Guild Wars 2

I never did finish Diablo 3. Now I have a whole week for it. Thanks Anet.

You don’t need stealth at all. I hid in keeps several times yesterday as a Guardian. In this 40vDoor meta zergs don’t care about sweeping since it just slows them down on their journey towards the next door. Besides, they can just melt their way in when it gets flipped anyways.

Maybe we should necro up more of these posts with the red tag just so it looks like the WvW forum is still occasionally visited by staff.

This applies to WvW.

I’ve been running torment shatter since the trait came out a little over a year ago. It was decent pre-patch, but post it has been particularly strong, not so much due to the extra stealth (which is nice) but Blinding Dissipation + Ineptitude. Pre-patch I slowly evolved my build to run a pistol OH instead of torch specifically because of thieves. I needed to maintain distance as much as possible, and landing a shatter on a “permastealth” thief was difficult, so the pistol phantasm helped apply pressure until I could secure a shatter with a stun. Even then, that one round of shatter was not usually enough to kill a thief.

The patch changed many things considerably. I no longer have to choose between torment-on-shatter application and PU, and PU is simply too good not to take. However, in fighting thieves, I don’t need to really rely on it all that much. Whereas I used to need to keep my distance, now I prefer to let the thief get in my face, so aside from often opening with a torch phantasm from stealth, I don’t really stealth much, because I want him to try and hit me. As soon as I get either the scepter block off (for 5 stacks of torment) or the scepter 3 channel (for 6 stacks of confusion), I immediately blow all my shatters for a fast application of confusion and torment stacks. Sometimes I add in Pain Inverter for good measure. It’s not unusual to see the thief with 10-15 stacks of both torment and confusion, each of which regularly reaches 3k+ tick.

Usually that’s enough to finish the thief. He scampers away and stealths and is downed. If I fight two thieves, I just focus one of them, and let the other one die from AoE. Just fought a duo yesterday, in fact. I didn’t even need to pop Mass Invisibility, although I did use the torch stealth. I just focused one, and by the time he was down so was the other one. With 3k armor, 28.5k health, and PU boons, even if they managed to hit me it wasn’t for much. Although good luck getting a hit in what with the at-will blind application from shatter skills, blocks, and evades.

However, had they been using shortbow, that’d have been a whole different ballgame. The one specific weakness that any shatter will have is conditions. When fighting power stunlock mesmers myself, I do survive the initial burst even if it comes out of stealth, because I have the armor to withstand it, which a thief ofc would not. But most of them succumb to the conditions sooner or later simply because they do not have the cleanses. I’ve noticed that many of them don’t even run the mantra cleanse, which leaves them with basically just the torch for condition cleanse.

Mesmers need to keep moving. Anything you can do to root them down and load them up with conditions will be in your favour.

In general though, I’d avoid these encounters altogether to whichever degree possible until Mesmer is nerfed back to reality.

I get bored at the very notion of logging on and facing this instagib festival. It’s the same zerker shatter stunlock trollmer or the god mode warrior or superman ele on every encounter.

Consequentially it’s also more toxic than ever, people emoting everywhere after the instagank because, obviously, Le Skill.

+1. It’s nice to know we’ve got someone in Anet who cares about our class.

It’s #anetlogic.

Yes, because the shatter burst is going to hurt less coming after a 6-second stealth than a 10-second one.

You can decrease the stealth duration back to what it was, and it will make zero difference to people kittening about Mesmer, because the shatter spike damage is the problem, not the stealth duration.

Sure, it makes it easier to disengage from a fight. So what? Let’s talk about Thieves. Or Eles. Or Engineers. Or GS Warriors.

People aren’t accustomed to having to do any work to kill Mesmers, and they expect kitten mobility and no way to escape. The new PU has evened the scales.

All I seem to fight now is an endless stream of shatter mesmers.

Exciton.8942:

Now I tried the condie mesmer.
Have to say condie combined with PU even after nerf is still pretty strong in 1v1.

