Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[Maarius]

Sounds legit, well I didn't play that high content and heroes with their meta-builds to experience it like you did. I guess you really had to know what you do and tried a lot of things before the heroes got to that OPness?! (Or use *cough* the internet to find the working builds)

I don't want heroes which are better than good players in GW2, but sometimes I wished it would be nice to be able to solo a dungeon without spending hours in it.

[Valeron]

What I loved about the heroes wasn't necessarily the actual gameplay with them but making and testing out team builds.

[Fencers]

I don't want heroes which are better than good players in GW2, but sometimes I wished it would be nice to be able to solo a dungeon without spending hours in it.

It was not that the heroes were super smart or the AI super amazing in GW1. Heroes were basically dumb. They got stuck on stuff, walked in circles, would rubberband back to you for no reason, etc. They were a pain in the ass.

What made the heroes "too good" was due to the fundamental design of Guild Wars as a franchise.

Guild Wars is skill based; timing and recognition are integral to actual existence of the franchise. All five of the Guild Wars games are essentially about recognizing enemy moves and timing your counters perfectly in response. Whether that was a well placed interrupt in GW1 or a knockdown in GW2, the gameplay expression is exactly the same in all five games.

Heroes always saw the "tells" and always used the right counter(s) you preset for them in GW1.

If heroes in GW2 were relatively speaking as "dumb" as the heroes of GW1 it would still slant the game massively in favor of the solo player with bots. Because those heroes would be able to use their dodge, interrupt or stability buff exactly. Whereas players can make a mistake/hit the wrong key/whatever when the big dragon does his glowing attack thingy.

That's what made heroes so good, they didn't flinch in a game series all about precise timing.

[lawow74]

Amusing anecdote taken from the last POI Livestream: The working name for the Teragriffs was Stabby-Cats.

[Deleted]

Earmuffs in gemstore for... 25 gems only! It's crazy o.O

[Vizardlorde]

Earmuffs in gemstore for... 25 gems only! It's crazy o.O

Guess the marketing team is testing how many people will spend 10$ on 800 gems to buy a 25 gem item.

[zito]

Guess the marketing team is testing how many people will spend 10$ on 800 gems to buy a 25 gem item.

zing

/10chars

[lawow74]

And as expected, LS is on hiatus until Jan 13th. Wintersday returns next week on the 16th and they're going to be trying some kind of non-tournament WvW thing, too. Read more here.

[Valeron]

Sort of expected. I wonder how many people we'll lose in our guild this time. We went from having over 30 people online in our guild on a nightly basis to now about 5-6 people over the last break. Disappointing really.

[Vlad Morbius]

Sort of expected. I wonder how many people we'll lose in our guild this time. We went from having over 30 people online in our guild on a nightly basis to now about 5-6 people over the last break. Disappointing really.

I can relate, there are only 2 of us left from my original guild and the new one we are in used to have 40 to 50 people logged in every weeknight, now down to about 20 max. Is it me or are they purposely trying to tank this game? Well I'm super pumped I have a great shot at wining a beta slot in Skyforge thanks to the mini game, at least that'll be something to do over the month long hiatus.

[Deleted]

I don't want to start a new thread but is WvWvW still about zerging? Is it even alive or dead on worse-doing worlds like ti used to be?

[Karizee]

I don't want to start a new thread but is WvWvW still about zerging? Is it even alive or dead on worse-doing worlds like ti used to be?

There has been some movement of night guilds to higher tiers, since there naturally is fewer Oceanic/SEA players and night coverage can determine the outcome of a match, but otherwise (except for a couple outliers - RIP Maguuma) seems as busy as ever - even in Bronze league.

Around 5 months ago I had posted the number of WvW guilds - it was 18k+ raiding guilds at that time.
It's currently almost 34k WvW guilds which is an average of 80+ new guilds joining the fray every day. (this is not all the guilds that play WvW, just the ones that have leveled their influence enough to claim objectives that have been captured, and then actually have a chance to claim an objective before some other guild does).

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post27628171

And of course EotM has a simply redonkulous amount of players.

[Gray_Matter]

Sort of expected. I wonder how many people we'll lose in our guild this time. We went from having over 30 people online in our guild on a nightly basis to now about 5-6 people over the last break. Disappointing really.

I have mostly stopped playing. I am now officially tired of this dribs and drabs content. There needs to be something meaningful released.

[Karizee]

Last day for the $19.99 price from the Humble Store. \o/

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p...rs2_storefront

[Rivellana]

I need an honest opinion here. I have a character slot open to level a character with and I can't decide what to level. It's been awhile since I actually played anything but necromancer so I haven't really kept up with any buffs/nerfs they've done to other classes.

My choices are thief, warrior and engineer. I have the rest at 80 already. I'm awful with anything super squishy (I was a horrible elementalist), but I will probably do sPvP with it and would like something that is actually adequate for both that and leveling/events.

