common to bug out. Shadow Fiend will typically work better once you activate his ability which should be used on CD anyways.

I think we covered the Staff issues in the MM guide I wrote earlier this year. Staff, and any targeting ability will cause the minions to not attack. I don’t know why auto attack bugs it out, but Axe 2, 3, Focus 4, 5, Warhorn 4, and Dagger 2 have really good forcing the target to attack abilities. Auto attack usually will cause a delay. I actually have auto attack turned off because it bugs them out so often.

I said I used their activate abilities to get them to move, and many times they will just go back to standing around once finished. I chose staff for its aoe ability. I like to have it for any build because an aoe chill, fear, and cleanse are hard to live without. I didn’t know about the possibility of the auto attack bugging the minions. I don’t use staff for it’s auto attack, nor does it even seem logical for a player weapon auto attack to cause a problem with an NPC’s behavior. It seems like the players have done more testing than the devs…

Disturbed.9305:

Oh and the other response I get is…

“Just make a Warrior or Guardian, everyone loves you then”

If you really want to be loved, make a mesmer. Everyone will beg you for Time Warp and Feedback. It’s a shame the necro doesn’t have useful abilities to set it apart.

Conditions are great. The only glaring issue with conditionmancers is they are completely useless for things like destroying burrows in AC because you cant bleed a pile of dirt (but you can bleed ghosts, robots, and rock golems? weird).

I played sPvP yesterday trying several different builds. I tried a straight up minion master build: 20/0/30/20/0 with all of the minion related traits of course, and a staff. During most engagements (and I mean 9/10 times) my minions would stand around watching me fight. I had to activate their abilities to get them to inflict anything on an enemy player, and sometimes the flesh golem and shadow fiend would simply disengage as soon as they were finished with the skill. Bone minions were extremely unresponsive, taking up to 30 seconds to finally start chasing an enemy player. I pretty much had to lure enemies to THEM so I could blow them up.

The only reliable minion is the flesh worm. It works perfectly. It spawns, it instantly attacks targets, and doesn’t stop until it or the enemy is dead.

I would be scared if they actually fixed a necromancer issue. Like a real necromancer issue such as minions or trait structure, not these silly alterations to skills like spectral grip (seriously everyone complains about minions for 2 months and then they buff spectral grip, lolwut). I’d be pretty startled by the sudden love and care being directed at the class.

eXs.6210:

Let me translate what the op means… there aren’t enough female armors with thongs, non-existent chainmail bras and fishnets…

Yeah there’s only really 1; the female heavy Arah armor. Lol.

Causic.3798:

I agree, no decent looking heavy armor :/ Atleast none where the person wears pants o-o
I dont want a skirt, more pants options please!

Sounds like someone is still level 10. Have you checked the pvp storage locker?

Amen.2630:

ive played pwi which is already 5 years old and they have better armor / clothes design than this game:
http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/7282/venos.png
http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/2637/sinl.png
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/5036/clericv.jpg

That is about the ugliest game I’ve ever seen (armor included). Glad I don’t play it.

lorndarken.3702:

im going to assume that necros are going to get very little to no change at all that strengthen the necromancer

while other classes get buffed and changes that benefit the group better the end result might be a over all nerf to the necro just by being ignored once again .

what say you ?

I expect warriors, mesmers, and perhapse guardians to get some buffs to help with their “mediocre” single target dps. Elementalists will have their AoE castrated and hung from a spike on the walls of Divinity’s Reach. Engineers will have a couple of things flip flopped around but no real nerfs or buffs, and Deployable Turrets will remain broken. Thieves will get no nerfs, and perhaps even a buff to venoms or something cas why would they ever need to nerf the thousands and hundreds of seconds of stealth and stealth stomping? Necros will get a buff to some practically useless ability like maybe the 50% deathshroud CD trait buffed to 60% (remember when they buffed spectral grip? Man we totally needed that instead of the countless other things we complain about). Meanwhile minions will be untouched and half the other traits will remain in wacky, nonsensical places in the trait trees.

