Guild Wars 2

Rodzynald.5897:

If you really seek knowledge through hours of reading posts on forums and wiki, then good luck on ruining the experience for yourself.
I have only used wiki to read about lore from the first GW just to know what rolls in GW2 and read forums just out of curiosity and not to help myself with something I can’t do in the game.
All knowledge that I need I gain while playing the game and from other players. It’s just simple as that, you don’t have to read to know, just experience it.

Really? So, here’s an anecdote. I go into WvW…the new BL map. I see these levers. You can interact with them, but nothing happens. No description as to what they are or what they do. They are just there. Unless I read the wiki, or a forum post, how would I find out? By experience? In my “experience”, they do nothing…they don’t even move when you interact with them. Apparently, they do something – guild thing. No idea. A clue would be nice. Some sort of instruction manual you can pick up in game and read. That would be cool.

I don’t mind puzzles. Love those in games. But I would like puzzles I can solve by exploring…by finding clues and hints throughout the location. From talking to NPCs. But there doesn’t appear to be any of that.

Baldrick.8967:

Xavier.2176:

The grind. I hate how to progress you now need to farm masteries. Hours and hours worth of brainless farming. That’s awful and unskillful game design right there. Maybe they should have created more maps instead of forcing us to do boring events over and over again to proceed.

I blame the SW trains, by which metrics Anet came to the decision that players like hours and hours of mindless farming. So they added more, and this time made sure that everyone (except the holy spvp, heaven forbid the esports are affected), especially wvw players, now get to spend their leisure time in pve grinding out masteries so they can get out of pve and back to what they enjoy (that will mainly be EB now, new BL maps= ghost towns).

So, VB is like Silverwaste? Man, adding that to the Cons column in my Pros and Cons on buying HoT list. That’s too bad.

Substance E.4852:

fireflyry.7023:

misterman.1530:

The more I read, the less I will play, and the less chance there is I will ever buy HoT.

I’m in agreement but I will buy HoT at some stage.In a month or two it’s just great value at half price or less.

Thing is the points of valid critique vastly outweigh the rebuttal.

You’re better off getting it now to be honest. Many of the events are designed as group content and Verdant Brink feels much less fun with fewer players than it had during the beta.

I don’t know if everyone is in the other maps or if the overflow system is bugged (I had heard this may be the case) but it will only get worse the less people show up to play in it.

Wait. So months from now, when new players join GW2 they will be screwed? They won’t be able to do this unless there’s a group. Well, that’s just awesomesauce. Brilliant design. Slow clap…

BrickFurious.7169:

qualm like a bomb.6512:

Thank you for killing small man, roaming and havok while at the same time turning the Borderlands into EoTM. I’m crying on the inside.

TLDR – the changes are kitten, anet really knows how to kill medium to low pop servers.

The drama is strong with this one.

Tons of new PvE content with HoT. The Halloween event. Guaranteed WvW doesn’t pick up full steam again until 2 weeks from now. Chill.

Pick up “steam”? Lol. Oh man, that’s a good one!

Wait…wait…you were serious? Wow. Ok. Let me ‘splain: most servers have no “steam”. Tier 3 and below will be ghost towns. At my tier, a zerg of 20 was considered huge. 20 characters in this new BL can totally hide and be hidden from. It’s ridiculous.

Rodzynald.5897:

Oh I am so sorry, Anet should have implemented a child guide to new content because some of you find it so hard to figure things out on your freakin own ?!
I have met with no complaints yet in my guild nor from people I met in the first zone.
I only Q_Q about pvp sometimes but this is PvE we are talking about here. Just take your time, this xpack is only 1 day old ~_~

I pretty much only WvW. I have no idea what we are supposed to do in there. Nothing is explained (what are those levers for, ’cause I have no idea?). What masteries do I need in WvW (there are these weird platforms that seem like air or something might shoot out of them. What are these? Once again, I have no clue). If a game requires you to drop out and read pages and pages of a wiki article, scroll through forum posts, and peruse youtube videos, then the game is doing it wrong.

