Guild Wars 2

If you don’t like a commander’s strategy or attitude don’t follow that commander. It’s that simple.

Remember that you’re all on the same team too. That commander may not be the best but he’s trying to win same as you are.

Lastly being the “Good” commander as you refer to it requires an enormous amount of personal skill both in dealing with people and in WvW strategy. Starting off by calling your Militia “sheep” is not going to work for you in the end.

I understand it’s what’s in the winds too. Of course your house won’t last if a volvo gets thrown through the window but those images suggest that 90% of it was pure wind power. Mount Washington has definitely endured that much wind (since they have the record for it).

My point about the schools still stands though. Now that we solidly know that a school building won’t survive a really powerful tornado like that we can build storm shelters into the classrooms there. It doesn’t help if a school is 2 floors but at least in that case (a 2 story school building) the first floor might be able to get away without storm shelters. The school is government funded I hope and they should put in a shelter for at least every 2 classrooms if not every one.

The real tragedy is that they know that storms like this hit these areas and yet they continue to build houses out of wood and brick. Apparently it is possible to build a structure that can withstand winds of a tornado: These guys have done it

Yet i’m watching the Weather Channel who is really covering this and what I see is a whole block of wooden houses that got reduced to foundations. Anyone who didn’t have a storm shelter was seriously screwed in that situation. And the school is the worst part about it. Each classroom could have a storm shelter in it and yet they send the kids into the hallway which is only marginally better than the classroom at protecting them.

Oklahoma is no stranger to tornadoes. Surely they could have building codes in place requiring shelters at a minimum.

It’s tragic to see this happen and my heart goes out to them.

The best thing a small group can learn is how to use terrain. At the end of that match at hills he jumped down the hill to draw them off the wall. Second part would then be to come back up and use knockbacks to throw them off the cliff. If they even get 2-3 players off the cliff they become divided enough to finish off.

You guys really need to learn to play thieves before you come rushing to this forum screaming for nerfs. Get one to 80 and go into WvW and figure out how to play it. At the same time watch how other players counter you. What you successfully died to is what you need to do to counter thieves.

Quick hints for all you thief haters out there:
- Knockback and immobilize are a thief’s worst enemy.

This reminds me of the argument they had about Backfire, Spiteful spirit, etc back in the days of GW1. The arguments were the same. You have those who have the awareness necessary to not die to backfire (and it’s obvious marks) and those who don’t and end up spamming firebolt to their deaths or worse blowing a Protective Spirit on a Diversion.

Those who couldn’t handle it came crying to the forums and very little if anything was done about it.

Now… We’re lucky to find anything that requires a shred of skill before it gets nerfed into the ground.

PS. Yes I’m of the belief that thieves were never overpowered and I had proof of it in an sPvP match. A guy rolled a thief after watching steamrolling videos on youtube faced my guardian. I smashed him into the ground while his attacks bounced off me. It got to the point where he had to ask me what he was doing wrong. I gave it to him straight… those videos were performed by skilled players who understood their class and character really well.

PPS: If you’re getting 3k ticks of confusion wait it out and shatter the mesmer doing it. There’s no way he has defenses with that kind of condition damage gear stacking. Better yet every class has at least 1 condition removal, specifically for this situation. Use it and shatter the perp.

PPPS: In large scale combat you need to carry AOE debuffers (like Null Field, Well of Power, Engineer healing turret, etc) and use them to be effective. T2 and T3 zerg clashes are all about understanding the condition damage metagame and that several classes carry tools to counter it. Use these tools to be effective at crushing an enemy zerg. Even if you’re pugging in a zerg carry some kind of aoe utility like this. It will come in handy and even mean the difference between a victory and defeat.

You have Auto attack turned on… there’s your first problem. Turn that off in PvP. You want all of your actions to be deliberate. Auto attack opens you up to damage from the very thing we’re complaining about here.

Confusion and retaliation were intended to punish their victims for lack of awareness. They’re like Empathy and Backfire from GW1. Confusion applies to an enemy, Retaliation applies to yourself.
The issue is that too many players are incapable of developing situational awareness and end up punished by these conditions. Instead of making these players adapt, anet nerfs these skills so they don’t have to.

Problem is games where player skill is required don’t pull in money anymore. The shareholders say nerf these things and make Arrow carts overpowered and the devs listen.

If there was any commander ability I would want it would be the ability to see all allied forces on a map. I mean like mark their locations on the minimap but instead of the short range you normally get make it map wide. Half the time I have to make my zerg respond to threats on the other side of the map because I don’t know if we have any forces over there that can handle them.