Rangers will get nothing. The bots have brought shame to their family.

Magnetron.5823:

Dear Arenanet team,

Will the sound bug be fixed in the upcomming patch? Because it is very annoying. Today i waited 30 minutes to get into WvW, and i could play for 15 minutes cause you need a full client reset to fix the soundbug

Thanks!

I found a semi-fix for the sound bug (if you are referring to the one I’ve been suffering from every day for the last month where the game suddenly goes WWWOOOOOOO…. WOOOOOO…. WWWOOOOOO…)

When this happens, do the following. Open the sound options and change the output device to something that isn’t a speaker or isn’t the correct audio output. This should tell the game to send the audio signal to a dead end where you won’t have to hear it anymore. Next, alt-tab and bring up youtube or your favorite music program and play some smooth jazz, or funk, or Deadmau5 or whatever floats your boat. Tab back in to GW2 and enjoy your not WOOO WOOO gameplay without having to restart the client and be removed from WvW.

Salacious.7358:

Chorel.1720:

Because nerfing isn’t always the answer? They should be balancing it more instead of nerfing an entire damage class.

care to elaborate?

The elementalist is something like 80-90% AoE based. If they don’t handle this nerf with tact and precision, they could end up ruining the entire class. I am unfortunately expecting the already-garbage staff to become worse. My elementalist (who used to be my main) will continue to collect dust until hopefully one day in the far future when the balance of power shifts back in his direction.

Last night I saw first hand the crazy power of AoE that Anet seems to be worried about. We (Dragonbrand) were attacking Anz tower in EBG and they (Maguuma) seemed to have maybe 4-5 people only inside defending. When we breached the wall and got to the stairs, we were hit by a massive surprise attack. The stairs were a choke point and they were simply painted with a blur of particle effects. There must have been a good 50 of us in the zerg and most of us were killed right there in the opening seconds. The rest were scattered, fleeing off the walls and back through the wall opening. Maguuma had held their 50+ zerg at the top of the tower and waited to dump 50+ AoE’s on our heads at the choke. I’m not sure how I feel about this. It seems like a legit strategy, but realistically how do attackers have a hope of dealing with it?

Anet’s problem seems to come from the scaling of the zerg. Individual performance is laughable sometimes (Rangers and necros lol) but added together it just becomes a kittenstorm.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

The default respawn rate is 95-120 seconds, so if you’re seeing locations where they respawn much faster, please report it with specific info! Event creatures will often appear more quickly (so the event doesn’t look dead if players kill them immediately) and if players were killing things in the same area, they might respawn near you. (i.e. if a group ran through and cleared an area a minute ago, a lone player might be in the area when their respawn timer comes up.)

I think I did report this a few times when I first encountered it in some lower level grawl cave, but I have since grown tired of abusing that report button. It seems like every single cave in the game is full of either grawl or dredge that respawn in roughly 5-10 seconds. I pretty much gave up doing map completion with my elementalist because it’s impossible to clear such content with a class is designed to snare and kite enemies around for 20 minutes before getting a kill. I remember times when I’d actually used my elite skill multiple times before even being able to set foot inside a dredge cave.

Ouroboros.5076:

Such a blatant lack of understanding of this game’s mechanics does not give much credibility to this thread.

It’s even more sad coming from a GW1 player where each class used to use maximum 20 skills in Vanilla, where attributes had no influence at all on the gameplay, and where you could not swap skills on the fly. On a single Fractal run I may use up to 30 different skills with my Mesmer, depending on the ennemies, my group needs, and the situation.

This game’s mechanics are much, much deeper than GW1, so complex in fact that it’s hard to really understand them all.

^ A breath of fresh air among many spewings of hot air.

