Guild Wars 2

IMHO, as a semi-experienced thief, when you solo in PvE you are almost always in melee because SB really isn’t necessary. You just love stunning and whacking mobs for high crit damage and surviving just fine.

PvE in dungeons requires a complete re-think in play style. Took me a lot of dying with my friends — not PUGs — to get used to moving a lot, swapping weapons a lot, dodging and evading a lot, slotting the healing skill Withdraw that includes a dodge and cures some conditions, using Steal as often as possible (combined with the evade from Crippling shot if I have a SB in hand). I play an Asura, so I may drop Pain Inverter or Elite Golem if the situation demands.

blah blah blah

Essentially I feel like I have to regularly juggle my slotted skills — and change up between S/P, D/D and SB weapons almost every battle. Juggling stuff isn’t unique to Thief, though — effective Elementalists cycle constantly.

In the end, I had to drop my sense that my thief was some DPS kitten, and use my DPS in conjunction with my friends, while also offering utility (smoke screens, group stealth, Asura elite golem) and just plain having a good time instead of crying that we don’t pwn every encounter in a dungeon — we often get pwned — but we’ve finished nearly every run we’ve started (I think we abandoned our first couple of Ascalon runs when we couldn’t get past the spider queen — until we finally did).

Caveat: I haven’t run a ton of dungeons, but I’ve run my fair share. I don’t grind (ain’t nobody got time for that). I don’t have a single piece of ascended gear — the price of not grinding and not having the time to do all the stuff required to get it. Best advice in this thread has been to play with friends — or a friendly guild that will bear with you while you experiment with all the tools at your disposal.

Anyone know if “Nature’s Bounty”, which adds 33% duration to regeneration a ranger applies, is supposed to affect regeneration from the healing skill “Troll Unguent”?

It currently does not. The 10s duration stays at 10s instead of bumping up to 13s.

I would raise this as a bug but the Forum search doesn’t work — I can’t see if it’s a known issue — and I don’t want to file a bug if it’s not a bug.

Thanks

More of the Guild Banker saying I’m not in a guild. I stood down, logged to desktop, re-entered, couldn’t represent until i left Lion’s Arch, finally able to represent again in the Grove, returned to Lion’s Arch. Still no access to guild bank — still says I’m not in a guild.

Middlebud.7295:

elk.1493:

if people are more worried about riskay language, then maybe they’ll be more considerate.

I can convey the most vile, horrid things without using any “foul” language. I can also use “foul” language and not mean anything negative by it. In fact, for many people (especially in the younger generations), saying “<Removed – please do not bypass the language filter – Thanks! ~ Dalmarus>” is not inflammatory in the least when they’re just using it as an adverb or an exclamation.

Well said, Middlebud. Your entire comment raises other good issues as well.

Eluziel.4650:

Agreed.
I don’t mind occasional language used as an enthusiastic comment, nor am I against various levels of humor

but having a game where people ARE punished for obviously taking thekitten which ‘Fittle Lucker’ is.. is a refreshing change. Besides.. a 3 day suspension isn’t bad.. and hopefully will teach you not to push it so far again.

Well clearly not everyone I met believed I was “pushing it so far”. I really thought I was employing clever wordplay. And why should “punishment” be administered first instead of a clear warning?

For example, during the character creation process ANET could have popped up a dialog before you click confirmation of your character name and said “Read these rules about naming. If your name is found to violate the rules, you will be immediately suspended for 3 days”. That would have a been a fair warning.

If you think a 3 day out-of-the-blue suspension isn’t bad, I sincerely hope it happens to you some day and that it teaches you a lesson. The only lesson I learned was that I shouldn’t be surprised if something undesirable happens without fair warning.

For an in-game example, I recommend avoiding any of the encounters where you are offered a chance to bet on an outcome such as the Cowtapult engineer in the Charr lands. I thought the bet of “50 silver” was just a joke of the storyline, never expecting to get rewarded or to have my character’s money taken. But no. If you place a bet you do in fact lose the money. And of course it appears to be rigged to lose. There was no indication in the dialog that you were actually betting your own money. I just picked an option since that’s what I’d been doing in hundreds of other chats with NPCs. So yep, I “learned my lesson”. I ignore a lot of quest dialog now and really don’t engage NPCs much any more unless I know I have to. Pity.

