Guild Wars 2

7. Ideally, every .25 seconds.

Sounds good to me as long as the reward for the harder version is better. It would kind of make the group dungeon pointless if you could just go solo easy mode through it alone and get the same rewards.

Vash.9183:

timidobserver.7925:

Aurust.8961:

I think that DB is purposefully lowering their rating because they think they can eat up some easy points on two “fattened pigs” later on when they get whatever guilds they are currently farming for.

Good luck to them.

It doesn’t really matter what they do. Nobody is really going to respect any victory won by bank rolling a bunch of huge guilds over.

To my knowledge, there is no other guilds transferring in. There is only members of the newer guilds that are trying to help the rest of their guild transfer. Like [Omen] and [FIRE], they are not done transferring.

Im pretty sure a number of guilds have transferred in since the move up to tier 2?

I find that thieves are the only people that have this behavior. Nobody other than a thief tries to invite me to a group after they get rolled. I guess thieves don’t expect to lose 1v1s very often, so they are more likely to react in an extreme manner.

Good idea Ross. They should push your idea out asap lol. Though, it does make ticking a bit more difficult since siege will have different timers. At least now if you run around and tick everything instead of one minute, you pretty much know when you need to be back. If everything has a timer somewhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours, it’ll make ticking siege more complicated.

In a post on the guardian forums, mentioning fighting mesmers with condition damage in not one but two places in your suggestion qualifies as going on about it lol.

I find that to be a bad/impossible suggestion for the guardian forums. Stacks implies multiple stacks, and burn doesn’t have stacks. The only thing that stacks is duration, but there are no burn stacks.

Anyway, done responding to that. Have a good one.

Eh, I"d rather deal with spies spamming trash siege honestly.

I am fine with the downed state idea. If it got removed I’d be okay with that too. That said, some classes are extremely powerful in downed state. That should be addressed.

There is no flame war as I am not flaming you. I just found it important to note that, in a thread where a guy is asking for guardian advice on fighting mesmers, you suggest condition stacking and go on to talk about how effective it is.

Skelemiere.3094:

I mentioned both just in case

Just in case… what? You know what. Nevermind.

I find this to be fun against people that are specced into cleansing conditions because they’ll have more than they can possibly get rid of, but sword sword is ultimately useless for anything other than occasional trolling.

Yes, but you mentioned condition stacking, which makes your entire post not even worth reading for someone reading the guardian forums. Clearly you aren’t talking from the perspective of a guardian if condition stacking even appears as a suggestion. Do you even have a guardian lol?

I have to say, engineer does have a ton of junk traits. I have an 80 engineer, guardian, and warrior. For guardian and warrior, a great deal of the traits have at least some use if it is just in certain situations. Engineer has so many junk traits that aren’t useful in any situation ever.

You do realize you posted in the guardian forums right? The only damaging conditions that will get placed on the mesmer by a guardian is burning. Even specced fully into conditions damage, which would be extremely unintelligent, that burn won’t significantly impact the Mesmer.

/signed

Siege ticking is horrible. Even if you have to nerf all siege to justify it, the despawn timer needs to be at least 1-2 hours or longer.

Hopefully it does end in a group dungeon as I and many other people like them. There is nothing wrong with casual content, but something a little bit more challenging is fun to some people. I don’t really like event farming and soloing, which caused me to go into Southsun long enough to get my back pieces and never go back again. Unfortunately, the back pieces are so easy to get that everyone will have them, which means I won’t ever even wear mine.

I think they should continue to add a variety of content for all players instead of catering to those that only want the stuff that they like added in.

Aurust.8961:

I think that DB is purposefully lowering their rating because they think they can eat up some easy points on two “fattened pigs” later on when they get whatever guilds they are currently farming for.

Good luck to them.

It doesn’t really matter what they do. Nobody is really going to respect any victory won by bank rolling a bunch of huge guilds over.

Would be OP with boon durations runes + symbol duration trait.

Eh, yeh I know pretty and ugly is a big deal to GW people as GW has always been cosmetics focused. I don’t really care about the aegis animation though.

Eh, AH is better because you end up getting a great deal of +crit damage and +toughness to go along with it. What makes zealous blade in sufficient is that it it isn’t worth what you have to put into it.

I don’t attack thieves unless they are already sub 50% health. Helps me save from going insane like the creator of this thread.