Why does everyone keep saying the D/D build (or any build honestly) requires skill to use? Seems to me Ele has become all about keeping everything on cooldown and popping cantrips when you get in trouble… Every D/D Ele I run in to just face rolls the whole time. There’s no need to time anything except churning earth + lightning flash. By the time you put all of your Fire, Air, and Earth skills on cooldown, you probably have taken some damage and conditions so its time to go water. By the time you put your water skills on cooldown, everything else is ready to be spammed again. Again, this can be said for pretty much any other Ele build… Spam everything on cooldown and pop cantrips when you need to.

nutspanther.2476:

My Proposal

Create 3 more profession buttons:
F6 – Spawn Bone Horror
Cost: 30% Life Force
Cooldown: 10s
Description: Minion. Necromancer creates a bone horror at its position. The necromancer is allowed a cap or 5 bone horrors out at a time. Bone horrors are a low hp, low dmg melee minion.
F7 – Wrath of the Grave
Cost: 40% Life Force
Cooldown: 40s
Description: Corruption. Necromancer calls the wrath of the grave, granting quickness to the necromancer and all of its minions at the cost of chilling itself.
Quickness (4s)
Chilled (4s)
F8 – Spectral Fury
Cost: 40% Life Force
Cooldown: 30s
Description: Spectral. Necromancer is infused with Spectral Fury, granting itself Fury, Stability, and Might for a limited time.
Might(15s) x1
Fury(15s) x1
Stability(5s)x1

This gives us necromancers access to many boons that we don’t have otherwise and provides us with more unique profession skills like the other professions. Let me know what you guys think.

Seems like every time I browse through the Necro forums, I find at least 1 amazing idea that would breathe new life (or perhaps undeath) into the profession. This idea is amazing because it addresses so many issues with one simple stroke of design. I can’t decide which idea is better, this one or the “3 pacts” idea (3 different flavors of death shroud: one for power/crit attacks, one for conditions, and one for minions) which another player posted.

I wish Anet would put more effort in to stuff like this, or at least fixing traits that have been broken since launch but were WORKING in the BETA (I’m looking at you, Deployable Turrets). Alas, it seems Anet’s priorities are more like…

Bots>Bots>Account Security>Bots>Holiday Content>Bots>New Content (fractals)>Eating>Sleeping>Bots>Blogging about anti-bot measures>Bots>Daydreaming>Going to the dentist>Bots>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Fixing trait and skill bugs.

Don’t get me wrong, though… I do appreciate the slaying of bots by the thousands.

Alberel Leonhart.9640:

Your last point is the real issue here. They are completely disregarding player concerns when it comes to class balance.

What seems to be happening is they are focussing on fixing ‘bugs’ that give unintended benefits to skills (such as the blast finisher on evasive arcana). The trouble here is that a lot of professions are in such a bad state these ‘bugs’ are the only things propping them up.

Going forward ANet really need to try to offset any future bugfixes that affect class balance in some way. If a bug is fixed that makes a class weaker then they should buff something else to make up for it.

Agreed with this and OP. I’m appalled by the “fix” to Evasive Arcana. That has to be the dumbest change in the entire patch. It was the crux of any halfway decent support build. Another thing that irks me is the way they tried to buff conjured weapons. “Wielders of this weapon gain increased stats” except that they don’t. Casters of this weapon are the ones who get the stats in the form of a boon with a timer that goes away as soon as the weapon is dropped and does not get reapplied when picking up the other copy. The stats are tied to the cast, not the wielding of the weapon.

The best thing Anet could do right now is abandon future event plans and get more than two people working on bugs and balance.

When I logged in to see that trait sitting there unchanged after the patch, all of my happies just vanished…

I was glad to see we got a couple of buffs and fixes, but extremely disappointing that so many other glaring issues remain untouched. Why doesn’t Anet just remove all minion skills and rename us Warlock or Dark Mage or something? Adding to my disappointment is the fact that my ele received some really stupid nerfs for no reason.

Meanwhile the game keeps getting frequent new quests and content no problem. Anet needs to fire the entire balance/bugfix team and hire people that are actually capable of doing their jobs like the creative content team.

