Guild Wars 2

@OP:

I am accustomed to grind as well. However, I, as well as many, got into GW2 with the mindset of no gear treadmill, no item treadmill, no gear grind. Get exotic sets from whatever means(all same stat levels), and youre done…just grind for aesthetics.

Apparently ALL of us misunderstood them and they said ascended gear is in place to bridge the gap between exotic and legendary. Uh, well they were the same “ilvl”. Exotic = legendary in terms of stats. No bridge needed. But they said people got legendaries way too fast. Not sure about that. Anyways, its hear to stay..But they made two more fatal flaws, even if you have made your peace with ascended gear like I have.
1. Currently only able to get on the track to ascended via Fractals of the Mists dungeon. They are going to make it spread across the game, soon hopefully. They wanted to get this in before the patch but pushed the patch out the door..pre maturely.
2. Fractals of the Mists has a player gated system. Its a level system. Do it once, you get to lvl 2, do it again, youre level 3. Have to find people your own level in FoTm to do it. See the problem? They didnt, but again, working on a solution.

All in all, if they make ascended as easy to get as exotics, I wont have much of a problem. If i can buy an ascended ring with 50,000 kharma, Im OK with it.

If they make it cost 200,000 kharma, Im making a forum post on here with a big F you to you know who and quitting the game for good.

But you are right, by and large the rest of the game is still as fantastic as always.

I havent gotten one yet either, so you’re not alone. I also hope, they implement fractal gear across other areas of the game as soon as wintersday. I hope they are working feverishly to get this in. While I love fractals, I definately don’t want to run them every day and I definately dont want to grind them out.

This game is probably the MOST grindy game I have ever played, even before the Nov 15 patch. I was fine with dungeon grinding for dungeon sets, and grinding/farming out mats for legendaries. But grinding for the new “best in slot” is so terrible and utterly boring. It is not fun and I hope that this is fixed soon.

One more thing: While I respect arenanet when they address some of our concerns via an AMA or an interview/panel, they cannot tell me that this is NOT a grindy game. Always has and will be. They set out to not make a grindy game, and that is exactly what it is. Grindy. They can say all they want that it isnt. But this consumer thinks differently and it is my opinion, and the rest of you, that matters…not what arenanet thinks is a grind because guess what? The customer is always right.

I am on Stormbluff isle, arguably one of the most populated servers, and there are only small groups doing events. I havent seen a large zerg in a while, since the patch. I am having a tough time getting to some areas for map completion, including skill points that are flooded with risen and vets, that normally more people would stop by and help out.

A problem.

Content wise its as good as ny sub model game.

Thats fine. Just dont need to chase a new acended slot yet. Too soon.

I hope that they do not upgrade an additional slot with ascended gear for wintersday. I believe they said not for a while, and i hope they hold true to that. I dont have one piece of ascended yet.

Thoughts?

Like the OP, I was insanely upset over the changes. I stopped playing the game for almost two weeks, resubbed to WoW and leveled two characters from 85 to 90. I was about to continue playing…but read some other’s posts here about simply ignoring it and playing the game as I was before. It helped put my mind at ease a bit.

To note, Chris Whiteside did say they noticed the fractal level issue right off the bat as soon as people began outleveling eachother. They have some ideas to fix it, but itll take time to adjust reward and difficulty. At the time I took a break I was fractal level 5. I am now 11. Im playing the way I want to again. I plan on leveling all classes to 80. However, if they do not fix the grind for ascended gear(a bit) and the fractal level system by early 2013, I am done.

Good morning.

I am level 72, in Orr and I am having some difficulty. Up until this point Ive been running an axe/axe greatsword build that focuses on equipping sigils but not using them for increased precision, and keeping adrenaline at max for hp regen.

When leveling my necro, I saw a warrior running axe/axe, solo a champion and her hp never waivered much. I assumed she was running the same build as I have been.

Anyways, at 70 I respeccted to add more surv. I am now getting my kitten handed to me and it takes a while to kill stuff. When I leveled my thief through Orr, I could take on a vet and a few regular mobs no problem. Now I am going down steadily.