Prior to the patch I ran GS & Sc/P with MtD, Phant Haste, Phant +15% dmg, DE. It was a hybrid build that lacked stealth but it had flexibility and it was extremely engaging and active to play. I could pop the iClint and shatter it along with my clones at will, which provided the pressure and burst I needed to kill things before they killed me and my 1100 Toughness with no stealth (beyond Decoy and MI).

That build was fun. The patch made me choose with Phant Haste and MtD, without the latter the build is nothing but a weak shatter with a phantasm thrown in. Now, the torment pressure is so much weaker especially against classes that can quickly cleanse it that I have no choice but to run PU.

Which means torch. GS I can’t replace since everyone kitten out at 20% and all I do half the day is chase people. Does it work? Yes, comfortably, with little risk to me, but the fights take longer and I spend half the time using my GS and the other standing stealthed. Oooo, engaging.

Well, there goes what was left of my build. I am glad they released this trait system and the subsequent nerfs now, so that I can view a possible HoT purchase more objectively in terms of whether I still want to continue playing this game.

Oh… ohhhhh…

It is coming to me now…crystal ball emitting a strange glow…

Thread deleted… YoooOoooOooou will receive an infractionnnn…

Hacker reports… Bad PR, bad.

Caedmon.6798:

BloomEngery.1592:

Same uplevel FA warrior using falling damage to repeatedly knock people over. It is hilarious. Except that it isn’t.

Yes, I have reported this via the exploits email address. But I think it’s important to note that people are very frustrated when this occurs and the feeling is that when the violators are reported using the in-game mechanism, for example for botting, nothing ever happens. Doesn’t matter how many people report it. Yes, I understand that ANET doesn’t care if 200 people report someone, but don’t they have an obligation to investigate it? If given the violator’s account name and description of the violation and the timeline that it was witnessed, you would think that it would be enough.

It seems that either an anet employee has to see it himself while in-game (which prolly won’t happen b/c the anet tag sticks out like a sore thumb), or there’s got to be irrefutable video proof (and even then, there’s no fast guarantee). Anything short of that, there’s no ban. The feeling is that it just doesn’t seem like it’s a priority for ANET to investigate these reports.

The first time I encountered this FA hacker was when I was on a catapult hitting Garri, when all of a sudden, I was repeatedly getting knocked around by this falling uplvl warrior, pushing me all the way to the cliff. This hacker continued to do this to other players for many hours in plain sight in front of scores of players, even after multiple people have reported him on both servers. It totally ruins the game experience when this sort of thing is allowed to continue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ESL_2a83Mo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaTxlpCxC_Y

At first i didn’t quite understood your post,untill i saw the vid..MAN that’s some sad stuff ! just wow,traiting up to make it fit with your hack,then using it in such a clear and stupid way so everyone can see you’re hacking…i just don’t get it,What’s the point of hacking so openly,what does he gain besides losing his account ?

An inflated self-esteem, probably, knowing that he can do things you cannot prevent; that you cannot fight back; a feeling of superiority. Meanwhile, he isn’t afraid of losing his account because nothing ever gets done to these hackers; they have free reign and they know it.

lordkrall.7241:

The reason it got deleted and you got infracted was due to you breaking the rules of the forums. Might I suggest you review them here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/rules

Which was my point exactly…

I caught a few hackers on video, and reported them using the in-game tool. They just came back the next match, nothing happened to them, so I posted a video too, identifying them; I thought it might help find and punish them. The post was deleted and I got an infraction.

That’s when I realised that it all must have been a big misunderstanding. There are no hackers in this game. Why waste time on negativity and harboring black thoughts when we could be checking out the latest great promotions at the gem store? There’s a new Mini Beetle that you can have follow you around for just 500 gems.

Upload the dump file and post a link.

What brand and model keyboard and mouse do you use?

Update the drivers, or reinstall if the latest versions. Use LGS instead of SetPoint, if you have Logitech hardware.