Astralporing.1957:

Xenon.4537:

This. There’s way too much vitriol and alarmist diarrhea being spewed all over the forums over something that hasn’t been tried yet and has already received a reply from Anet themselves that everyone ignores because omigosh it must be a lie or something.

Perhaps we’re ignoring it because there are several informations in it that are just plain untrue already. That doesn’t help in believing the rest, you know.

Which bits are untrue and how do we know they are untrue?

Dra Keln.2015:

I’m sorry about CoH, but my advice is to let it go. There is potential for that to happen with any game, the best thing to do is just enjoy the game while its out.

I cry myself to sleep every night because of what happened to Chromehounds. ;_;

Casuals are fickle, whimsical, flaky, unreliable, annoying little kittenhats. It breaks my heart that developers are forced to hand tailor games to suit the casuals more and more every year just because they outnumber hardcore players. Casuals love to argue that they deserve all the accommodations because they are the majority. They don’t give two kittens if this means the game becomes cheapened, watered down, or dumbed down.

Here’s a thought: If you are too casual to keep up with any particular game, why don’t you go find a more casual game and stop trying to make all of the hardcore games less hardcore?

I think it’s working, just not very well. I always have huge issues getting tag credit in my MF set because I don’t pump out enough fast, front-end damage before the zerg of other farmers ethnically cleanses the area with aoe. When I do get credit (usually in those rare times when there aren’t 10,000 people at pent/shelt/plinx/wherever) I tend to get more rares with my MF set, though it feels like I also hit DRs a lot sooner so its like… am I really getting better loot or just finding my better loot faster and being forced to go on break sooner?

I dunno.. I wish there was some clarity, but as someone once told me asking Anet to explain magic find and diminishing returns is like asking Coka Cola to give out their secret recipe.

Grazingcattle.1627:

Stratzvyda.3921:

To the others, saying this isn’t grindtastic because other mmos do it worse is like saying that dudes not an kitten for punching a toddler because that guy’s running over one with a car.

Did you really just compare adding content to a game to child abuse?
Hyperbole has its place. This just makes you seem like you dont have any foot in reality. I know it was an illistration but I am sick of all the QQ from people who havent even played the new patch.

If after the patch you still feel like this is a valid comparison we will talk… about your need for therapy

This. There’s way too much vitriol and alarmist diarrhea being spewed all over the forums over something that hasn’t been tried yet and has already received a reply from Anet themselves that everyone ignores because omigosh it must be a lie or something.

Come on Anet! It’s the 15th, where’s our patch and/or notes?

I’m itching to see the class change/fixes!

Not looking to hijack the thread, but I figured it would be redundant to make a new one on the same topic…

Could anyone suggest for me a super tanky/CC build for WvW? I want to get around somewhat fast while being basically a nigh-invincible distraction. I want to slow and impair enemies and make them feel like I’m a threat. I want them to think “Oh this kitten clothie is just asking for my knife in his face!” only for them to be foiled by massive amounts of health, boons, conditions, life steal, life force, or whatever I can use most effectively.

Lani.1429:

I still love the game, but what i read on the forum is really shocking.

I’m right there with you. I feel like looking through these forums is like wading through a sea of monkey feces and cat urine. At first glance you would think Anet must have assassinated Jesus on his second coming right after resurrecting Hitler and contaminating the world’s supply of Nutella to deserve this kind of feedback.

As to the OP, I’m glad you’re looking at this the right way. I haven’t got bored yet, but If I had, I would not be upset. I payed $60 and got more hours of fun than 90% of the games I’ve ever played including stuff like Oblivion and Fallout. I face palm when I hear people complain and make alarmist declarations that the game is dead/dying just because they reached level 80 on their first toon and got bored. No one does that for Skyrim or Halo, also products that only cost $60.

My friend complains of this too, but I’ve never been alone in a zone so I have no idea what yall are talking about. Any zone, any time, any day/night I always run in to someone every 10 minutes.

