Guild Wars 2

I hope they release them soon so that we can all have the exact same weapon skins, and walk around pretending that the one each of us has is a unique and special commemoration of the incredible skill we demonstrated running in an EB blob alternating between tab and 1.

I’ve not tried a keep lord, but I’ve soloed a tower, Briar to be exact. For me, the key was torment. 0/4/4/0/6, with DE and Maim. Staff, sc/to. Kite, pop clones, shatter, plus conditions from clone death.

I’ve never tried a keep lord simply because I always figured it would take too long to get the lord down and I’d get steamrolled by enemy players by the time the ring was up.

METAShift.2913:

I don’t understand, what is the point of this thread? There have been no dev responses or fixes for the last few months…

To get us all to post in one single thread, which makes it easier to moderate, easier to ignore, and subsequently doesn’t make the game look as uninviting to prospective players since the tech support forum is not littered with network lag threads.

I am getting really tired of being rooted into the map in every single fight at least once when using Phase Retreat. If you’re not fixing bugs on Mesmer weapons aside from the tooltip typos, can I create a mouse button macro for doing an emote so I can actually, you know, move, and not be instantly killed? Is this allowed?

Decoy is the one skill that doesn’t leave my skill bar even when I switch builds.

Also a big fan of Blink and Mantra of Resolve.

RedCobra.7693:

8. you lose your dignity

lol

Part of it is that people don’t like to lose, and they don’t like to fight annoying opponents, like thief and mesmer, to begin with. I’ve gotten numerous “****ing PU mesmer, get a real build” whispers from enemies I’ve downed, and I don’t even run PU. But I guess all mesmers are PU mesmers to people who don’t understand the job’s mechanics/skills.

On the other hand, it is a powerful skill. It’s not my standard choice for the slot since it has a long cd and it’s fairly easy to avoid, but it certainly has its uses. It’s perhaps a bit too strong against MM necros, but this post-patch condispam circus has eased up whatever hesitations I had about using it.

Lord Aragorn
Gandara

He’s great at communicating what he is going to do, why he’s doing it, what he needs his infantry to do, and motivating people even when things go bad. Also, unlike so many, he doesn’t use derogatory terms like “scrub”. He’s just a really nice guy, to the extent that while I usually roam and scout and don’t like to follow commanders, I do try and help when I see him tagged up.

After a warning/infraction I’ve come to realize my previous, now-deleted opinion was wrong. I think the tournament is balanced and wonderful, and the things I thought I saw being done by players I couldn’t see did not in fact happen. I look forward to more exciting adventures on the battlefields. I encourage everyone to check out the new promotional offers at the gem store, and if you’re not playing GW2 right now, what are you waiting for?

Blink. For the reasons, refer to the pointless comments.

I enjoyed PU Power pre-patch. Post-patch, with everyone running conditions and godmode bunker, not so much.

With my power build, a pair of hammer warriors will kill me. With my torment build, they kill themselves.

I don’t know why Guardians are even brought up. They have a lot more access to swiftness than just their staff, but more to the point, they use the staff in zergs because it has a lot of other uses, such as Empower and Line of Warding. The Mesmer focus is a bugged weapon with usage scenarios that are very situational.

I’m not so concerned with chasing as I am with general mobility. I scout and play as part of a small havoc team, responding to contested camps and structures. Without Traveler/Centaur runes, my odds of reaching a camp before it is flipped are very low. The problem with the focus is that if I slot it in just for running over to contest something, I may forget to put the torch back in, or I am ganked by a group and have no access to one of my best stealth skills since I’ll be in combat and can no longer change it.

I was excited when they announced new traits, as I thought that I could use something which would rival PU in its usefulness. I really like Maim the Disillusioned, but unfortunately it is only useful if I don the Tormenting runes. It makes for very fun combat for me, but my mobility and usefulness as a scout goes to hell. If I’m going to use Travelers/Centaurs then I might as well just stick with Power PU since a condi build with those runes will be half a loaf. Build diversity among Mesmers isn’t exactly helped by having to choose your weapon/runes just so you can keep up with other jobs.

I think they should set the standard running speed to Travelers speed and tone down access to swiftness.

Just a few days ago I came across an Ele that had a “beast”, capping a supply camp. I know they can summon elementals, but this one was simply named “beast” and looked like a Necro minion. I was surprised by it but I don’t really know much about Ele so I thought maybe they have some new abilities that make this possible. It’s also interesting to learn about pet swap. So maybe it was legitimate.

Fuzzion.2504:

The orbs were sold to a dodgy Norn merchant and have never been seen since. Rumor is they are now kept in a private museum collection by a rich Char.