I congratulate you both on being chosen, thank you for being willing to donate your spare time for what will undoubtedly gobble up hours of it, and simultaneously warn you that you may need a thick skin. The last part you probably already knew.

The thing is, while your intentions may be right on the money, ArenaNet’s track record on implementing changes people ask for is not regarded as being the best, so only time will tell how many of the criticism and suggestions you may pass on will actually result in actual WvW development changes. Because we have had so little access to the development team through this forum, many will use this opportunity to shift the blame for any inaction on you.

I do wish you godspeed. At the end of the day, we all want the same thing: a better WvW experience.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

msalakka.4653:

Asura only

:<. I want honeykittenarr. With a little sting on the tip of the tail.

Edit:
Honeykittenarr
Honeykittenarr

Haha, you’re right. It would look great on a charr as well.

I’d like a honeybee outfit for my Asura. It should be round and stout in the middle, black and yellow striped, with a black stinger sticking out of the back. The helmet should be yellow and black, round, with antennae sticking out. Preferably there’d also be translucent wings which could, if possible, flutter when you run.

I’ve not bought outfits from the gem store, because I only buy armour that I can mix and match. However, I would make an exception for the honeybee outfit. Asura only, please.

Thank you.

This has been going on for well over a year. Anet’s response has been a deafening silence.

Yes yes, moar zerg, moar PvD. Anet doing their Kevorkian routine on WvW, yes.

It’s not your father’s WvW. Everyone runs a condibunker cheddar build. If it’s not a medigod or a hammer war, it’s ranged. It’s very, very exciting. Ferocity and buffing conditions really was one of the more troll maneuvers the devs have made. There are some builds on Metabattle, but ultimately you can either suffer along slowly with more fun builds or stop playing entirely and roll a Thief or a Lamebow.

jan sobi.6485:

A thief in perma stealth, not suffering damage or condition.
Nice, really?
ANET HAMMER ON HACKERS, PLZ
https://youtu.be/GsGrMtJaBuk
today, EotM, around 18.00 EU time.

Normal thief mechanics, broken class working as intended.

Thank you for writing up the build. I’m sorry that the community here is not the most forgiving or welcoming. I agree that while you may survive quite well on this build, your damage will be suboptimal by a considerable degree. There are simply better options.

Still, trying to come up with your own builds is fun, as is putting them into the test. Don’t let the rather nasty comments dissuade you from sharing your ideas in the future.

Timelord.8190:

Sick lag in EB now. How long until fix?

Timelord.8190:

Far Shiverpeaks

You could always ask 40 guys to disengage from the mother blob and, I dunno, roam or something; you’d still have another 40 left to operate the lawnmower.

Kasteros.9847:

Merge servers it is nice idea, but u miss something: EU. What is such sepecial about EU? 7 German servers, 5 French servers, 1 Spanish server and 14 English speaking servers. How u want to merge them? Also if it is about merging it should be like 6:6:6 – due to tournaments, so from 24 to 18, this would bring some queues and totally unbalance servers.

That’s a good point about the DE/FR/SP servers.

Kasteros.9847:

msalakka.4653:

Just remove server transfers altogether. The PVE crowd won’t miss them since they have the megaserver anyways. If you can’t transfer out, then you can either create a new account somewhere else and suffer what pains go along with that, or put in the effort to resolve your server’s problems.

Of course then they couldn’t sell gems for people wanting to get on the latest bandwagon server, so obviously that’s out.

Ye but what when server die? Or queues get ridiculous? Ppl would like to transfer then

As unpopular as the very notion may be, this is why MMOs have had server mergers since time immemorial. Because servers do die, as they should, as the game’s – or game mode’s – popularity dwindles.

We’re in gold and there are nights when we don’t have pugmander one on our home border in all evening, and we struggle to keep 15 reds from resetting the whole border because we don’t have defenders. Yet there’s a queue. I think it’s partially because of Anet in their infinite wisdom shoving PvE dailies bs into WvW, which means we got 2 guys defending and 8 recapping, and all ruins are manned while we lose keeps. The other probable reason is that they’ve lowered map caps to correspond with the fact that they needed server muscle for China and eSports and took them from WvW.