I don’t get it. No one wants grind or gear treadmills, but they also want the game to go on forever with always something to work towards, i.e. a treadmill of some sort?

:fizzle:

They need to add to the definition of “casualize”

Casualization – The steady cheapening of video game design over time due to the increasing popularity of the pass-time and subsequent necessity of developers to cater to the fickle, selfish, “busy” masses.

I miss the good old days of gaming…

Necromancer has been my all-time favorite roll since Diablo 2 because if the minions. GW1 allowed you to (almost…) make an army like that, and I was pretty disappointed that GW2 didn’t live up to this legacy. That said I think I’ll still enjoy being a minion master if/when they work out the bugs. For now I’m thoroughly enjoying well-bomb and corruption builds.

For serious, just aggro everything, drop some spectral wall, grasping dead, enfeebling blood, blood is power, epidemic, watch the numbers fly, then collect the loot.

Where is everyone getting their info on Infusion, Agony, and the new dungeon/gear? Wading through the general discussion forum is like wading through a sea of cat urine and monkey diarrhea.

If memory serves, Spectral Agony was a special monster hex that only the Mursaat could use. It had something to do with their higher existence within the Guild Wars universe. If you read about the Mursaat, the Bloodstones, and how the gods created Tyria it becomes obvious there are mystical forces underlying the fabric of reality. I doubt it would make sense for mere mortals (players) to have mastery over such forces. That’s why we have to kill spectral creatures like the Eidolon to use it’s essence to Infuse our armor to protect against Agony.

I looked around and could not find much recent relevant information to answer my questions about diminishing returns on loot. I see plenty of threads regarding dungeon token, silver, and DE karma Drs, but almost nothing on loot DRs. I really hope Anet will shed some light on this soon, or that someone has tested for this information.

I’ve just finished leveling my second 80, a thief. My main is an elementalist. I read recently that Anet had “relaxed” the strictness of DRs recently, but I’m not seeing it. My ele has been getting porous bones and globs of globby goo for weeks now. I tried farming Orr, frostgorge, dragon events, dungeons, other zones like Mt Maelstrom and nothing seems to help. I have a full set of MF gear on him which doesn’t seem to help at all. To contrast this, my thief was getting (on average) 3 rares, 7-10 greens, and countless blues and mats per hour while leveling in Orr from 70-80. However about 30 minutes after hitting 80, right on que, my thief stopped getting anything more than 1 or 2 blues and a stack of porous bones per hour.

Before I waste any more time on this game, I hope to get a few questions answered.

1. How long does it take loot DRs to go away? It seems like my ele has been under the effects of DR in all locations for weeks.

2. Do I have to be logged in to the game for DRs to actually wear off? Again, my ele hasn’t seen a good drop in ages. I am usually farming something when I log in. Should I take a 10 hour break and stand by the mystic forge in the hopes that DRs finally go away? If this is the case, why?

3. Are DRs tied to specific mob types or are my loot drops affected across the entire game after farming a single spot? After hitting the “loot wall” in frostgorge (farming for lodestones) and trying my luck in Orr, and then again just about everywhere else in Tyria, it seems like a higher power simply hates me.

4. Is it possible for my character/account to encounter a DR bug in which I am “cursed” with permanent DR? I can be very paranoid at times, and this idea scares me because I have no way to know for sure.

5. Would Anet consider actually making the DR “debuff” a visible icon somewhere on my UI? The only thing I can think of that would make this bad is possibly botters exploiting the information to make their botting activities more efficient. I would still argue that the usefulness to legit players would outweigh the tiny benefit a bot might get from it.

Thanks in advance to Anet or anyone who might be able to answer some of this.

You should use that trait that makes you invisible when immobilized. Makes me lol every time a ranger or thief tries to lock me down for a fast kill.