…or that of a shirtless theme park owner.

TheDaiBish.9735:

If they did say ‘we are aware of the issues and are looking into it’, do you honestly believe that people would stop posting / whining about the same thing on a daily basis?

No, but they wouldn’t move on to other games which are still under active development.

I’ve noticed that the invisible hacks have become more brazen over time, and I have no doubt that Arenanet’s deafening silence on the subject is putting people who use these hacks at ease about it. Since ANet punishes those who publicize these hacks, and does nothing to touch the people using them, there’s little reason for them to stop. It’s tantamount to encouraging them to carry on.

As for quitting the game, I wouldn’t do it simply over hacking incidents. I would, however, do it because the developers of the game have put it on autopilot, don’t communicate, don’t provide support, punish legit players while ignoring exploiters, meanwhile expecting me to fork over money in their in-game cash mill, which seems to have become the sole focus of their game.

Don’t feed the troll.

I’m amazed this is still going on, getting worse, and no one acknowledgment whatsoever from the developers that they’re even aware of it. I guess the Chinese release is eating up all their resources. Either that, or they’ve no intention of trying to patch it.

I don’t run from 1v1s personally once it’s started, typically. A lot of people seem to run, especially warriors. If I’m on a power build, I usually give chase; if condi, I don’t bother. Some of them do emotes after their escape. That’s fine. If they don’t want to fight, or learn how to do so better, that’s up to them.

I sometimes run before a fight has begun, if I see a thief with fifty billion boons and stacks or something and I’m not running conditions. Being instagibbed used to bother me, until I realized that I have killed plenty of guardians and warriors who drowned in a sea of conditions trying to kill me or thrashing about at my clones. For everyone there is someone who can kill them just as there is someone they can kill. Thieves kill me, I kill guardians, guardians kill rangers, and rangers kill skritts and centaurs.

Have you fought these guys yet? They’re amazingly pro. I challenge ArenaNet devs to beat ’em!

I think since your runes are all about confusion duration, you’d benefit from taking all the points from Inspiration (thus losing Mender’s Purity) and putting 5 into Illusions for shatter confusion and 5 more into Dueling for confusion when killed. Then I’d replace Signet of Domination with Mantra of Resolve.

Solidbeatz.8571:

Devata.6589:

In my opinion everything that is part of the game should be in the game, not in some cash-shop. So when you get gems anyway I would only spend them on things that should not be in the game itself. Character slots or a name changer for example. I guess bank tabs are sort of oke. But it really depends on how you look towards it.

Anyway, that sort of things are really additions to the game and you don’t support taking elements that should be in the game out of the game and into the cash-shop.

Don’t call it a cash shop. You can get EVERYTHING in the gem store without spending a dime in real life.

You can become a doctor if you want to. You just have to go to medical school.

As a more-or-less WvW only player, the only thing of any use for me in the cash shop are the finishers. Let’s say I want the Whump Finisher. It costs 800 gems. That’s 76 gold by current exchange rate. Newsflash: WvW chests drop crap. 76 gold isn’t easy to come by on top of regular gear upgrades and food and other running expenses. 70+ is what I paid for my Traveler’s runes, and it was no small purchase for me.

Yes, they can all be purchased by grinding gold. I don’t argue with that. I do, however, take exception to the notion that the Gem Store isn’t a “cash shop”, because that is very clearly what it is intended to do: take cash from your wallet and put it into ANet’s. They wind up your desire/need to possess something, and then present it to you in two ways: you can either buy it with your allowance/life savings now, or you can submerge yourself in the tear-inducing boredom of the champ train and buy it much later.

Except that many promotional items can only be purchased during the short period of time they are available. The Grenth Hood was only available during the Wintersday event. If you didn’t have time then to grind up 47 gold, too bad. Could’ve bought it with your PayPal.

Just saying.

I wonder if changing your resolution would help. Try 1024×768 and enjoy.

Man, that’s hilarious. I mean I feel for you, I really do. But it’s still hilarious to think of you being on a server where the map chat is filled with a language you don’t understand.

Some of these traits could be quite useful. The problem is, none of them should be Grandmaster.

The way I see it, a Grandmaster trait, along with runes, adjusts the focus of the build, or at least determines the armor/rune choices. Pure of Voice, AH, Battle Presence to a lesser degree… These are strong and specific enough to require the point investment. 300 Vitality is not. 15% endurance regen…

Underwhelming, in the face of what you could have instead.

4/4/6/0/0, if you mean Osicat’s Hidden Cat. Grab torch trait and DE, the rest really depends on your preferences. And yeah it works just fine, was never focused on crit damage to begin with.