Anyone have any decent builds for Orr, that utilize axe/axe and greatsword?

Edit, I am running 20/20/20/0/0 and putting any new points into arms.

Strength: 2 and 5
Arms: 1 and 10
Defense: 2 and 1

Everyone will be in the downed state several times in any dungeon run. I dont care how good you are, it’ll happen.

Thief is no exception, but we are definaely not kittened in this regard. I love the thief in dungeons.

Yeah. I’ll bite…even though I think this is considered trolling.

I don’t see ANYONE running a p/p in fractals. Only once. Ever. EVER.

I think P/P definately needs work, but do not tell people how to play. The day I am cornered into one weapons loadout is the day I toss my digital copy of GW2 out the window.
K?

Eh still dont see it, so I cannot rejoice with you.

There are obvious pros about the class and I dont see a need to post those since they do not require attention!

Cons:
1.Adjust the time you are in stealth with the downed state #3. It is something like, one second. Completely useless in any situation, PVE or PVP.
2.Make P/P more viable in PVE. Maybe I just never learned how to properly play this build but I always felt initiative starved, even if I wasn’t chaining unloads. Still, your #1 source of damage will be unload. When you aren’t unloading, the gameplay feels very slow.

Where is this information anyways?

While I laud the positive nature of this post, it should be infracted like the rest of the arenanet callouts.

No offense

alcopaul.2156:

i posted this in a thread.

“if I was in Arena.NET’s “Department of Making Awesome Excuses”, i will make it appear like Ascended item was the natural progression of item upgrades.

How?

By telling you players that Exotics which accomodated runes and sigils are meant to be ascended with the runes and sigils and jewels attributes.

See, exotics will be the first step in the process. you can configure your exotic jewels to be berserker+emerald jewel and whalla, ascend it to have berserker+emerald stats with a slight increase. or you can configure your exotic weapons and armors with runes and sigil, ascend it and the ascended version will have the rune/sigil attributes.

this ascended versions are fixed and cannot be reconfigured but the infusions and the only way to reconfigure your ascended gear is to go the exotic way again and do all the configuration there with the appropriate jewel, rune or sigil and ascend them again.

with this setup, exotics are not obsoleted and is a prerequisite to get the ascended item.

and yes, thank you, A.NET in advanced. i’ll take a donation."

basically using Gift of Ascension and our current exotics. Yes, our current exotics as precursors for ascended.

This.
Farm the 500 fractal relics(I think its 500 for gift), and there you go. Simple, easy, gives people that slight verticle progression they want without creating the grindy game that you dont want. This I could deal with, and you would have some more Gem purchases from me in the gem store if this sees the light of day.

Please.
Please.
Please.
Please.
Please.

rozcinana.7249:

I’d love to make my exotics ascended in some way. Right now I don’t think any of the back pieces or rings give Carrion stats (power, vitality, condition damage). I love my build and don’t want to change it

I got vassar’s ring after beating the jade maw on lvl 10 and it makes me weaker so i’m not using it, even in fractals!

And this is something that I hope they are paying attention to. Your whole post brings to light two things:
-A way to convert the STATS of your exotics to ascended level.
OR
-Give us stats for each stat “group” such as carrion, knights, etc.

Edit: Thinking about it now, a simple “upgrade kit” from exotic to ascended is a far better idea than finding new items all together. Reduces bag/bank space and it might feel less like a grind.

Ascended gear needs to be obtained from literally every portion of the game because the whole matra of GW2 is “play how you want to”. I want to play casually(2-3 hours a night), while obtaining the best in slot gear while running DEs or dungeons.

They need to put this stuff into:
Orr Dynamic Events
Southshore Dynamic Events
Random drops in any 75+ zone
Pattern drops in any portion of the world for crafting disciplines.
Drops in any explorable dungeon.
WvW

etc.

This would be nice.

I would also like an update, or an estimated time when other planned fixes will be put in, as a result of that disasterous weekend.

In particular, minimizing some of the grind for ascended gear(Chris Whiteside alluded to this) as well as fixing the fractal level system so that it is easier to find people at your level(again, alluded to by Chris Whiteside).