I have met with nothing BUT complaints in game. So, what does that prove? Nothing. Some people like it, some people hate it. The problem is this…if someone comes into these forums to get answers, what impression do you think they will get? There are tons of people complaining, and then there are those defending Anet – but many of them are condescending. Case in point “Oh I am so sorry, Anet should have implemented a child guide to new content because some of you find it so hard to figure things out on your freakin own ?!”

The more I read, the less I will play, and the less chance there is I will ever buy HoT.

Genavelle.9516:

Domey.9804:

played the new borderlands for 10mins, got really bored from fighting pve mobs.

i just hate myself for buying this expansion…

You didn’t even have to buy the expansion for the new wvw maps….

You do need to buy HoT if you actually want to explore the map…and get the Hero Challenges. You need masteries to get to many places. Fun times, fun times.

Dawdler.8521:

I am certain that players will learn optimal routes, where the battlefields are etc but it will take time. Time WvW wont have if the border scare away players.

This. This right here. When I first ported to our BL and realized I was running around trying to find how to get out of spawn, I knew it wasn’t going to be good. The twists and turns of the maps are way too much for me. I know, others will jump in defending it. That’s fine. Good for you. People who don’t like it have a right to their opinion, and a right to NOT buy HoT. I’m one of those.

I have to amend my post earlier. I wrote, then, that I would continue playing, but wouldn’t buy HoT. I don’t think I will continue playing. Hate the new WvW map. Hate it. Sorry, maybe I should give it more time, but, while pretty, it’s too convoluted. There are other great games out there…and Fallout 4 is about to drop.

kittenatiel.2874:

This expansion will provide entertainment for the next two years for $50. That is a laughable amount of bang for buck.

I think he is talking about things that were part of the original game that are now locked behind a HoT purchase. It would be like, you cannot go into Orr unless you get HoT, even if you were able to before.

Yup. Usually I am in WvW, and didn’t buy HoT. Hate the new map. So pretty, but so messed up. Like EoTM on steroids.

I am sitting here wondering if, like WoW and Rift before, I have had enough of the game. I usually quit cold turkey, so this might be the time. It’s been fun, usually.

Still playing – but not buying HoT. Will wait and see after the the xpac drops and 123 different patches over 6 months are released. By then I will hopefully have finished Fallout 4 (mods won’t be in that quickly) and can revisit my decision not to spend $70 Canadian on an expansion.

With HoT, I thought that maybe, just maybe, I could get a legendary. I’ve never had a precursor drop, so I figured these new legendaries would be accessible. Imagine my chagrin when I read that you need to sPvP. Awesome. Back to gold farming for me.

Got nothing at all to do with exchange rate…not exactly. At the current exchange rate, Canada should be paying $64 or $65 for the xpac…if you use the exact rate. They are bumping it up a few percentage points.

Sometimes it is cheaper to buy from a distributor in the US and have it shipped

Sorry. What will happen, if the Elite spec is underpowered or useless to play, people will call it The Crapper.

restrictions* … just going to throw that in here.

What Blaine Tog said. Tough in PvP unless you know what you are doing.

Been a while since I had a level 10 Necro…in fact, been a while since I had a level 10 anything. Not since the New Player Experience (NPE) and the changes to Trait acquisition some time ago. I remember getting minions early – they helped. But that’s it.

Huh. I had a response to someone, and because their post was deleted, so was mine. To paraphrase what I wrote:

It should be easy to use a handicap system that uses ratings. So, if a low rated server plays a high rated server, they get a handicap equivalent to the percentage of the ratings. For instance, server 1 is rated at 2500, server 2 at 2000, and server 3 at 1500. Server 3’s rating is 60% of Server 1’s, and Server 2’s is 8-%. So, Server 3 gets a 20% bonus to things like PPT, perhaps bonuses to power and vitality amongst other things, and Server 3 40%.

It might not work, but it would be interesting to see. I mean a T3 server against a couple of T1s. Come on, that’s got to be more fun than “golem rush”.