Aneu.1748:

Johje Holan.4607:

fishball.7204:

Aneu.1748:

Maybe you should get a discussion going on these very forums regarding the changes you are going to implement soon rather than bull-rush it out without anyone the wiser, especially on the change that seems to be coming to the ranking system, its quite drastic.

This.

Please consult with the people that actually play WvW about any changes before you implement them.

There are only so many pros and cons you can draw up inside a board room even if you guys are very smart and very capable.

There’s no way they can consult with us. We don’t agreee on anything.

For every suggestion, there’s someone who hates it. For every complaint, there’s someone who disagrees. For every change, there’s people who asked for it and people who threaten to quit over it.

There is a very interesting tool that is used by many marketeers and business men that involve sampling – Its quite frequently used and is even used in some supermarkets you probably frequent yourself. Just because some people don’t agree doesn’t mean a conclusion cannot be drawn from it and on top of this it doesnt mean that a sensible debate cannot take place regarding the “top down” look at the overall picture as opposed to the very fine details (which should be left to behind closed doors in most cases).

Nah, he is right. It doesn’t really matter what they change or how they change it, about 50% of people will have some issue with it because it isn’t exactly what they want. WvW is much to competitive to go that route about it. People will like stuff that helps them win and not like stuff that doesn’t. The goal is to make WvW better not give people what they want. If I got what I want Mesmers would be removed from the game and given a ticket for free 80 of any other class. I probably should not be given what I want.

That said, there probably needs to be more player assisted testing and just testing in general of new content. There is no excuse for arrow carts that destroy golems in 2 seconds ever making it past QA. I think that properly testing WvW changes is impossible without having a ton of people testing them, and I think Anet is trying to test these changes with like a few of their staff instead of setting up a realistic WvW simulation to test changes in.

Hickeroar.9734:

FA and TC kissed and made up on EB this evening, You guys didn’t hear that? It was like a massive makeout party between the two servers between Jer and LL. Slobber flying everywhere.

Nobody that knows TC and FA will ever take any of you guys making this claim seriously. It is pretty clear that the two servers will never get along well enough to do something like that in any coordinated fashion. Dragonbrand wouldn’t be winning so often if TC and FA didn’t spend so much time trying to kill each other without thinking about trying to win the match.

I play on TC and I’ve seen commanders just give up keeps to DB because they were to busy rolling FA to bother defending it.

foofad.5162:

timidobserver.7925:

/signed

Not that I’d use any guardian signet atm, but this would be a better state for that signet.

Judgement is a great armor replacement for zerks.

Even the tool tip doesn’t display the right information. I can’t really tell how judgement even works. It says 10% all the time regardless of the recent signet buffs and the signet trait. For that reason, I just don’t bother with it. Also, guardian signets are terrible atm given the alternatives.

Amins I challenge you to pull off a guardian signet build… lol.

/signed

Not that I’d use any guardian signet atm, but this would be a better state for that signet.

Oh cool. Do you still stack health steal (omnomberry + sigil of blood) or did you give that up with the omnom nerf?

EDIT: Nevermind, I see the sigil of fire proccing on your GS.

Are you running boon duration runes? You seem to be doing a lot of healing but it doesn’t look like clerics gear.

Sorem.9157:

timidobserver.7925:

Bakitten291:

This has been discussed alot in the past regarding zeal and some good idea have come out of it, one of the biggest things was actually adding CC to the trait line to make it more appealing for damage based builds, since we do lack mobility (which I am fine with, but we have limited snares that don’t make up for it.)

My personal suggestions for zeal would be 2 of 3 things

1) Move Glacial heart to a 20 point talent in zeal, lower the duration, lower the CD, and make it work with all weapons. (something like 15 second cd, 2-3 second duration)

2) Upgrade zealous blade. a) make it include the 5% extra damage from greatsword power, (this will clear room for Glacial heart as well.) b) Either make it scale slightly with healing power, or buff the heal slightly.

3) remove the 5 point talent and move each symbol talent down a tier (vulnerability on symbols to 5, symbol damage to 15, add in a 25 point trait to make symbols immobilize up to 3 targets for 1 second, and cripple them for 2. Make it so only the cripple applies to Hammer symbol, as adding an immobilize to that spamable of a symbol would cause issues. This could also be a 30 point talent that could replace zealous blade as well.

I like your ideas. Although, I’d settle for adding mobility to the zeal line, like a 25% run speed signet or something, if they don’t want to do cc.

