To be honest, sPvP, especially at higher tiers, is largely random. Since the sPvP population is so low the game gives up trying to find people of similar skill level pretty quickly into the matchmaking process and you can very easily end up with teams with platinum players playing against teams with bronze players. I'm Gold 3/Plat 1 personally and each match pretty much comes down to whoever gets the most silver/bronze guys.
Then there is the rampant match fixing at the very top tiers, I think one person (who is actually legitimately top 10 in the world anyway) held 5 of the top 10 ladder positions simply from using multiple accounts to attempt to sync join the same games. The number 2 position on the ladder was allegedly bought this season.
@Perrsun Sometimes I wish we could go back to the glory days of spirit spamming in GW1 or that one time we were #1 because our match finished immediately after the rank reset.
It's a shame because at times I've had a ton of fun in sPvP...when I wasn't vaporized the moment I looked at an enemy player. The basic gameplay of GW2 combat is great and lends itself well to pvp but the balance often feels way off and sometimes you just get destroyed so fast you are left going "what could I have possibly done to survive that!?" (this has frequently happened to me in wvw and spvp in 1v1s even using builds that have defensive skills / armor), which for me largely made me feel like my own skill was not important, removing any desire to participate in the mode. When I've played sPvP and that didn't happen I had a blast because it has this kind of "90's arena shooter but as an rpg" feeling that I liked.
DarkMecha on
Steam Profile | My Art | NID: DarkMecha (SW-4787-9571-8977) | PSN: DarkMecha
Yeah after that 4th match we had a match that my team finally won, like 500 to 199, but that was no fun either. It felt like a steamroll for us. The balance and matchmaking of spvp feels very off. Which is a shame because I got really turned off of the wvw meta that developed around 6 months after launch (and which hasn't really changed). I think I'll give some more time to sPvP though. At least the matches tend to be pretty quick which is really nice.
Launch wvw was the best, no one knew what they were doing, friends and enemies were everywhere all over the map so you could get into small or large scale fights often. People actually set up catapults and trebuchets at long range to bombard enemy walls.
On another note, farming the Mad King's Labyrinth is really good money. But not the absolute best money I've made. A few weeks ago I joined this leather farming group in Lake Doric hunting centaurs up in the north east of the map. When the group got big enough, Champion centaurs would spawn quite regularly. Champions had a 100% chance to drop hardened leather sections (which sells for like 16-20s on the TP). And there were plenty of elites and vets who had a good chance of dropping some as well. Doing one rotation of the camp with about 20 other players got me about 5-10 gold worth of leather every 20 to 30 minutes. I spent an hour and a half with them and made 25 gold. But every time I've gone back to that map no one's been doing it
I find that most competitive games are incredibly fun when they first come out and noone knows what they are doing. Then a clear 'meta' gets established and the whole thing stagnates into a looping routine because 'the best thing to do' stays the same. The only solution is to constantly rebalance the game, even if it is balanced currently, so that 'the best thing to do' is changed to be different regularly.
That or have a game that is balanced in such a way that it provides both variety and balance, but it seems like few games achieve that. Even still, it's the players that ruin that too with "the meta". If you have two things and one is very slightly better than the other, not even enough to really matter, usually the whole player base flocks to 'the best thing' and everything else is considered completely useless. I think a lot of competitive players only find the winning fun and don't care how they win so they are fine with that.
I think GW1's pvp was overall more fun than GW2's spvp, and I really wish that was reversed.
DarkMecha on
Steam Profile | My Art | NID: DarkMecha (SW-4787-9571-8977) | PSN: DarkMecha
Yeah after that 4th match we had a match that my team finally won, like 500 to 199, but that was no fun either. It felt like a steamroll for us. The balance and matchmaking of spvp feels very off. Which is a shame because I got really turned off of the wvw meta that developed around 6 months after launch (and which hasn't really changed). I think I'll give some more time to sPvP though. At least the matches tend to be pretty quick which is really nice.
Launch wvw was the best, no one knew what they were doing, friends and enemies were everywhere all over the map so you could get into small or large scale fights often. People actually set up catapults and trebuchets at long range to bombard enemy walls.
On another note, farming the Mad King's Labyrinth is really good money. But not the absolute best money I've made. A few weeks ago I joined this leather farming group in Lake Doric hunting centaurs up in the north east of the map. When the group got big enough, Champion centaurs would spawn quite regularly. Champions had a 100% chance to drop hardened leather sections (which sells for like 16-20s on the TP). And there were plenty of elites and vets who had a good chance of dropping some as well. Doing one rotation of the camp with about 20 other players got me about 5-10 gold worth of leather every 20 to 30 minutes. I spent an hour and a half with them and made 25 gold. But every time I've gone back to that map no one's been doing it
This sounds like it would be worth doing a guild event for, how many folks were in the zerg?
Yeah after that 4th match we had a match that my team finally won, like 500 to 199, but that was no fun either. It felt like a steamroll for us. The balance and matchmaking of spvp feels very off. Which is a shame because I got really turned off of the wvw meta that developed around 6 months after launch (and which hasn't really changed). I think I'll give some more time to sPvP though. At least the matches tend to be pretty quick which is really nice.