Personally, I am going to continue doing what I was doing before that weekend. Im leveling all classes to 80. I have the Thief, Guardian, and Necro done. Almost done with the warrior. I plan on doing the Elementalist and Engineer this month and next month. Ranger and mesmer in February. If by the end of Feb, early march these fixes are not in place, then I have no place in this game. 3+ months is enough time to get a fix in, in my eyes at least.

I am not sure what it was, but last night in CoF explorable, on the last boss of Path 1, I could not switch weapons. It was greyed out, but I received no error message on screen.

After the fight was over, I was able to switch weapons.

Hi,
Last night in Lion’s Arch, I witnessed a warrior, what looked like chaining 1000 blades, but the sword swinging was probably 50x faster. The entire animation lasted 15-20 seconds, maybe more. I tried to quickly get a FRAPs going to video it and post it, but my computer blue screened

While I hold my reservations on their development direction in the last month, and some unnerving rumors about “realignments”, I still think at its core Guild Wars 2 is fantastic.

1-80 I absolutely love. Leveled 3 to 80, and my fourth is 71. At level cap, the fun drops off a bit, but its still not bad.

Just…some design decisions and “Oh we didnt see that coming” have me worrying whether or not they can handle an MMO like this for the long haul…if they are up to the task.

But regarding the thread at hand, congrats.

Posted my answers..and I would say the Norn area takes the cake once you reach the snowy portion of the zone. The “highland” mountainy area is really really nice, one of my favorites until we have to venture north to the snowy portion. Hate it.

I think the guy that broke it down like this had it right…here are my answers:

I dislike the most…
Landscape: Sylvari (not that it isnt pretty, but I think there are way too many obstacles in your path)
Quests: Asura
Population: Charr
Humor: Human

“Everytime you’re knocked back, a risen gets his wings…”

nofo.8469:

I don’t understand why Zhaitan is such a bad guy.

I mean sure he attacks lions’ arch, but that’s likely in response to 100’s of adventurers pillaging his empire.

When he does get his empire back because all the invaders decided to do fractal reruns he doesn’t invade or anything, he just chills in his empire happy to finally have some peace and quiet.

Stop being cretins and attacking orr, they are just minding their own business.

He attacks claw island…

Or as trahearne says
“CLOOR island”

Sticky this thread

Raehvyn.4530:

CassieGold.7460:

putting on flame kittenant jacket

I don’t have problems moving around Orr. As zones go, I kind of like Orr…. Loved Straits for a long time, but Malchor’s Leap has really grown on me.

Now, I’m not saying I can move around with my Map screen up, and some times you have to smack things around a little… (not every mob, or even close, but some times, you need to kill some trash really quick to move on.)

Mobility skills are a must…. mobility is it’s own form of survivability…. and anything that lets you break agro is handy on those occasions you get caught… but if you pay attention, just moving around isn’t that rough.

Ok. First off, you’re right. It isn’t a zone to navigate with the map on. I can respect that because that is how it is supposed to be. I’d be disappointed if it were just a Hello Kitty simulator.

Have you ever -tried- to do -anything-? Skill points or anything? You can kill all the mobs you’d like and then you turn around and they’re back. Might as well give them party hats and alcohol, they’re like the failed frat boys of college, everywhere you don’t want them to be.

Quite frankly I had the same thoughts as you. Then I leveled up a bunch of alts. Do Orr three or four times and see if you’ve still got those googly eyes for the mobs.

I’m going to need Prozac because of that zone.

Dude you are hilarious

Lets not jump on jon. He took the time out of his day to give us an idea what to expect. He could have said no. Be a little grateful.

@sauncho, i am in the same boat although i dont pvp much. But they should start with the basics.

Clearly. haha
Clearly a dead guy has residual memory. Have you ever seen the show The Walking Dead? They are not alive! They have no remorse, no feeling, no memory. No intellect.
Nothing.

Mars.6319:

I think it’d help if world vets and champs were updated so that they had much longer spawn timers, required 5 and 25 people respectively, and had loot tables that made players want to hunt them.