/Signed

Believe it or not, Guardians can have a decent mobility if build for it. Running a triple med with sword and greatsword will provide you 3 ports and a lot of condition removal, being conditions probably the main thing people can use to kitten the mobility of any class.

First of all, i’d like to recall that our type of damage is stationary, having more mobility wouldn’t solve the problem. It’s close to useless to be able to catch up to your opponent if you can’t burst them because they would just outrun WW and get the kitten out of our symbols with no effort.

I feel like putting an immobilize on the symbols would be too overpower to be honest. Immobilize is one of the strongest CCs around. If symbols had an on-demand CC like that, all we would have to do in order to burst our opponent is pull them and set the symbol. Considering the pull is AoE and so are the Symbols, that trait could give us something close to that ranger elite skill, which is obviously something too strong to have on a 20s cd. If it were like you suggest, even if people poped their condition removal, the immobilize would tick up again on the next symbol tick.

Exedore.6320:

A big problem with Zeal is that for all the focus it has on symbols, it’s missing the “Larger Symbols” trait, which is key to making them useful offensively. That should replace the 5pt minor trait.

Then, instead of something with CC like cripple, which doesn’t fit the guardian theme, you can have a major trait to create a Symbol of Swiftness when you get CC’ed.

The main reason i feel like we need a cripple is to make our burst somewhat less close to impossible to land completely. I choose blind for it because i thought it was a source that wouldn’t just fit the regular SoW + WW rotation randomly.

I understand that Zeal needs a lot more love than this in order to get competitive to other trait lines such as honor, but again, i feel like we should ‘’start from the beggining’‘. The best thing we can do is first draw ArenaNet’s attention to the issue, which seems to have been forgotten, then we can start going for drastical changes.

Again Thanks for all the feedbacks

You should stick your suggestion into the suggestions forum and link it here. I’d really like an Anet dev to at least see the idea of being able to trait into attaching CC to symbols.

1. Bladed staff(See Darth Maul.)
2. Whip
3. Katana
4. Chakram(See Xena warrior princess.)
5. Tonfa(see google tonfa.)

I swear people like the person that made this post ruin the game. This is the easiest to acquire exotic item in the game, and kittens are complaining about something to small that is completely optional.

Yeh it definitely looks like Anet completely rolled over for the people that were complaining about some of the stuff in Flame and Frost being hard to get.

Anyone got this uncontested

Yes, Turrets can now perform better but still be ultimately useless.

Bakitten291:

timidobserver.7925:

I like your ideas. Although, I’d settle for adding mobility to the zeal line, like a 25% run speed signet or something, if they don’t want to do cc.

/Signed

See, I honestly don’t want more mobility as a class. The dev’s have already said that guardians are meant to get into fights and hold their ground, which is an ideal I follow as well. Let warriors have all the mobility. I just think as a class we should be able to punish people who do jump into it with us in through different forms of CC. As it is at the moment, the only class that cant escape us is a necro, who has a ton of CC and range to make up for that fact. They also have conditions so even if someone does try to kite/run they are still going to be taking indirect damage. They really just need to give us some CC to help make up for the fact that we only have a very small amount bursty mobility on a very few select weapons.

I agree that CC would be a great option, but I could live with just giving us a little more mobility as well. I’d only want CC if it were something on par with static field, or in other words, something with a great deal of WvW utility. Of course my opinion is bias toward myself being primarily a WvW player.

Bakitten291:

This has been discussed alot in the past regarding zeal and some good idea have come out of it, one of the biggest things was actually adding CC to the trait line to make it more appealing for damage based builds, since we do lack mobility (which I am fine with, but we have limited snares that don’t make up for it.)

My personal suggestions for zeal would be 2 of 3 things

1) Move Glacial heart to a 20 point talent in zeal, lower the duration, lower the CD, and make it work with all weapons. (something like 15 second cd, 2-3 second duration)

2) Upgrade zealous blade. a) make it include the 5% extra damage from greatsword power, (this will clear room for Glacial heart as well.) b) Either make it scale slightly with healing power, or buff the heal slightly.

3) remove the 5 point talent and move each symbol talent down a tier (vulnerability on symbols to 5, symbol damage to 15, add in a 25 point trait to make symbols immobilize up to 3 targets for 1 second, and cripple them for 2. Make it so only the cripple applies to Hammer symbol, as adding an immobilize to that spamable of a symbol would cause issues. This could also be a 30 point talent that could replace zealous blade as well.