I tried looking at the official GW2 forums but that was a mistake...I saw at least one thread in every section stating how said class was garbage now (thieves complaining, warriors complaining, etc)...I guess they've gotten nerfed since I last payed attention.

My necromancer has been my favorite ever since I started playing it because it feels super tough to me with death shroud and all of the different builds I can choose.

I could use some suggestions. :P

[Meledelion]

This will probably become quite long but I'm bored so let's do this!

Thief:
The strength of thief is two fold, 1. It's very good against other squishy targets 2. It's super mobile.
The draw backs are that you also are reasonably squishy, you survive either by relying on stealth or by using teleports to get out of LoS/range.
This class plays a lot like elementalist used to (before celestial came in) in that you're not good at taking hits, but you're good at evading them/healing them/...

The most popular builds are D/P and S/D
D/P plays a hit and run type of style, you generally don't want to be in team fights since you can die extremely fast and stealth doesn't protect you from AoE which most team fights have a lot of. In 1v1s you're weak vs conditions.

S/D is a whole different ball game, you actually want to be in team fights since your evades (3) also steal boons, while not being vulnerable to AoE since you can simply port out. Don't be fooled, even though team fights are important S/D can easily hold it's own in most 1v1s the only threats are D/P thief (unwinnable vs an equally skilled player) and condition spammers (builds that focus on multiple conditions like Engineer/Mesmer) but general condition stackers (think ranger who basically rely on bleeding) aren't an issue.

S/D is a lot stronger in general but when you're playing against a lot of squishy targets D/P works better.


Engineer:
Engineers have good survivability as long as their CD's are up. It's possible to get bursted down in one stun if you're unlucky but most builds are more pressure oriented than burst which engineers can easily deal with thanks to their various blocks through shield and the tool kit. The great thing about engineer is that they can roam if needed but also are extremely strong in team fights, especially with their elite.

The most popular builds atm are celestial engineer as said earlier, CC is your weakpoint a secondary weakness are conditions all though you can equip a different kit if need be to help with that.

I'll mention it but it's the most retarded build ever Turret Engineer, its a bunker build that relies on semi-afking, is incredibly boring to play and not that usefull against teams with heavy AoE.

Warrior:
Probably the most sturdy profession, this means that it can hold it's own in both 1v1s and team fights. Do not be fooled by the high numbers you see, when in a team fight your role is to control the target as best as possible so toons with more damage can kill them easier or to help your team survive.
The toughness comes both from CC and the most broken heal skill in the game. A big part of staying alive as a warrior is simply kiting. Not blowing your CD's too early is the hardest part as a warrior, if you're running into 1v1s and popping your stances before the fight starte you're playing horribly.

The only weakness warrior has are blinds and constant poison, this makes D/P thief a pain to deal with in theory but in practice your AoE's are strong enough to win against them. The only PITA classes are condition ranger and mesmers which you see relatively few off.

Hambow
Still is the strongest warrior build.
There's also a condition S/H build but it doesn't really do anything better than Hambow aside from give better condi removal for your team which is quite redundant since stunning the enemy will achieve the same thing.
______________________________________________

The easiest build to play is Turret engineer by far, Hambow isn't hard to play but is quite hard to master (there's a big difference between a good hambow and an ok hambow). Thief is more about map awareness than anything else.

[Rivellana]

Ty for the nice write-up, Mel. I had started a thief but couldn't get into it before I asked, I think I will delete it and try out warrior. This time I'll probably try out sPvP before I start leveling it. :P

[Huehuecoyotl]

Ty for the nice write-up, Mel. I had started a thief but couldn't get into it before I asked, I think I will delete it and try out warrior. This time I'll probably try out sPvP before I start leveling it. :P

I play thief mainly as P/P. It may not be the popular approach, but it's great for running around EotM using the 3 ability to hit multiple targets. Makes sure you get plenty of tags when you get into a zerg v zerg fight. I think thief is worth persevering with, even though it does tend to feel very squishy to start with (at least it did to me).

[Meledelion]

For WvW that's fine, build really doesn't matter there (I run a healing thief build in WvW ) but in PvP I really would advise in going with meta builds.

[Rivellana]

Honestly I like being able to win 1v1s but I also like being able to get into the thick of things with group fights and not melt like paper.

I'd probably stick with mostly sPvP and not WvW...even though my current experience with it has been limited to guardian (I was awful at it) and necromancer. I have run MM necro for sPvP and love it and can survive both group fights and win 1v1 most of the time, although I've had issues with certain thief builds.

Simply as comparison, I have two rogues in WoW and have pvp'd with them and I'm not really sure I want the burst/escape/restealth type of gameplay in GW2. If the thief archetype is similar enough to that in GW2 then it's probably a good reason for me to go with the warrior or engineer instead.