PacoXI.7690:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Bilbo, need I remind you that it only takes 3 players to CC somebody to death, and not everybody has a large amount of stun breakers or condi removal? Also I heard they’re nerfing condi duration reduction food/armor stats.

You’re saying that you shouldn’t lose a 3v1?

He’s saying it shouldn’t be automatic with no ways to counter it.

3 hammer warriors v 1 isn’t really 3v1 anymore, anyways. More like PVE.

A blob is a larger-than-normal zerg.

The number of enemies bundled together required for something to be considered a blob decreases as one’s frustration with being outnumbered increases.

Let’s face it…we’re just talking about hammer warriors.

We went one week without even having a matchup thread there, no one had bothered to create one. It’s a shame, really, because you can tell the people working on that site have put a lot of effort into it, and I applaud that. It’d be nice if ANet included a link to the site or something, to increase its visibility. They mention it sometimes when they kill matchup posts, but that’s insufficient.

Guard Leech was renamed Applied Strength.

The Quaggans are gone.

That’s it for the important ones.

Reverence.6915:

msalakka.4653:

I wish they’d rework the system in terms of that travel dialog window as well. I understand that it has to move you back into queue eventually but the current short wait to respond seems harsh, I’d like to see it move me automatically and if I am afk it’ll just d/c as per normal routine.

On reset, I started at 176. Four hours later, I was about 12 or something, but had to use the bathroom. Came back to find that I missed the dialog box and was back at 200+. This is the first game I’ve ever played that penalizes you for taking a kitten.

Why would you queue for EBG?

I didn’t. I never play in EBG. It was for home borderland; EBG was worse. Gandara was designated as a free transfer server, and in addition to some awesome guilds we received a fair number of PVE clowns.

I wish they’d rework the system in terms of that travel dialog window as well. I understand that it has to move you back into queue eventually but the current short wait to respond seems harsh, I’d like to see it move me automatically and if I am afk it’ll just d/c as per normal routine.

On reset, I started at 176. Four hours later, I was about 12 or something, but had to use the bathroom. Came back to find that I missed the dialog box and was back at 200+. This is the first game I’ve ever played that penalizes you for taking a kitten.

eleshazar.6902:

How are we supposed to stop the cheating?

We’re not.

It’s no accident that we’ve been provided with no real means of reporting exploitation. It is also no great surprise that people who try to publicly suggest that hacking happens get their threads closed due to being “unconstructive”.

The developers, who are the only ones with the capability to address these issues, don’t read this forum. Moderators do, and their only job is to function as PR cops and close threads which paint the company/game unfavorably.

There is money to be made in pandering to PVE achi hunters through constant gem store promotion. There is no money to be made fixing glaring exploits in WvW. Wubbos don’t spend money on town clothes and minis; the only thing they might spend it on are finishers, but those are hideously overpriced.

It’s not the devs fault, though. You can read on GlassDoordotcom about Arenanet consistently not balancing out the teams and their general lack when it comes to project management. I think the devs are between a rock and a hard place, and WvW is just in the frontline of things that slip down the wayside.

It’s two-fold. The grand wizards at Anet put traps along the puzzle so people could try to kill enemies. If memory serves, at release you could even build siege there (maybe I recall incorrectly?). So obviously fighting there was part of the design from the get go.

However, the other side of the coin is, that we all know there are people who are inexperienced in WvW and go there for the achievement. There are people who take hours to get through those tricky jumps. If you want to attack those easy prey, you can. The design supports it. The ultimate decision comes down to whether you have enough honour and respect to not ruin someone else’s time for your own cheap laugh.

I don’t judge people based on their decision, I just do what I know is right.

These guys are in the G/FSP/PS Obsidian Sanctum. Judging by the kitten damage, probably new accounts and uplevels created just for this so they don’t risk their accounts, although I’m not sure that’s necessary due to Anet’s laissez-faire attitude regarding hacks.

Can’t be seen, can’t be targeted, can’t be damaged.

It was terrible in the low-to-middle levels. Just terrible. I actually considered giving up a few times, because my only other job had been Guardian which had been smooth sailing all the way to 80, and I thought that if I was 40 levels into Mesmer and still getting owned regularly I wouldn’t ever bother logging into it once it did hit 80. I was wrong… Once I hit 60 and had access to Grandmaster traits (and more points to spend, too, obviously), and followed some guides regarding good trait synergies to use, it got instantly better. Keep going. It’s worth it.

Temihal.8651:

Keeping it on mesmers, when don’t you want to have clones around?
Are you afraid of them aggroing or something like that?
Making them only in combat when you have a target wuold help?
I’m just curios.