I like your ideas. Although, I’d settle for adding mobility to the zeal line, like a 25% run speed signet or something, if they don’t want to do cc.

/Signed

Arya.9034:

timidobserver.7925:

Step 1: Just read instead of find little ways to prove stuff wrong. Point being, all sorts of things exist in the game because there is all kinds of players. RNG exists because some people like it, it stimulates the economy, and it ultimately gets some people to spend large sums of real money or spend ridiculous amounts of time farming in game money.

Also, there was no catering to one group.
1. There was a MF item available just for finishing the achivement. This gets one group out of the way.
2. There is others available to just buy from the store. This is another group taken care of.
3. There are others available through RNG farming. Another group taken care of.
4. Items are also available through farming up gold and participating in the economy. Another group taken care of.

First off, this is a discussion so there is absolutely no need for me to ‘just read’ and secondly there are no ‘little ways to prove stuff wrong’, you are either wrong or you are right.

You also state that ‘3. There are others available through RNG farming. Another group taken care of. ’ Which is fundamentally flawed since they are only ’taken care of’ IF the item drops.

You also seem to be under impression that these items are somehow mutually exclusive or supplements for each other while in actual fact many would see them as complementing each other quite well. So all your so-called ‘groups’ are now mixed together aiming for the same content rewards.

If you are not willing to contribute to the actual topic, which is whether or not rewarding players through pure RNG compared to having multiple methods of obtaining the same item is better, then please just refrain from posting anything at all.

There is definitely no need for you to read. You can try to go kitten for tat, go the semantics route, and drag this out for 3 pages by finding every small thing you can turn around in every sentence of my post, but I won’t play that game with you.

I got a game that is relatively good for a one time payment, and they are actually still adding content even though I am not paying them anything regularly. I understand that they have to make money from somewhere, because unlike kids, I know that nothing is free.

So they have easy items that cost like 600-800 gems or roughly 10 bucks. Then they have stuff for high rollers like legendaries, super rare/hard to get skins like mjolnir, limited time super rare items like the jet pack, ect. EIther you do the content 200 times to get it, farm up gold to buy it, or pay money to buy it. I am not saying that I Iike it, because I really really really want a mjolnir for my guardian, but it makes sense to me.

We have roughly 6 months before even the possibility of an expansion, so yeh, I understand that they have to do other stuff to make money until an expansion hits.

EDIT: lol the language filter is hilarious. I think I am going to leave the kitten there.

Vulpis.8063:

timidobserver.7925:

Cygnus.6903:

Just wondering if anybody else got screwed out of their fused gauntlets… I lack the molten facility achievement, and can’t get it anymore now. Would have been in time, but the other events seemed to be bugged… badly. Took ages to complete.

I guess the gauntlets will be sold for a lot of gems? Or not at all? Either way, screwed.

It’s been there for a long time. You failed because you waited until the last minute. Take some responsibility for your own failure.

Hopefully Anet takes this advice to heart, given how they ended the event. Don’t feel so bad, Cygnus—at least you didn’t get screwed out of it by doing all the other content over the past few months only to be slapped with a Mandatory Group.

I swear my mind is blown every time I see someone refer to it as a mandatory group. Maybe you are afraid of people or just don’t like them, I can’t really say what it is that causes group content to be so frightening to you.

The dungeon was fairly easy. You should have just done it and got it out of the way. It certainly shouldn’t have been hard to find a group.

ArtemusHunter.9521:

timidobserver.7925:

Not for every Living Story event no, but I expect to see them show up from time to time. The game can’t continue if they don’t make money, and it can’t continue if people don’t play.

It makes perfect sense when you figure out how to understand other people.
1. You have GW1 casuals that pretty much want easy stuff.
2. You have WoW converts that like progression, farming items, ect.
3. You have crafters and people that like to sell stuff and participate in the econonmy.
4. You have shallow people that are focused on cosmetics enough to spend hundreds of real life dollars to buy some stupid cosmetic item that has no benefit other than how it looks.
5. You have the weird anti-social people that have an issue with group content being added to an MMO.

They have to continue to supply stuff for all of those groups of people while at the same time convincing those people to spend money in the gem store. Rare RNG items are enough to keep number 4 and 2 active in the game and spending money. So yes, to keep 4 and 2 playing GW and spending money, RNG items will still show up.

bla bla blah ,whining, and ect

Hmmm, obviously you missed the point of my post, which is talking about how a game with no sub fee has to do other things to make money.