Launch wvw was the best, no one knew what they were doing, friends and enemies were everywhere all over the map so you could get into small or large scale fights often. People actually set up catapults and trebuchets at long range to bombard enemy walls.
On another note, farming the Mad King's Labyrinth is really good money. But not the absolute best money I've made. A few weeks ago I joined this leather farming group in Lake Doric hunting centaurs up in the north east of the map. When the group got big enough, Champion centaurs would spawn quite regularly. Champions had a 100% chance to drop hardened leather sections (which sells for like 16-20s on the TP). And there were plenty of elites and vets who had a good chance of dropping some as well. Doing one rotation of the camp with about 20 other players got me about 5-10 gold worth of leather every 20 to 30 minutes. I spent an hour and a half with them and made 25 gold. But every time I've gone back to that map no one's been doing it
This sounds like it would be worth doing a guild event for, how many folks were in the zerg?
I want to say a good 20+ Maybe as many as 30. It was solid cash once the ball got rolling.
@Dissociater Did you use the LFG tool? I just opened it and there is a leather farm listed with 22 people is squad.
I didn't...doohhhhh
I would just go and see if there was a commander icon on the map and bailed out when there wasn't as I assumed people were doing halloween content. But enjoy the faaarm!
To be honest, sPvP, especially at higher tiers, is largely random. Since the sPvP population is so low the game gives up trying to find people of similar skill level pretty quickly into the matchmaking process and you can very easily end up with teams with platinum players playing against teams with bronze players. I'm Gold 3/Plat 1 personally and each match pretty much comes down to whoever gets the most silver/bronze guys.
Then there is the rampant match fixing at the very top tiers, I think one person (who is actually legitimately top 10 in the world anyway) held 5 of the top 10 ladder positions simply from using multiple accounts to attempt to sync join the same games. The number 2 position on the ladder was allegedly bought this season.
@Perrsun Sometimes I wish we could go back to the glory days of spirit spamming in GW1 or that one time we were #1 because our match finished immediately after the rank reset.
Ah, those good old days. To echo what others have said, I just don't have the time to dedicate to being good at PvP anymore.
But yeah, back in the day, we were the absolute best one trick pony. Once the metas developed it was harder to stay on top, but the thing I remember most is everybody finding a bullshit strategy, and watching people crumble as they didn't know what to do.
Within a few hours of the Nightfall release we developed the Zulu build with Ranger/Paragons and everybody with spears and mantras. Just a full load of singing and spears and pets.
To be honest, sPvP, especially at higher tiers, is largely random. Since the sPvP population is so low the game gives up trying to find people of similar skill level pretty quickly into the matchmaking process and you can very easily end up with teams with platinum players playing against teams with bronze players. I'm Gold 3/Plat 1 personally and each match pretty much comes down to whoever gets the most silver/bronze guys.
Then there is the rampant match fixing at the very top tiers, I think one person (who is actually legitimately top 10 in the world anyway) held 5 of the top 10 ladder positions simply from using multiple accounts to attempt to sync join the same games. The number 2 position on the ladder was allegedly bought this season.
@Perrsun Sometimes I wish we could go back to the glory days of spirit spamming in GW1 or that one time we were #1 because our match finished immediately after the rank reset.
Ah, those good old days. To echo what others have said, I just don't have the time to dedicate to being good at PvP anymore.
But yeah, back in the day, we were the absolute best one trick pony. Once the metas developed it was harder to stay on top, but the thing I remember most is everybody finding a bullshit strategy, and watching people crumble as they didn't know what to do.
Within a few hours of the Nightfall release we developed the Zulu build with Ranger/Paragons and everybody with spears and mantras. Just a full load of singing and spears and pets.
That is awesome! Hahahaha!
Steam Profile | My Art | NID: DarkMecha (SW-4787-9571-8977) | PSN: DarkMecha
To be honest, sPvP, especially at higher tiers, is largely random. Since the sPvP population is so low the game gives up trying to find people of similar skill level pretty quickly into the matchmaking process and you can very easily end up with teams with platinum players playing against teams with bronze players. I'm Gold 3/Plat 1 personally and each match pretty much comes down to whoever gets the most silver/bronze guys.
Then there is the rampant match fixing at the very top tiers, I think one person (who is actually legitimately top 10 in the world anyway) held 5 of the top 10 ladder positions simply from using multiple accounts to attempt to sync join the same games. The number 2 position on the ladder was allegedly bought this season.
@Perrsun Sometimes I wish we could go back to the glory days of spirit spamming in GW1 or that one time we were #1 because our match finished immediately after the rank reset.
Ah, those good old days. To echo what others have said, I just don't have the time to dedicate to being good at PvP anymore.
But yeah, back in the day, we were the absolute best one trick pony. Once the metas developed it was harder to stay on top, but the thing I remember most is everybody finding a bullshit strategy, and watching people crumble as they didn't know what to do.
Within a few hours of the Nightfall release we developed the Zulu build with Ranger/Paragons and everybody with spears and mantras. Just a full load of singing and spears and pets.