BAMs from TERA. (oops did I mention that game on these forums? )Monster hunting… Its a great idea. I would DEEEEEFINATELY partake in that..trying to solo vet and champs, if the loot tables made it worth the 5-10 minute fight.

BAM hunting in Tera is/was awsome. Normally it took two or three people at least to take one down. Unless you were REALLY good. Solo it sometimes took upward 15 minutes. Rewards werent fantastic, but the fights themselves made it worthwhile because of the true action combat system.

GW2 has a less interactive combat system, imo, but I think that they could do something similar here. There is a dodging system, so put it to the test with these things.

Great idea.

Zenyatoo.4059:

residual memories of the person they used to be.

Much the same way the farmers carry their old tools despite other risen being happy to just punch at you.

Oh dont feed me that.. Lazy coding is what it is!

I compare it to SWTOR: Theres a video on youtube of a guy that just ran around one of the zones, I think the IA starter zone, and there was sometihng like one or two dozen NPCs that looked EXACTLY the same..hair style, skin pigment, face structure, everything. It was the same NPC, all over the camp.

Frotee.2634:

I actually like his voice – a lot. However, it does feel somewhat…weird not to be the central hero of the story, but rather just the second in command to a NPC. We are just so used to being the one(s) in the center of attention that we get jealous of him I suppose What with the game starting with “This is my story” and everything

His voice is not one that inspires. If I were to follow a leader onto the field of battle against risen ankle biters, he better not be a soft-spoken englishmen(no offense). He needs to be rugged, scratchy voice. Or the guy from Full Metal Jacket, the drill seargent.

Gomer pile!

I hate trahearne.

I want to stomp on his larynx with my boot.

“CommanDUH may I have a word with you, I need your advice”..on every mission!? What in the hell? Youre supposed to lead us against an effing enormous dragon and you want my lvl 62 warrior’s advice? We are in deep kitten.

No offense to the voice actor though.

I encourage all of you to go out into the world, and find a risen…basically, any zone in the game right? Anyways, just sit there and watch. WATCH OUT! Dont get too close! Just sit there and watch their idle animations. I was in….one of the zones last night, I witnessed a female(former human) risen shuffle her feet and then do the “stretch and yawn” emote/animation that MY LIVING character does.

Seriously, go check it out.

Why the hell is an undead minion stretching and yawning? Like she had a hard day at work or something.

The title of the thread made me laugh so hard haha. But I agree with the post

edit: The entire post made me laugh out loud at work. kitten you dude haha. But you are correct.

Ankle biter kingdom..hahahahaha.

Chriswck.6490:

Perhaps remove bleeding, since the point of the caltrops are to hinder enemy movement. Not the Caltrops skill per se, but the trait that gives caltrops upon dodge.

This would be bad as it has detrimental effects to condition thief builds. Particularly in PVE. Caltrops are an enormous part of my DPS, and i do not PVP. Doing this would break my build and I’d be forced to look for a new one.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Apologies, this feature wasn’t suppose to go out in today’s patch. This was intended to come out with the next patch along with a UI drop down to change how you want team colors to work. The new default setting is WvW style coloring (enemy only has team colors), but you will also be able to make everyone, or nobody team-colored. There will also be UI changes to reinforce what team you’re currently on, so hold tight, apologies again!

Hey, no need to apologize. From the sound of it this is a good thing and people are liking it. And its nice to see someone from Anet on my server. Ive only seen one of you guys, and she didn’t /wave back!

Looria.8019:

This game is the most grindy and farmy game I have ever played.

I agree, but Chris Whiteside said they are taking steps to reduce the grind for some of the new stuff.

But folks, bigger picture: Take out the grind and what do you have? What are you left with? Will you still log in? Grinding is what keeps people playing. If you took out grinding, theres no reason to play GW2 other than wvw or spvp. You wouldnt be working for anything new. Youd have it all, already.

With that said, I am against gear treadmills of any kind. Grinding out dungeon sets for weeks or months on end for cosmetics was fine to me.

There was a grind before Nov. 15, theres a grind after Nov 15.