Kaiser.9873:

FA/SoS/YB for 21 weeks. The only thing keeping us going is hate right now.

Ugh. I would hate that.

DiscoJacen.1590:

“4 weeks in a row”. Oh your poor thing. In lower tiers we’ve been facing the same servers for months. Plus the same ol hackers as well when we faced Blacktide.
Plus we have almost no more wvw players so ven facing us must be very dull for the others : )

TRUST ME you are not in the worst case here. FAR from it.

I know. I know all about issues with servers constantly facing one another. At no point did I suggest we were in the worst situation possible. I mentioned that even after only 4 weeks, apathy has set in.

I cannot imagine what kind of bore-fest it must be to face the same 2 servers over and over again.

Apathy happens when you face the same two servers 4 weeks in a row. I know, I know…not much they can do. Glicko and such. Still, gets dull quickly.

Here’s hoping for some out-of-character WvW fix by Anet once HoT hits. Otherwise, holy boredom Batman.

I always have to laugh at people standing around with their latest virtual party dress or special snowflake mini. You’ve seen them…especially since mega-server. They hang around Divinity’s Reach or some other crowded spot and almost shout “Please, see me. Acknowledge me. Look at me! Aren’t I pretty and cool?”.

Anyone, whether in game or in real life, who dresses up like some peakitten does so because they have something lacking in their life. Some sort of pathetic need to be noticed, if only briefly, by someone.

I have minis, never use them. Bought a couple of outfits because I thought they looked cool to me, not to show off. So, yeah, please let us hide the virtual Barbie portion of this game. Would be nice.

Yeah! And all of a sudden I lost 200…40..no 5000 g. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Sorry, couldn’t resist. Must’ve sucked though…hope it gets resolved.

Gorani.7205:

I have no idea will ever change the scoring system they have now and looking back at the history of recognizing sever imbalance and match up problems, I would be surprised if they ever will look into that at all.

I agree. They must have the numbers they could crunch, but, like most of WvW, they seem intent on ignoring any and all issues.

Ah well. Too much to hope for, I guess.

coglin.1867:

No, getting people off the map is not what we want. That is a ridiculous idea. The objective is to fill the empty maps, not create horrible, artificial punishment to push players off of full maps.

There is no path of logic thay makes sense to offer negative reprocution for playing the game.

By the way….what’s a “reprocution”?

coglin.1867:

No, getting people off the map is not what we want. That is a ridiculous idea. The objective is to fill the empty maps, not create horrible, artificial punishment to push players off of full maps.

There is no path of logic thay makes sense to offer negative reprocution for playing the game.

Why not? You are obviously on a server that can steamroll a BL of a server that cannot hope to match your numbers. That fun for you? This an exciting way to play? Oh, right. There’s very little sportsmanship amongst people who play online games. I forgot…very few of them ever had the opportunity to participate in team sports in real life. I guess doing this online is retribution for how things didn’t work out for them.

The fact is, I don’t like to steamroll a server when we outnumber them constantly, and I don’t like it done to me either. So, yes. If they have to punish a server that spent gold getting Oceanic and SAE guilds to move over from other servers – and now they are so over-populated that there is really no competition anymore – then so be it.

So, you want to have 200 active WvW players against a server that can barely muster 50 at the best of times, then, yeah, you have to expect a handicap. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it if it happened to me. But I guess leveling the playing field is something you cannot support. I get it.

So..let me know what server you are on. If we end up playing against you, I’ll put a shout out to not show up for the week. That way, you can maximize all your fun times.

So what’s the build?

Maybe if Russia pulled out of Ukraine, Anet might think about a Russian localization

Interesting build. I notice you have D/W and D offhand…but you didn’t trait for Quickening Thirst (Blood Magic 2) but instead took Ritual of Life (Blood 1). Why is that?

What’s wrong with people telling others to get off the map? Isn’t that what we want? If they want to try to zerg at a disadvantage due to the debuffs, then so be it. Otherwise, send some to another BL. Seems like a win-win to me.