Jason King.2647:

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Thanks for the update. This was the one thing my backstab thief couldn’t adapt to.

If you simply get it back to how it was before the patch I would be happy. I never had any other glitches with this trait.

For everyone posting about an issue not related to this trait make a new post. Let us not confuse our Anet peeps working on our issues.

I was running this before the nerf to stealth.
http://tinyurl.com/cvyuhtv

(edited because GW forums garbled the link) … one more time with feeling

It should still be viable too, just adding a death blossom or dodge at the end of the attack chain before going in for another round of CnD /Backstab… except that Hidden Killer is completely broken now. This build relied on that for the critical strike damage coming off the backstab while stealthed to provide the damage it needed to down a target. I’m trying other builds now. If they just fix Hidden Killer (and I mean hot fix, not wait till the april update to fix it) then i’ll go back to this build. Otherwise I hope they’ll compensate the loss of defensive capability in the revealed debuff change.

I’ll try to find a new build but I had a lot of money tied up in the gear that went with my old build.

I’ve adapted to this so far…
http://tinyurl.com/coxuubc
(edited cause gw2 forum garbles these links)

It’s a work in progress but it’s showing promise. It’s a heavy dodge build that relies on alternating between dodge rolls and death blossom for defenses. It will occasionally do a CnD + Backstab but the main point is sustained dodge caltrops. I’ve toyed with using that other caltrops too. Also not sure what to use for the healing skill.

I’d be still running a HK backstabber but Hidden Killer is broken too far now.

IMO the decision to go with the 1 second revealed nerf was too hasty and broke a lot of the thief mechanics. It used to be that you could fill the revealed debuff with 1 full dagger attack chain. Now you have to add something to fill the extra second like dodge rolls or a death blossom to recover the lost defenses.

To those who sing praises of these thief nerfs… we will adapt again and you’ll still QQ.

I heard a rumor about a revealed buff increase. I hope that it is heavily compensated for… my expectations from what I heard then:

Revealed increased from 3 to 4 seconds.
Dancing Dagger initiative cost reduced to 3, projectile speed increased by 100%.
Death blossom initiative cost reduced to 4.

That’s it really from what i think they’ll change. What i would want to see is below. Changes assume a 4 second revealed buff rather than the current 3 second one.
Black power: lasts 1 second longer or bigger combo field.
- This is really for tanking mobs in pve. It doesn’t change much in pvp.

Infiltrator’s arrow (shortbow 5) causes 3 seconds stealth. No longer causes blind.
- Shortbow really lacks options for stealthing other than your utility slots and it has one of the strongest stealth #1s on a thief in Surprise Shot. What I’m looking at here is more access to that ability especially considering other classes access to Immobilize on short cooldowns. The shadowstep component would still work during Revealed. The blind component IMO seems useless on a weapon skill 5 slot especially at the cost this skill has. This could potentially make a better gap closer this way as well with the thief swapping to another weapon to use the stealth.

Signet of malice: Attacks remove 1 condition once every 5 seconds instead of healing on attack.
- My thief doesn’t use this much at all simply because it’s not as attractive as Hide in Shadows. This one would trade it’s passive healing for condition removal. Shortbow thieves would benefit most from this rather than having a really low passive heal.

Withdraw: The thief gains 2 initiative when activating this skill.
- Also not as attractive as Hide in Shadows this one could use a little help. It would slightly mirror Roll for Initiative and make this more useful for dodge build thieves (as an alternative to stealthing).

Utilities:
Signet of Shadows: Activate effect causes stealth instead of blinding foes.
- With the nerf to revealed accessiblity to stealth can be increased without breaking stealth balance. Signet of Shadows currently takes a permanent spot on my thief’s bar because of the speed boost it’s passive effect provides. The current blind activate is lackluster at best. I’ve found situations where it’s useful but a stealth activate would be more useful. I know, i want swap it out but the ability to close gaps on fleeing enemies is too valuable to leave it off.

And those who pick up new thieves and try to faceroll with them wonder why they bounced off my guardian as I smash them into the dirt with my hammer.

That’s not a joke. I had that happen a while back in sPvP. I was practically 1v1ing a thief who after I rick rolled him a few times actually asked me to stop and asked why the build sucked. He watched youtube, rolled it and thought he could faceroll everything. It’s not that easy.

It takes way more skill that most realize for a thief to survive fights in the ultra bursty builds. Most of the time mine can’t actually get the stomp off on a guy I just downed. The way I fight is to be “closed” to attacks. 50% of this is stealth. The other 50% is landing my attack then proceeding to dodge or use Death Blossom to evade attacks until stealth is back up. I then use heart seeker to gap close and CnD to get back into stealth.