By GW1 casuals want easy stuff, I meant that yes there were some hardcore people that went through a bunch of crap to do all the stuff you’ve listed, but if you didn’t do all of that it meant nothing since most of it was purely cosmetic. Game based purely on cosmetics = easy. Also, farming elite skills was very easy unless there was something OP about the Dervish class that allowed me to solo them when no one else could.

Arya.9034:

timidobserver.7925:

Not for every Living Story event no, but I expect to see them show up from time to time. The game can’t continue if they don’t make money, and it can’t continue if people don’t play.

It makes perfect sense when you figure out how to understand other people.
1. You have GW1 casuals that pretty much want easy stuff.
2. You have WoW converts that like progression, farming items, ect.
3. You have crafters and people that like to sell stuff and participate in the econonmy.
4. You have shallow people that are focused on cosmetics enough to spend hundreds of real life dollars to buy some stupid cosmetic item that has no benefit other than how it looks.
5. You have the weird anti-social people that have an issue with group content being added to an MMO.

They have to continue to supply stuff for all of those groups of people while at the same time convincing those people to spend money in the gem store. Rare RNG items are enough to keep number 4 and 2 active in the game and spending money. So yes, to keep 4 and 2 playing GW and spending money, RNG items will still show up.

That’s a lot of generalizing in one post, but going with what you’ve said that is only 2 groups of players out of 5. That and also we are not talking about end game PvE content such as precursors, legendaries, etc. so your group #2 does not necessarily apply either since the most recent drops were cosmetic and brought no advantages to ‘progression’.

Even using the very rough examples that you provide, it seems rather counter-intuitive for the well-being of the game in the long-run to cater to 1 group (the ones willing to spend money for gems for gold) and alienate 4 others.

Step 1: Just read instead of find little ways to prove stuff wrong. Point being, all sorts of things exist in the game because there is all kinds of players. RNG exists because some people like it, it stimulates the economy, and it ultimately gets some people to spend large sums of real money or spend ridiculous amounts of time farming in game money.

Also, there was no catering to one group.
1. There was a MF item available just for finishing the achivement. This gets one group out of the way.
2. There is others available to just buy from the store. This is another group taken care of.
3. There are others available through RNG farming. Another group taken care of.
4. Items are also available through farming up gold and participating in the economy. Another group taken care of.

I find that this build works but I am reluctant to spend effort gearing up for it because I find that it becomes ineffective in zergs, and at the moment, zerging determines who is winning.

I might gather up the gear for those times when I want to defend something or take some camps.

Not for every Living Story event no, but I expect to see them show up from time to time. The game can’t continue if they don’t make money, and it can’t continue if people don’t play.

It makes perfect sense when you figure out how to understand other people.
1. You have GW1 casuals that pretty much want easy stuff.
2. You have WoW converts that like progression, farming items, ect.
3. You have crafters and people that like to sell stuff and participate in the econonmy.
4. You have shallow people that are focused on cosmetics enough to spend hundreds of real life dollars to buy some stupid cosmetic item that has no benefit other than how it looks.
5. You have the weird anti-social people that have an issue with group content being added to an MMO.

They have to continue to supply stuff for all of those groups of people while at the same time convincing those people to spend money in the gem store. Rare RNG items are enough to keep number 4 and 2 active in the game and spending money. So yes, to keep 4 and 2 playing GW and spending money, RNG items will still show up.

Sorry, but they could hire a high school intern to update the text of tooltips.

Arya.9034:

timidobserver.7925:

MMOs have to make money. Either you pay monthly or you deal with little money making schemes. RNG items will garner more profit by increasing the chances that those that did not get them will buy gems in order to convert them to gold and buy the item.

If that was the case then why would Anet not just sell the jetpack or any other reward in the gem store like Braham and Rox’s weapon skins. Seems an awfully roundabout way of getting players to buy gems: farm dungeon chest > buy gems > convert to gold > buy off TP at a price not set by Anet, but the players rich enough to be able to flip them.

Because it is a combination of methods to convince people to buy gems.
1. Moderately cheap Gem store items for people that don’t mind adding a small amount of money to buy items.
2. Super rare RNG items that will get great deals of money out of those well off players.

Both combine to bring in money based on gem purchases.

Anwar.2018:

To answer those saying…it’s a MMORPG so grouping should be part of it.