I do agree to revisit the outnumbered buff…but since you can target an enemy and see that they have the buff, not sure if it won’t turn out the same way you mentioned – people telling others to get out of the BL.

The more I think about it, this debuff should only apply to an opponent in your own BL. That is, green won’t get the debuff if they outnumbered the enemy in their own BL.

EB doesn’t get the debuff at all.

There are always ways to compensate…for instance, debuffs and buffs. We already have a (lame-ish) Outnumbered Buff. I have said a few times we should have a “Overpopulated” debuff. Things like:

1. If you outnumbered your opponent by x% you have to spend that x% more in supplies to build siege, repair structures, and order upgrades. Up to a max, of course (say, double? triple?). So, for example, you have 30 people, the opponent has 10, You have a 300% increase (triple) in supply requirements. So siege that would cost 60 now costs 180.

2. The same calculation increases your opponents’ vitality and/or power, and also applies a decrease to supply requirements (maybe not as much).

3. It also applies a buff to all guards and lords and wall/gate HPs.

Note: these %s are for example purposes only. But it would be a good idea, I think.

dobri.7820:

We are not obligated to get the reward every time!

if more bosses fail ppl will pay more atention to them. and not just WP hit the boss from max range and w8 it to die. as all good things it takes some time so the ppl can adjust to the current situation.

I think you have that backwards. If “more bosses fail ppl will pay LESS attention to them”.

It won’t take time to “adjust”. See, if we can agree that most players are casual in that they don’t research the best build for a boss, nor do they watch countless videos about how to take a boss down, then it simply means that after failing at a boss x number of times, they won’t bother with it.

No, not food, Applied Fortitude – part of the Defense Against Guards mastery you can take with WvW experience points. At 115 pts you can get stacks of AF to a max of 5 stacks.

I am finding that the Minion Master is very effective in WvW. For the first time, I can jump into a 3v1 battle and, even if I lose, I can hammer down at least one. With my spec, I appear to be able to sustain Death Shroud almost constantly. My fears do damage. My marks are unblockable. All in all, very sustainable. Plus with the right food and the Applied Fortitude (so sad it is not going to be in HoT), I am over 32K HPs.

Maybe, just maybe, the OP didn’t mean the actual Traits. What he meant was the ability to pick traits in more than 3 lines? Just maybe that is what he meant. I don’t think OP was defending the old trait acquisition system, nor the actual Trait/Skill combinations.

I, for one, hate the fact I am locked into 3 trait lines. I also hate that I have to take a 3 of each level (adept, master, and grandmaster) – I can’t take 1 Adept and 2 Master traits, for example. So…those arguing that this new system has more diversity…I think you need to look up what “diversity” means.

Personally, I find that I am logging in less this week because I can’t be bothered playing with the builds right now. I have done enough theorycrafting throughout my time in GW2, I just can’t be bothered to do it again.

Not sure what exactly the issue is, but I log in, take one look at the characters I will have to relearn how to tweak, play, possibly re-gear, and deal with so many bugs that I say, “Blah. Back to Fallout 3 and New Vegas”.

So, to answer the OP, I’m just waiting until metabattle gets a consensus – then I’ll see if that piques my interest again.

Can we get the title of this thread changed to New PVP Meta Builds (Power/Condi)? Would make it easier to find for players interested in PVP and easier to avoid for those that aren’t.

Nightshade.2570:

Finally some attrition with survivability in my build! Fighting me takes forever. You can not down me quickly, I am completely not what anyone expects.

Everyone melts around me while I just deathshroud life siphon. Sure I took a hit to my damage but I have already said, I would gladly give it up to be tanky.

I wont die anymore to focus, let the glassys burn around me

Please dont nerf me.

When I have tested this build and refined it I will share. I was hoping others would be able share some of their tankier builds so I could get a feel for what is working for others.

Would love to see your build

Zok.4956:

Bugged karka #1 is not bugged. I have 49/50 and need only the one from the end of the jumping puzzle (yes, too bad, I died at the last jump) and I can see the karka #1 with my karka-gun and it does not make any sound.