If i tried to run that burst build any other way it simply wouldn’t work. And for those who cry nerf to precasted CnD during steal it won’t do you any good. Mug through steal will still apply the basilisk venom and i’ll still hit my burst combo off and down you (or get you low enough to scare you away).

Sun Tsu advocates zerging. He advocates attacking the weaknesses and shoring up your own weaknesses. He would much so approve of the situation where the OP’s 5 man party faced and lost to the 20man zerg, so long as he was in the zerg.

Bringing your 20 man zerg against a 5 man group is a valid and actually correct course of action.
The incorrect course of action is that 5 man group trying to drive off a 20 man zerg unless they had a truly solid strategic advantage. Sun Tsu calls it “earth”.

The 5 man group can choke the 20 man group and make their numbers count for naught. If they can’t choke them they have no business fighting them. There are very few locations where you can choke a 20 man zerg in WvW so if yours is 5 men, avoid the enemy zerg and try to rally more to your cause. If you can’t rally more then you will inevitably lose objectives that the zerg attacks. You should be attacking other objectives that are undefended.

How to be a good commander…

It’s about respect really. You have to be willing to give full respect to everyone around you in the game. You must not shout, berate, or otherwise bash another player ever. Even if he makes the stupidest decision you could ever think of you can’t bash him for it. You must also earn the respect of your fellow players, your troops if you will. You will earn their respect over time. Most of all you cannot force other players to do things you want them to do. If they want to follow you they will. If they don’t want to follow you they won’t.

That said there are two easy ways to earn their respect: Be successful, and learn to follow.

Being successful… when you turn on that commander tag you step into the strategy game that is World Vs World. You must learn the roles of every class. You must learn how to use siege. You must learn how to conduct field combat, how to predict enemy movements and how to place your troops effectively. You must learn to coordinate with other commanders on the map and know that your server will not be truly successful if yours is the only commander tag on the map. These are things that you will only learn with experience. You can gain that experience if you learn to follow.

Learning to follow… there are other commanders on the map. There are some whose names become famous to your server. There are some who you will ask “who is this guy?” They’re all the same. They all want the same goal: for your server to succeed. Learning to follow means giving your full devotion to whatever commander you choose to follow. Support their strategy. Run the supply runs they ask for. Sweep the keeps they take for mesmers. Use your skills and build your character to support them while playing how you want to. Your name will be known and the players you follow will eventually follow you.

Once you know what strategies make sense and how to follow you can successfully lead. You will know how to inspire the players like they inspired you. Then you will be a good commander.

This change actually makes defensive strategy much harder. Ninja strategy is the new metagame and small groups are the weapon. The commanders must now learn to anticipate enemy movement rather than react to it.

Especially gone are the days where 1 commander is sufficient for success. Your server needs at least 2 to be successful. More would be even more effective since their small guilds can now take any tower easily.

You guys actually miss the bigger change too. This is the fix to the Righteous Indignation buff that makes the claimer perfectly invulnerable. Before a large zerg had no trouble knowing they could get supply by condition burning the claimer. Now the 2 man camp gank squad can snarl their supply so effectively that they’ll fail.

You must adapt or you will fail.

If your team is successful you will make a decent bank off the drops and capture rewards, more than enough to cover both the cost of repairs and the cost of siege weapons.

The key is to be successful though: Don’t just run into a spawn camp and expect to make money or even live, go out the side doors and start capping camps. Each camp is 2 silver roughly, plus drops if you get any. Each yak is worth 1 silver and they’re typically defenseless. Each guard post is worth about 80c. All of these will pay for your repair bill even in lvl 80 exotics.

I have to say I enjoyed our battle with and BP tonight in eternal battleground (I was that krew commander you probably saw in the south half of the map). We will have plenty of time till Friday for more action! I hope to cross swords again!

I have to agree that the excessive message limit should not apply to commanders in wvw maps. Once you hit that limit it totally breaks your control over your troops. I found that it takes about an hour of coordinating the map for it to hit with normal talking. It also hits alot faster when you ping locations instead ( I was trying to do that to use less message to move my militia but hit the limit faster).

Also the /supplyinfo command’ s range is really tiny, like melee range almost. It needs to be bigger to be more useful, like 1200 range. I have to estimate my militia’s supply based on the number of camps we raided and find myself hitting more camps than may be necessary. I can’t expect everyone to join my squad even after I ask.