To me, the best thing about GW2 is that you can solo then if you come across other players, you can jump right in and help out without needing the irritation of forming groups for an hour first. You are free to come and go as you please most of the time and still have folks to chat with and help each other out with information.

So for me, I want as little forced grouping as possible..you can get that anywhere from dozens of titles….and yes, I like grouping, I just like freedom to choose more.

Yes, they should only add the stuff you like. Anything else is useless.

Vulpis.8063:

timidobserver.7925:

Elbegast.6970:

Will Southsun be ending in a Group Dungeon?

I would like to know so that I don’t waste my time with the content. I have no desire to complete a single player chain; only to beg 4 other players to run me through a dungeon.

Forcing people to party to complete a dungeon is just wrong, especially after a long chain of soloable content.

GW2 is a MMO. Go buy a single player game if that is what you want.

No, but seriously stop being selfish. There was solo and group content added. They added content for everybody and that is how it should be. Just because you like Solo content doesn’t mean that all content that they release should be solo and that you should whine and moan if they add one thing out of 5 that isn’t in line with what you want.

GW2 is a MMO with a lot of people who like doing their own things in parallel.
If the only content you can bring yourself to do is dungeons, maybe you should be the one to leave, find a good GM, and run yourself through more complex and challenging dungeons than it’s possble to do here?
Quit being selfish towards those who paid for this game precisely because it allows myriads of other ways to be social and work alongside each other than Ye Olde 5-man.
If these dungeons were being presented as an alternate mode of play (like PvP and WvW are) instead of a roadblock across content that otherwise is doable by by solos and groups in its entirety.

How am I being selfish by saying that they should continue to add stuff for everybody instead of listening to those that whine about everything that gets put in that they don’t like.

I personally hate Spvp, but plenty of people like it so yeh they should add stuff for it.

I am sure that this new content will have stuff that you can solo and hopefully group content, assuming that they don’t succumb to the pressure of people like you guys. Adding stuff for everybody is the way to go.

Cygnus.6903:

Just wondering if anybody else got screwed out of their fused gauntlets… I lack the molten facility achievement, and can’t get it anymore now. Would have been in time, but the other events seemed to be bugged… badly. Took ages to complete.

I guess the gauntlets will be sold for a lot of gems? Or not at all? Either way, screwed.

It’s been there for a long time. You failed because you waited until the last minute. Take some responsibility for your own failure.

MMOs have to make money. Either you pay monthly or you deal with little money making schemes. RNG items will garner more profit by increasing the chances that those that did not get them will buy gems in order to convert them to gold and buy the item.

Elbegast.6970:

Will Southsun be ending in a Group Dungeon?

I would like to know so that I don’t waste my time with the content. I have no desire to complete a single player chain; only to beg 4 other players to run me through a dungeon.

Forcing people to party to complete a dungeon is just wrong, especially after a long chain of soloable content.

GW2 is a MMO. Go buy a single player game if that is what you want.

No, but seriously stop being selfish. There was solo and group content added. They added content for everybody and that is how it should be. Just because you like Solo content doesn’t mean that all content that they release should be solo and that you should whine and moan if they add one thing out of 5 that isn’t in line with what you want.

I kind of agree at least on reset nights. If there is no queue then fine, but if there is a queue then sub level people need to leave and go somewhere that doesn’t have one.

Niim.9260:

timidobserver.7925:

To buy ascended rings: Must obtain WvW rank of 40 or better. Each item costs 1000 badges.
To buy ascended Amulet: Must obtain WvW rank of 50 or better. 2000 badges per amulet.
To buy ascended accesories: Mut obtai WvW rank of 50 or better. 1000 badges laurels per.

Rank means nothing and should not be used as a basis for purchasing gear. All having a higher rank means is that you zerg a lot, good at tagging kills and zerging down objectives. Like the system didnt already reward horrible play enough, making it a requirement of ascended gear will be the death nail on quality play in this game.

Rank means plenty. It is the WvW progression mechanism regardless of whether you like it or not. If you have a rank of 40 or better, you spend a lot of time in WvW and timespent is generally the ultimate thing that needs to be insured with ascended gear.

I don’t really bother to try to kill thieves in WvW. This isn’t saying that isn’t possible, but by the time you pull it off someone else will certainly have shown up. I find that the best plan of action is to /wave at the thief and keep running as you spam invulns, bocks, blinds, and heals.