I am sorry, not to sound rude but I would have reported your name had I seen it. I like a name with a good laugh as much as another but your thief’s name is just wrong, sorry

On the other hand I like your necro’s name

You don’t sound rude but you do sound uninformed. You see, over 33 levels of play I received no feedback from anyone other than “great name!” or “funny name!” I never behaved or acted in any way to offend someone and I certainly never said anything in chat that would have been offensive. As you can see from my other character names, I try to give them some personality. What I did not know was that misspellings of offensive words in names was a suspend-able offense. I found out after the suspension when ANET put very clear links to the naming rules in the “you are suspended” dialog that pops up when you log in. Had I been truly warned and given those links to see why, I would have made a change immediately. And I did not know that I would be immediately suspended with no option to correct the problem before the suspension.

If I were a lawyer I would be more willing to take exception to the problem with my name.

The word “Fittle” is not offensive.

The word “Lucker” is not offensive.

The name “Lucker Fittle” is not offensive. (You’d have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to be offended by it.)

But as soon as you reverse the words, the level of mental gymnastics seems to drop to a point where people who seem to be easily offended are, in fact, offended. OK, fair enough.

But does this really warrant an immediate 3 day account suspension — not just for the character in question but for all other characters on the account? There are so many ways they could have chosen to handle these issues, but they chose a pretty blunt instrument.

But at the end of the day, my main complaint is that they equate a suspension with a warning.

Bellok.4180:

I defend the use of racial slurs because I believe in freedom of speech. If someone is using these kind of words we do not blame them, we blame the people they have been around, and we blame their education. If those terms offend us then we have the obligation as a whole to teach them why the use of such language is unacceptable. We don’t just heavy handedly give them the axe, otherwise we are no better than they are.

Bellok, showing people that their use of language has consequences IS a way of teaching and educating them. If someone does not understand the harm they cause to someone else by using slurs, then a small “lesson” can serve, especially in a private-space environment such as an online game. GW2 is not a public space.

Also, stop blaming everyone else (educators, parents, society, etc.). Each individual is responsible for his or her own conduct. No one is forcing anyone to say slurs against their will. So this kind of action might actually help people learn some self-restraint and how to behave in a society that has more people in it than themselves.

Do they have to become a saint? No. Do they have to be helpful and friendly? No. Do they have to understand that spouting off rude offensive language is not acceptable according to the rules of the game creators? Yes.

What I do object to in all of this, though, is the manner in which suspensions and bans occur without real warning. Anet says it has a way to flag accounts. I think it would have been preferable to tell people — “warning: your account has been flagged for violating the game’s terms of service. Here’s what you did: (violation). If you violate the terms of service again, you will be (suspended, banned, etc.)”. This would allow people an opportunity to correct their behavior, rename a character, etc., and also separate the accidental or unintentional event/problem from being lumped in the same boat with the repeat offenders.

Kallas Lupus.8370:

Also let us side step this out right by letting us limit who can mail us please?

This. If I had an option that only people on my contacts list could send me email or whisper to me, this would go a long way to letting me have some measure of personal control over this.

While I agree that having a system in place is useful, the execution has not been well thought out. The naming rules, for example, state that being suspended for 72 hours is your warning. This is NOT the right way to use such a tool — and it makes GW2 feel like a totalitarian state rather than a game.

Taking punitive action against outrightly offensive names or exploiting is one thing, but when you have a name that is only potentially offensive if someone chooses to read it that way, then being suspended before you even have a chance to correct or change the name is NOT a sane way to enforce a policy. At the very least ANET could have sent out mass email telling people to re-read the various naming rules (with links to the pages they provide in the “account suspended” dialog). It would not have stopped everyone, but it would have been a truer definition of “warning”.

Again, I don’t disagree with the rules themselves, but as soon as you have it happen to you you’ll understand how draconian and heavy-handed it is to be punished before you even have a chance to know it and correct it.

In case you’re wondering, here are my character names:

Autumnio the Red (Sylvari Elementalist)
Bloodric Gutspiller (Norn Warrior)
The Ragged Tiger (Charr Ranger)
Fittle Lucker (Asura Thief)
Verdigrina (Human Necromancer)

I try to name my characters to with a sense of character. Guess which one got me suspended for 3 days. I played for a week and never had anyone complain to me about my character names — in fact, a couple of people sent me tells to say my Thief’s name was funny.

I’ll rename him, of course, and keep playing. But I’m no fan of this over-the-top penalizing, and especially object to the policy of “your suspension is your warning”.