It also seems it is intention, that these are not killable, because they are not included in the list of the 50 karkas you need in the hero panel.

Seems that way… and Karka #2 is also a red herring.

Well, someone was able to. They posted a screenshot and they are only missing one (the first one I posted).

Here’s the 2nd one:

screenshot of bugged karka #1

There are at least 2 karkas that are not killable in LA. Took a screenshot of one (ne of Farshore WP) – in a crevice. The other is in the bar that has the belcher’s bluff barrels. Also in a crevice.

Koviko.3248:

misterman.1530:

We can’t even do something like 22066.

Can’t do it now, either. lol

Sorry. That should have read 22064

Frankly, only people with more money than brains pre-purchase anything. I have never done that…not for software, not for hardware (reserve your iPhone bullkitten is ridiculous). Essentially you are getting, except for the Gems and the slot, some Barbie-dressup stuff to pretty up your cartoon.

Really? Now, if they gave me something useful (infinite upgrade extractor, for instance, or an awesome ascended weapon of my choice) then maybe.

I’ll wait until the dust settles…until I read about the new maps and the “verticality” of it (I hate jumping puzzles, so not really a draw for me). I will wait until I see that the patches have slowed down and the cycle goes back to some semblance of order.

I don’t like the fact that we can’t take 2 adept traits. Instead we HAVE to take Adept/Master/GM. We can’t even do something like 22066. We, again, HAVE to take 666 in only three trait lines. How is that “diversity”? Sad really. In many cases, depending on whether running in PvE or WvW, you will have, at most, 2 viable builds per class (until HoT drops, then we have our specialization).

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Kodama.6453:

What the…. there was a discussion about the reason of this nerf and nobody wanted to admit it was an advantage in WvW and what’s going on now? XD

Because it was literally the only advantage? And an extremely situational one at that?

Yeah. I mean, we don’t have stealth, we don’t have a good teleport, this was our only “gimmick” move. It was fun, but Anet had to be killjoys. It’s a wonder they didn’t pop a self-condition on its use as well…though maybe they will in a patch. I mean, 20 secs to kill ourselves hardly seems enough

DaShi.1368:

I’m not pre-purchasing because I just don’t like the model. Pre-order, maybe, if I had more information about the game.

That too, for me anyways. Really, I hate jumping on a game, any cost, without knowing what is in store. Though, I still will probably buy Fallout 4 sight-unseen

narwhalsbend.7059:

There actually was a suicide skill for necros in GW1. Unfortunately, they reduced it to only 50% health in 2009.

Wow. Had no idea. Well, at least they are consistent in their approach. I can’t think of any other class that can do more damage to itself than an opponent can do to it than the Necro. It truly is a work of art.

Daddar.5971:

I have 2 lv. 80 Necros. I’m going to wait and see what works. If it really is that bad for Necros, I’m sure they’ll apply an adjustment pretty quickly.

I hope so. Man, it appears (again, on paper…will wait and see) that Necros are damaged so badly with this patch.

Reaper will be…interesting…but not sure if we all want to play Reaper all the time. Might be the only viable spec, however.

So, am glad they are offering a character slot…and it has nothing to do with price or value or anything else but the atrocity they have committed to Necros. For those of you who don’t run Necros, or do so only casually, it will now be possible to commit suicide just by popping your own elite skill (Plague) after a popping a couple of other skills that immediately apply conditions on yourself…even one of your own healing skills.

In fact, Necros are so bad in this upcoming patch that it appears an engi can spam 1 for more damage in 5 seconds that a Necro can do in 30. Some balance.

So, after the patch hits tomorrow…and I assume no one could be clueless enough to expect there won’t be a dozen or so patches between now and when HoT drops…will be a telling period to see if Anet can fix what appears, on paper, to be the utter destruction of an entire class’ viability in every aspect of the game.

I could be wrong, but the theorycrafting going on in the Necro forum is frightening.