You grind out dungeon sets, 20+ runs for one full set.
You grind out Kharma for God sets
You grind out mats and pre-reqs for Legendary.

Whats different, aside from the slight gear, sorry item upgrade, treadmill installment?

JonathanSharp.7094:

felivear.1536:

Just a quick question if you are still monitoring this thread. Do you agree that the scoring system in hot-joins is not conducive to team play and actually causes it to be the main reason you see so many theives and mesmers? Because they are very well suited for that type of play (i.e. Kill, quick hopping between points, cap and leave).

Also, are you completely set in stone on the no solo queue option? Many people including myself do not have the time or have an odd schedule to form teams and play at set times, we want to be able to queue in tournaments with people who also want the same thing. That would by far be the most popular type of SPVP played if that was added.

Edit: are there any plans to make hot-join keep parties of at least 2 people together? With Christmas rush I plan on seeing a few new friends joining and I would like to stay on the same team in hot-join.

• Scoring: As I said in the interview, we want to make changes to this system once other key features are finished!

• Solo queue: We want to try the system I spoke of, where individuals can join and be grouped together, and then get an aggregate rating. It’s a complicated formula, but once we’re closer to releasing it, we’ll do blog posts to explain how it will work. So we will be addressing the issue you raise.

• For hot joins, we’re going to see what happens after custom arenas go live. We think hot joins will change how people view casual games.

• To the whole newb/noob thing: I did NOT mean this to be derisive. I was simply using it as a term to describe players who are new at the game. I did not mean to deride, explicitly or implicitly, player skill. Sorry that it came off that way to some of you. I simply feel very passionately about making an E sport WHILE ALSO PROTECTING our new players with the fury of a 1,000 burning suns. If we don’t protect and teach our new players, then they can’t get into the game and learn. If we don’t bring in new players, there will be no interest in the higher levels of competitions. I think that in order to have a successful E-sport, you need players who want to watch high level players playing. You also need to bring in new blood into your game to keep the game growing (think of any sport in the world….you have high school -> college – > professional).

So I didn’t mean that to be demeaning at all, sorry if it came off that way. I tried to explain what I meant by newb/casual (new players, or those who just play casually), sorry I didn’t do a better job – I’ll work on that one.

J

Its cool. And we’ll be “even-steven” if you push for a legendary called “Fury of 1000 burning suns” haha.

I know that when you used the term that you didnt mean it in a derogatory sense. However, I think just using it at all carries a certain “reputation” with it. Ive never heard the term “noob” used as a polite way to describe someone as new player. Its always used as a slight jab, whether playful(kidding) or serious(derogatory). I don’t think it has a place in game development…especially MMOs where we need to be coddled at times =)

But in regard to the content of the discussion, while I found it very engaging, I simply disagree that the “pro” players know what’s best for us just because they meta-play all day and because they are normally the first out with new builds. Pro players make up a small percentage of the playerbase. I find it difficult to concede that the non-pro players don’t have anything constructive to say. I am making this a point because inviting pro-only players to events like this suggests that their input weighs in more, which sounds like it is true from the interview. I simply disagree with this. Again, just my opinion and anyone, including yourself, are free to disagree with it.

With that said, please do shy away from holding “round tables” like the one you just had, just because people like myself or others might not view the content of the interview in the most positive light. I think it was a great discussion to have, and to continue having, even if I disagree with the mood of it.

@xeph: I am not sure if you have been reading my posts or not, in this thread. I want to be clear, I personally do not have anything against any of you that were on the podcast. Infact, I am not sure why there is such hostility in this thread toward the people that were on it…I remember the first few days of GW2, I had a quick conversation with Lowell about thieves, as he is/was on SBI at the time. Nice guy.

My issue is with the direction of the conversation, the content of it. Again, its my opinion so please don’t argue with my opinion. I felt that because they only had “the pros” on it, only the things that mean alot to you guys would be discussed. I personally feel there should have been a mixed audience there, which that Guru guy said would be considered next time around. Good.