Just remove server transfers altogether. The PVE crowd won’t miss them since they have the megaserver anyways. If you can’t transfer out, then you can either create a new account somewhere else and suffer what pains go along with that, or put in the effort to resolve your server’s problems.

Of course then they couldn’t sell gems for people wanting to get on the latest bandwagon server, so obviously that’s out.

With all this irrefutable video and screenshot evidence, accompanied by multiple reports, I am certain that ANet is launching a full-throated cyber-assault on these perpetrators as we speak. I am picturing large monitors with neon text flashing by Matrix-style as ANet’s finest propellerheads track the logs with CSI-grade vigor for violators to swiftly scour.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

With reporting, you can’t just report someone without a reason, or you can get in trouble for false reporting.

That’s a myth. For you to “get in trouble” for a false report, they’d have to actually investigate the said report to rule out foul play. Just take a look at the Blackgate hacker Thief thread: all those reports, including video footage, and not a kittening thing has been done. Had they investigated something, the hacker would be long gone. Had they found him to have flown in through walls by legitimate means, surely all those people reporting would have gotten “in trouble”?

I mean it’s nice to keep dreaming that somebody’s answering phones or opening Outlook at ANet’s abuse department, but the fact is there’s no Santa Claus and Elvis isn’t cutting records anymore.

Why are they sitting at spawn when they could be depleting supplies by building random trebs, catas, and rams inside the enemy keeps, à la Far Hackerpeaks?

It’s not really so much a tournament as a PVE farming event, which results in server stacking and brings out the hackers because the best coverage yields the best rewards. At least longtime committed WvW players are interested in fights, the PVE clowns just want their next shiny which means they have little fun to lose by hacking.

Anet’s response, as usual, is a deafening silence. Once the moderator shows up for the weekly visit, the thread will be closed and you’ll be given the proverbial finger and thanked for your “understanding.”

Curunen.8729:

Possibly merged in the “Master of Fragmentation” trait.

Which means I can’t reflect the Lamebow cheese back on my MtD hybrid, since I have to choose between MtD and this.

Couldn’t find it in the new traits table. Is it being removed or made baseline? I know the devs don’t seem to think we need these traits since they don’t play Mesmer in a Ranger meta.

What do you get for this title? A free precursor? I just don’t see what the point of title farming is. Am I supposed to ooh and ahh when I see this title, when I know whoever has it didn’t even earn it?

RoseofGilead.8907:

Smartcat.2130:

If only they had added an opt out function many many people would be playing today. But it was not only offensive to many many people, but it also caused a health risk. Alot of people have only been able to play for a short amount of time as the screen flickering caused headaches and migraines. And I hate to think what it might be doing to the epileptic crowd.

You can turn off the sepia and flickering effect by turning off post-processing. Just FYI. I turned it off myself because it was giving me a headache.

THANK YOU. This crap was giving me a headache, and your tip helped immensely. I don’t have a problem with the prank itself, it’s just for one day after all, but I wouldn’t be able to play for more than half an hour were it not for this “fix”.

Whenever someone prefaces their MMO forum rant with some indication of actual professional expertise or experience in game design, I always picture an unemployed guy who made a Final Fantasy rip-off with RPGMaker 2000 that none of his friends actually bothered to play through.

It was near the Mill so that must have been it. Thanks for clearing it up.

In WvW, I and another Mesmer had a Thief downed, and while the Mes went to finish the Thief I slapped a Chaos Storm on the downed Thief just to put some random condi on him. The Mesmer said after the fight that my “Chaos Storm almost rallied the Thief” but did not go into specifics as to why.

Why would that happen and is that specific to Thieves, some skill or mechanic of theirs? I’ve never heard of that before.

WuGzaGenius.5684:

Im trying to understand why people don’t like it or are attracted to SPvP, If you ask the PvP forums they all respond with things like “tank meta” or “MMR / leaderboard structure”.