If you have the money, I recommend a Logitech G700 mouse. Hella comfortable with lots of well-placed, fully programmable buttons. I have 1, 2, 3, and 4 right above my right thumb and I just tap it to throw grenades. Also I use fast cast ground targeting. Rather than 2 clicks to drop an AoE, it’s only 1 click. It’s half the clicks in half the time! All those clicks really add up. Without it, throwing 100 grenades means clicking 200 times.

I had hoped this issue was fixed in a recent patch where the notes said something about fixing a “bug which would clear targets incorrectly with mouse left click” or some such. But alas, it is not fixed. I get extremely frustrated when fighting Jormag’s claw because for no apparent reason, I will untarget his head multiple times during the fight and it’s a pain in the kitten to re-target because I have to re-angle my camera in such a way that makes his head clearly visible in the middle of my screen without the name plate or the hundred other players blocking my click, all while dealing with 8 FPS because my cpu is simply not good enough by Anet standards.

I really don’t think this is an issue with his build or gear… I’ve heard these stories from many new players of all different classes. It’s always the lack of dodge timing and proper skill usage that is causing them to die.

Almost every weapon and kit the engineer uses has a snare, slow, stun, or knockback. I’ll go ahead and list a few.

Rifle
Net Shot – Immobilize foes with a net shot.
Overcharged Shot -Fire a blast so strong it launches your foe as you fall backward and cures immobilized, crippled, and chilled.

Offhand Pistol
Glue Shot – Coat the target area with a glue puddle that immobilizes foes on impact, then cripples foes that remain within.

Shield
Magnetic Shield – Create a magnetic field that reflects projectiles and can be released to push back foes.
Magnetic Inversion – Release the magnetic field to push back nearby foes.
Static Shield – Electrify your shield, preparing to throw it at foes. If you are hit, the shield discharges, stunning your nearby attacker.
Throw Shield – Throw your charged shield. Dazes foes it hits on the way out and back.

Bomb kit
Glue Bomb – Set a timed charge that creates a puddle of glue, immobilizing and crippling nearby foes.

Elixir Gun
Elixir F – Fire a bouncing glob of Elixir F that cripples foes and grants swiftness to you and allies.
Acid Bomb Elixir – Leap backward, spraying an acidic elixir on the ground that damages nearby foes.

Flame Thrower
Air Blast – Push back foes and projectiles with a hot air blast.

Grenade kit
Freeze Grenade – Throw a grenade that chills enemies with a frigid blast.

Tool kit
Box of Nails – Scatter nails that bleed and cripple foes.
Gear Shield – Block attacks.

Utilities
Rocket Boots – Fly backward, damaging foes with your rocket exhaust. Cures immobilized, crippled, and chilled.

Slick Shoes – Spray oil behind you, knocking down foes. If underwater, foes entering the field are blinded.

Throw Mine – Throw out a remote-controlled land mine that damages, knocks back, and removes a boon from nearby foes.

Net Turret – Build a net turret that immobilizes nearby foes.

Thumper Turret – Build a high-health thumper turret that damages nearby foes. (knockback)

Elixir S – Drink Elixir S to shrink yourself, recover from stun, and evade attacks.

As you can see, you have more than enough ways to keep your distance and avoid damage. This doesn’t even take traits into account which will increase effectiveness exponentially. Also, there are many other abilities I probably missed which add to your survivability and damage. For example the elixir gun’s auto attack applies weakness which reduces their effective damage by 50%. Skill descriptions are not written in some secret code, it’s all quite simple. Just read and try them.

The other thing new players need to learn is dodging. This is arguably the most important part of combat in the entire game. And yes, I’ve heard the responses to this many times as well. “But I do dodge! all the time!” It is illogical to be dying if you are properly dodging. Dodge makes you invincible for that 1 second, you literally can’t take damage (except from dots, but those have to be applied by an attack in the first place). You must watch enemy animation and dodge at the moment of attack. I highly recommend turning off double tap dodge. I find it unreliable. Bind dodge to an easy to reach button (I chose E).