They are completely unreliable. They aggro whatever they feel like. The very last thing I need when I’m trying to hide in a keep is clones standing around or aggroing guards.

This applies to WvW. I play a build based on Osicat’s Hidden Cat 4, although slightly less tanky. My weapons of choice with Warrior encounters are GS and Scepter/Torch. GS isn’t great in the beginning of the fight because it’s hard to maintain a distance from him, however it is crucial for me if I am going to finish him. The great majority of fights follow this pattern: I open with GS from a distance while he’s running towards me winding up his skills for that one-shot kill they always seem to think is going to happen. Pretty much as soon as he’s within faceslam range I swap to Sc/T and use Prestige and dodge out of the way of his attacks. Next, it’s Sc #3 and once he charges towards me again, #2 and usually Decoy. Usually what happens is that although my initial GS attacks have barely scratched his health, once I apply Confusing Images, he softens up very rapidly, and I don’t even have a single piece of Condition Damage gear on me. I Blink away, attack with GS, and send another iZerker at him. Now he’s actually taking damage. Fairly soon his health is in the 30% range, at which point he invariably runs. As per Hidden Cat I’ve traited for both Blink distance and cd. Those along with the nice long rapid reach of the GS and the direct damage focus of the build usually down him as I chase him. However you do need to try and burst him down quickly, as the longer the chase the less likely is the kill.

Also, make sure you bind a key to rear view so you can easily look behind you while running forward. I bound it to V which is right next to space and easily used with my thumb at any time. I use it frequently and don’t get caught off-guard as much.

Perhaps blatantly obvious, but it’s one of those things that are not bound to a key by default so it can be missed.

Frankly, there are times when I specifically do not want to generate clones, and I appreciate the ability to not have them around. My understanding is that Rangers can’t dismiss their pets and that many wish they could for various reasons. It’s not really a path I would like to follow.

The only thing I’d like to see changed about them is making it so that it’s not so blatantly obvious to tell them from the real Mesmer just by tabbing through them and watching for buffs. I’d like them to inherit the buff icons. I used to play Guardian exclusively and didn’t know anything about Mesmers, so I’d frequently end up attacking the clones and got confused about which was which. People would tell me that you had to watch for the one that wasn’t running towards you, one that dodges, etc. Now it seems that 95 out of a 100 opponents in WvW don’t attack the clones at all but always target me instantly, which renders the clones into nothing more than vehicles for putting conditions on enemies. There’s very little “confusion” going on, which I thought was the whole point of the job. I wouldn’t mind a nerf to PU if they fixed that, since I’d be more in charge of my own damage negation.

AG is a fun server to match up against. Their community seems to value strategy and sportsmanship which keeps the fights fresh and interesting. Plenty of zergs, plenty of roamers, but no brainless PvDing blobs. Great server.

Polymorph Moa. Very effective.

I use Osicat’s Hidden Cat 4 which is a PU Power build and I feel like it’s the most flexible. You’re not affected by enemies having condi duration reduction, and it’s quite effective both in roaming and zergs.

My question is, who are these idiots that get on the map and think, “oh wow, only 22 commanders, I better tag up.”

Adry.7512:

you HAVE to be kidding….press ESC then go to options and at the bottom left shows the guild wars 2 population which is always an average of 25k-30k on each server. the same and/or better than before.

That’s not the number of users, that’s the build version of the game client. …. Jesus Christ.

To clarify, I wasn’t inspired to ask because I was on the receiving end; I was actually the one tagging the garrison on an enemy’s borderland while watching Ripper Street. After a couple of hours of unrelenting tagging despite many deaths I started getting some whispers, and not particularly friendly ones. I barely started up again tonight when I got more whispers, and more threats of being reported. So I hoped to get some consensus as to the legitimacy of this particular activity.

I’m in the same predicament. I haven’t seen a single commander in our borderland since the Tuesday patch hit. I managed to upgrade a tower and then four guys slowly took it because there was no one on the map to come and help…during primetime. We don’t own anything, the other servers are tens of thousands of points ahead and keep PvDing our keeps taking turns since there’s no resistance. It’s a joke… I am embarrassed to be on this server if Season 2 starts and this carries on like this. Whoever that dev was that said there’s been no drop in WvW community numbers on each server is talking out of his kitten .

It’d be nice if the blades stacked up tighter when you’re not in combat, and then spread out and lit up when you are.

Christ that site looks like kitten. Is there any way to get rid of that three-column view and just see the posts one after another in chronological order?

Is repeatedly tagging a fully upgraded keep/garrison, thus preventing people from waypointing into it, a common and acceptable albeit inane tactic, or is it griefing?