Overall, I felt the conversation somewhat insulting…maybe insulting is the wrong word. Basically, I walked away from it feeling like I am holding YOU back because I am not on your level of “understanding” of how Gw2 combat and sPvP is meant to be. And since I feel like I am holding YOU, it discouraged me from trying sPvP. I felt this way because according to the discussion, the newer players or casuals aren’t as skilled, experienced, knowledgable as the rest of you. So, the changes that might have taken place if casuals didnt exist, do not get put in… yet. It almost felt as if the entire discussion was concieted and egotistical.

Again, nothing against you guys. Thanks for participating, it is appreciated. The content and direction of the discussion is what left a bad taste in my mouth about sPvP and esports in this day and age.

Im just wondering why this game launched without a PTR. Its the perfect way to get feedback from people.

While this thread will probably be locked, I agree with the OP.

I understand that coding something as complex as GW2, with the DEs and all, istougher than coding traditional questing. However… Every patch or every few days there are updates to fix bugs preventing progress in certain DEs and story quests. We are over 3 months into the game, and still squashing the same type of bugs. I see no end and I worry that this is something Arenanet does not have a handle on, that it is inevitable that these SAME bugs will pop up because of the pure rare nature of this particular game.

With that said, I agree. Fix the code before introducing more content. The time you spend on content could be better spent fixing the code. Not so bugs are squashed, but so they do not pop up in the future.

mavet.3047:

The whole point of these nerfs, which are intentional without a doubt, is that you spend more rl money on their piece of crap gem store. No subs so they have to sucker you in some how.

After the Nov. 15 patch, i wont be spending a penny in their TP. And if grinding out mats for a legendary becomes more and more of a chore than fun, then I simply wont do it. And if arenanet makes these legendaries 10x more powerful than an Exotic, I’ll then quit the game.

Rythgar.2896:

cesmode.4257:

Jonathan sharp even referred to casuals as “noob”.

This is the second or third time I see you making this statement. And I just have to clarify following to you, since you don’t seem to know it: Noob is a player that is generally “bad” at a specific game or overall. While Newb is a player that is new and henceforth “bad” simply because he is new.

You have, as I’ve mentioned, used as a statement against Sharp that he called causals noobs, which is just wrong. He used the term newb and casuals to describe the less experienced/skilled/newer players. So where you see an insult there actually is none. And if my memory serves me right he actually clarifies this atleast one time in the interview. He goes like “the newbs, I mean the more casual players” or “the newbs and the casual players” etc.

Oh and by the way, just want to point out that I (as a mid-tier player) would much more prefer Arena Net to balance/tweak the game from the professionals point of view/feedback. Because that is where the trustworthy analysis’s will come from.

Want examples? Just go to any successful e-sports out there, like SC2. When the SC2 HotS beta came out every single sc2 pro gamer got a key. And it is not because of some dark, ominous reason. It’s simply because Blizzard knows that the pro’s feedback is near invaluable, and the more they can get the better.

I guess you didn’t read everything I wrote. Thats ok, I’ll re-iterate. The term “noob”, however spelled, means the same thing. Inexperienced. However, it almost always has a negative conotation attached to it. You call someone a noob, you aren’t politely saying “Please acquire more skill”. I find it to be a bad business practice to use terminology such as this when it definately can be construed as an insult. I am sure he did not mean it that way, but it was definately poor word choice.

With that said, and while I referred to this two or three times as you pointed out, it is not the core of what I am trying to say.

It is an opinion post, my opinion, on how I feel after have watched the interview. How can I be wrong when it was my opinion?

The core statement I was trying to get across is that the entire interview could have been mildly insulting to the non-pro sPvP player. Jonathan sharp even referred to casuals as “noob”. Even though this term is frequently used, it still has negative conotations attached. He did say that they keep the casual comments in mind when making balance changes, but by and large it really sounded like they want to illicit the help from those top players. The rest of the community is just noise really. On top of all of this, the entire conversation gave me a feeling that just because I do not play for 10 hours a day, my lack of skill is what is holding the game back from being what the top players envision it. The casual lack of skill prevents changes from happening, to the detriment of the pro-playerbase. That is the one stinging feeling I was left with all of that.