I’d like to add my name to the list of kitten victims by this bug. I’ve been having this issue for at least 3 weeks and I’ve sent two bug reports on it so far. Everyone says to just vary your words a little, but they don’t understand that THIS DOES NOT WORK IF YOU ARE ALREADY SUPPRESSED. Once suppressed, you are screwed. There is nothing you can do for at least an hour if not 2 or 3.

I literally type “LFG for CoE exp” and post it once into /map. 30 minutes later I type in the same thing. 30 minutes later I type it a 3rd time and get suppressed. Now. Recap. I’ve attempted to post no more than 3 small, simple messages in the space of 1 and a half hours. How this could be considered spamming is beyond me. I see guild recruitment spam every 90 seconds and they don’t seem to need to alter their words at all, they just copy/paste. At this point if I try to type in “Need group for dungeon explorable” I still get the suppressed message. If I try to type something completely unrelated to LFG like “Dude this suppression system is bullkitten” I still get suppressed. It does not go away for at least an hour. No amount of different words, phrases, character swapping, map changing, or re-logging fixes it.

TL;DR if you commit the atrocity of typing the same simple message (ex. “LFG”) more than once in 5 hours, you get the kitten knocked out of your freedom of communication. This needs to be fixed.

Sethanu.8934:

Anet could always add a 7 day WvW lockout after a transfer

This, or at least a complete lockout until the next reset/matchup.

My suggestion is make it so that players who do a server transfer are locked out of WvW until the next reset and make matchups take server pop into account. As I understand it, matchups are based on previous rankings right now? I like all the other suggestions in the OP as well, especially the server entrance supply and siege. IMO servers should become harder to eradicate the less map they control. As it is now it seems like there’s a threshold that’s too easy to cross into pushing competition permanently off the map.

It might not completely fix the issue, but it would probably help, and at the very least it would just be a cool new guild thing. It’s the only thing I can currently think of that would please both sides of the argument.

If Anet would overhaul the system, they could set it up so that your guild chat is window-based such that you can put guild 1 in one window next to your map chat, and guild 2 in another window, etc. Then they could remove representation all together and allow a single player to contribute influence to all current guilds they are in. Since there’s a 4 guild limit it wouldn’t be too hard to change all of the upgrade prices and the rate of influence gains to re-balance everything. In fact I make this suggestion number 3 for Anet’s consideration. It’s a lot more work, but it could potentially work better unless I’m missing something.

Erin.7521:

I haven’t had this issue. I join a guild because of an atmosphere that guild gives. If that guild has chat, discussion and the occasional group being formed for what ever the guild focus is then that is a guild I am going to represent because it adds something noticeable to my experience. A silent guild with no community even if you have all the bonuses in the world I am not going to want to represent you.

I do not think it is that different to previous games just more obvious. I have always been a member of several guilds just now I do have to log to another character just because nothing is going on it a guild.

You just have to focus on providing that community and not just bonuses.

Maybe I failed to mention it clearly, but since the OP is so incredibly long I wanted to wrap it up. I do want to have the community part of the guild strong. I want active guild chat and grouping and activities. I can’t do that when no one represents. As I said, sometimes we would have 30+ people online and only 4 representing. If you can’t see chat when not representing and all you can see when viewing our roster is that 90% of my guild is not representing, it’s sadly safe to assume there’s no community activity going on and thus no reason to represent, thus the multiplicative issue where the less representing compounds upon itself until no one is representing.

There might be a threshold of members it takes to represent in order to turn this multiplicative effect in the other direction, but I haven’t reached it yet. Currently I am having all of my officers and myself sit down and talk to everyone to make sure they know how to represent, why it helps, and if they intend to do so at all. If we don’t get a response or they say no, we kick them and continue recruiting. Someone who only represents us 10% of the time is only harming our guild by clogging up our roster with non-representation.

It really is much like a cancer that must be healed or removed. If I let it sit, the guild pretty much dies. Honestly I sympathize with the GMs who impose representation rules because I can clearly see why they find it necessary. I would like to find a better solution though, and it requires Anet to take some action.