Why dont PvE’ers and WvW’ers like SPvP??
What could be done to fix* it?

I am not talking about custom or unranked PvP

I don’t know the difference between unranked or ranked. I only know that I’ve been to PvP, completed the tutorial, and fought a few of those random matches.

I didn’t enjoy it. The maps are lifeless and uninteresting, and I fail to understand what difference it makes whether I capture a ring or not. I guess points? That’s it?

The real problem for me though was that I can’t use my own gear. My build does not exist at all in PvP. Whenever in there, I felt like I was playing someone else’s kitten character with poor and limited gear options. It wasn’t my character and I felt disconnected from the proceedings.

Valentin.2073:

msalakka.4653:

Valentin.2073:

I main a rangfer and thieves are the least of my concern. I suggest investing on your armor.

Yeah but your pew pew channels into the Thief even if he stealths. The rest of us have to be able to see him to deal damage. As far as armor, I wear full ascended armor and trinkets and still take close to 7k per Backstab alone. That’s a third of my health pool in one hit, and followed by whip this whip that, Heartseeker, all within a second or two. Stealth itself isn’t the problem, it’s the completely ridiculous damage that goes with it.

i did mention that i play a heavy condition build so that means I don’t use a longbow. i use axe+warhorn and shortbow.

what set are you running? berserker, soldier, celestial, settler, or rabid? wvw is not the same as pve. thief is only scary when you are fighting them as a beginner but as you learn stuff to deal with them, you’d be laughing about that post that you just made.

btw, why would you let a thief land a backstab on you? once, a thief stealths maximum time that he can stay there is 4-5 seconds unless he used shadow refuge. just count 1 and 2, and prepare to dodge or block and if you have access to an aoe burst, drop it on your feet. always look at your back when you are roaming alone. if you see a thief following you, you can either prepare to go defensive or try to nuke him down first.

i am sure a lot of wvw players on your server can give you a lot more tips on handling zerker thieves.

Dire. Took over 10k from a Backstab just a few days ago. It is broken in my opinion. If you have the ability to reset the fight at any given time (= no risk) then the path to reward should be appropriately harder to climb.

Vyx.8607:

I would like to also point out that there’s a mass of videos here with quite a number posted every day. http://www.gw2wvw.net/videos

Thanks for that, I will check them out. I usually don’t visit GW2WvW.net, because the forums there are the most toxic I’ve ever seen, surpassing even the ArcheAge ones. The kitten measuring going on there is just surreal.

It was kitten and it was not interesting and I never want to see it again.

Valentin.2073:

I main a rangfer and thieves are the least of my concern. I suggest investing on your armor.

Yeah but your pew pew channels into the Thief even if he stealths. The rest of us have to be able to see him to deal damage. As far as armor, I wear full ascended armor and trinkets and still take close to 7k per Backstab alone. That’s a third of my health pool in one hit, and followed by whip this whip that, Heartseeker, all within a second or two. Stealth itself isn’t the problem, it’s the completely ridiculous damage that goes with it.

Conner.5803:

No centaur rune + healing mantra mesmers here? I thought most people who roamed on mesmer knew about this easy way to get perma-swiftness ._.

I am aware of it, and used it prior to the crit dmg nerf.

Centaur runes aren’t exactly ideal for my condi shatter build.

Some months ago (maybe in the summer?) ANet posted here asking for WvW videos. I was away from the game for a few months following the release of AA, and wondered what happened with those videos, in what capacity they were used, and whether there is a place somewhere that I could watch the cream of the crop.

Thank you for this thread. It told me everything I needed to know, and has undoubtedly saved me a lot of time.

I’d like to filter out the trophies, greens, and blues entirely. I have no interest in salvaging them. The only thing I seem to get through doing so is more “luck”, but I’ve been getting that since they did away with MF and my drops are still crap.

The rewards are lackluster in PvE, and they’re an outright spit in the face in WvW.