For lack of better words:
-It was said that developers keep the casuals in mind, but want to really garner information from the top players and the “meta”.
-It was said that most of the playerbase learns more slowly than the pros, so they need to keep this in mind as well. Its almost like saying “Pro players: We know that we need to change XYZ, but the rest of the playerbase just won’t catch on that quickly. Please be patient with THEM while they are still learning how to handle each class”. This type of developer attitude is probably present in any MMO, but hearing a developer say stuff like this really put things into prespective for me.

OneArmedBandit.7936:

Just to clarify, I didn’t mean to shun the casual PvPers who, in fact, form the majority of GW2’s PvP community. Their opinions and feedback should obviously be listened and catered to for a more accessible, progressive (casual>semi hardcore>hardcore>pro) and fun PvP experience which in the long run will translate into more stream views, TP purchases etc. However, there are certain areas of the game (as Jonathan Sharp so frankly put) such as class and meta balance where this can become problematic because, let’s admit it, a casual finds it easier to whine on forums about X being broken rather than watching how the top players handle said situation or doing a bit of research to discover/formulate counter-strategies, build optimisation, adjustment etc.

As a player from a mid-tier tPvP team (10 QP), I have full confidence in top players representing my concerns, suggestions etc.

True, and I agree. But the same can be said for the pro players. You don’t think that during these streams, that these guys will be pushing for fixes to OP class mechanics that they cannot handle themselves?

If one of them was a necro, and a thief catches them by surprises with a massive backstab-crit build…you don’t think that the pro-necro wouldn’t be pushing to nerf this?

In my view, its all the same complaints no matter who it is coming from. The only difference is, these guys are 100x better than most everyone else, and they are deemed all the wiser for it.

As for my own possible bias, as some might make it seem: I have no dog in this fight. I don’t sPvP. Im neither casual or pro. Im a guy that players 3-4 hours per night weekday, 5+ on weekends, but knows his sh-t. I just choose not to be all pro-y about it. Honestly, I accept whatever changes Arenanet will make to the game, because it all changes eventually. I usually dont fret about class balances and changes unless it actually changes how I play the game…ie.. If as a thief, I am unable to move in and out of the frey/stealth with relative ease. Thats a core niché of the class that should be handled delicately. I really could care less if they toned down the damage of a backstab, or heartseeker.

Sion.1653:

We need more posters like you, OP. Thanks for posting this – it’s very well written and informative.

Well, its not THAT informative. Its pretty basic, generic and softballed which I guess would fall into a “101” type of thread. However, this information is probably available on the guildwars2.com website somewhere or on the wiki. If people are savvy enough to navigate to this thread on the forums, then they can find the wiki information. Furthermor, I would also say that if you are on the forums, you probably know these basics and would have no need for it.

Still, I support what the OP is trying to do which is to say, in basic understanding “Heres three important facets of the combat, this is how the game is designed. Work with the game, not against it”.

ZaiTh.6378:

Dungeons are about zerging. There is no real form of controlling or maintaining any sort of taunt. Know when to roll and you will be ok. Learn the simple strats and dungeons are cake and unchallenging.

I agree. Dodge when you need to, move out of bad floor when you need to, and have a little surv. built into your build and theres no need for a tank specced guardian or warrior.

If you actually know how to play your class, you’ll be just fine.

etiolate.9185:

Actually, I have always found the problem with only listening to top players is that they will start to take advantage of that situation and influence the game to be balanced around their playstyles and favored builds. They also get stuck inside a bubble of thought that causes the game to get stale. GW1 ended up suffering from this problem down the road.

You need disruptive thought in regards to balance as well as “top players” feedback.

Nicely put and I agree, which is why I suggested mixing the next interview with two or three top players, and then randomly selected 2 or 3 players. If those randomly selected players happen to be pretty hardcore, then so be it. If they are the type that log in a few times a week for a few hours a week, then so be it. Id be willing to be that if they were selected and choose to attend, that they have some idea of what they are doing in game, and not a player that is completely new to an MMO or PVP.