I vividly remember winning in HoH with FireEngy way back when it was 6v6 with the two of us running paragons and four heroes. Nightfall was just the best campaign.
Ah, those good old days. To echo what others have said, I just don't have the time to dedicate to being good at PvP anymore.
But yeah, back in the day, we were the absolute best one trick pony. Once the metas developed it was harder to stay on top, but the thing I remember most is everybody finding a bullshit strategy, and watching people crumble as they didn't know what to do.
Within a few hours of the Nightfall release we developed the Zulu build with Ranger/Paragons and everybody with spears and mantras. Just a full load of singing and spears and pets.
One guild I was in we had this build for Tombs the guy who made it called 'Mittens' after his pet. It was 5 Rangers with Black Widows (I seem to recall some reason for this but for the life of me I can't remember) with Punishing Shot, Savage Shot, Distracting Shot and Distracting... Leap? The pet interrupt. Then 3 Monks to keep us up. The enemy team would accomplish nothing under the weight of 20 interrupts, with half of those Interrupts putting the skill cooldown on 30 seconds. Also Dual Shot on every Ranger so 5 Dual Shots and 5 Punishing Shots could spike down a target. One group told us we were the most annoying team they'd ever fought. Which was ironic coming from Spirit spammers.
One Australian guild I was in got into the top 100 with a pair of Obsidian Flame warriors (Eviscerate warriors with high Earth stats to contribute to a ranged spike) and a Fire elemenalist with Meteor and Fireball (that was my spot).
Overall I think I preferred GW 1's PvP because it was so much simpler. Less stats, less rune and sigil combinations, simpler mechanics. It was pretty easy to whip up something absurd and it could work.
I think what I miss most about GW1 PvP is Random Arena and Alliance Battles. AB was my JAM. It really did feel like a bunch of small skirmishes all over the map instead of the giant zergs of WvW. 12 on 12 felt like the perfect amount of people to feel like a large scale conflict but not overwhelming.
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My favourite experience AB experience was in the open stress test when they hadn't capped summons. By the end of the weekend each team would be half Necromancers and by the end of each match there would be huge undead minion wars with dozens of minions duking it out.
Though I still think Factions was the strongest expansion they did. I liked the classes it added more, I liked the areas more (holy shit the Jade Sea was amazing) and I feel their experiments with PvP were better.
My favourite experience AB experience was in the open stress test when they hadn't capped summons. By the end of the weekend each team would be half Necromancers and by the end of each match there would be huge undead minion wars with dozens of minions duking it out.
Though I still think Factions was the strongest expansion they did. I liked the classes it added more, I liked the areas more (holy shit the Jade Sea was amazing) and I feel their experiments with PvP were better.
Fort Aspenwood for life!!!
Right around when Nightfall released I brought in a pre-nerf Dervish/Warrior build that was:
[enchant w AoE condi when stripped] [same] [same] [same] [same] [enchant strip + dmg for each enchant stripped] [VICTORY IS MINE (Mana + Health for each condi on a foe)] [A Rez]
It was a P A R T Y lemmie tell u wot
I was so pissed when the Dervish nerf utterly destroyed the functionality of the Enchant + Strip thing, like... it completely took away what was interesting about the class
Obsidian Flesh dervish deserved to die. It was the highest burst damage by a country mile and you were all but unkillable save for a tiny window between stripping obby and reapplying.
On a GW2 note, should I be saving those skulls and nougats for something important? Google isn’t super helpful so far. They’re marked as crafting components but I’m not sure for what exactly.
Obsidian Flesh dervish deserved to die. It was the highest burst damage by a country mile and you were all but unkillable save for a tiny window between stripping obby and reapplying.
On a GW2 note, should I be saving those skulls and nougats for something important? Google isn’t super helpful so far. They’re marked as crafting components but I’m not sure for what exactly.
I'm saving mine up for the gift of souls so I can make The Crossing for my Necro.
At the moment you can buy the higher tier skulls/fangs/nougat from TP for ~1.86 gold.
1000 of the lower tier it takes to craft them vendors for 2.50 gold.
So you will save ~0.64 gold for each by buying the higher tier from the TP and just vendoring your stacks of the basic versions.
Yeah I learned this the hard way last night Oh well.
In Goals News: Finished Crystal Oasis Griffon achievements. I'm actually only about 100 gold away from having all the gold required for that particular sink, and I honestly think just bumming around the various maps & running Lab should get me there pretty quickly. Depending on what Magic Find buffs you have, Labyrinth can be up to 25 gold for about 2 hours of a solid run. Caveat being you need a Commander who knows what they're doing and to not have griefers who deliberately open doors when the zerg isn't present to fuck with you
*Edit* Related, it is more reliably profitable to just sell the ToT bags on the TP instead of opening them. Plus you don't have to deal with piles and piles of worthless trash food and utility items.
Where's a good spot to farm the 150 Awakened kills for the backpack achievement? I quite literally ran through the maps to get story done so I don't have much of them revealed yet.
Where's a good spot to farm the 150 Awakened kills for the backpack achievement? I quite literally ran through the maps to get story done so I don't have much of them revealed yet.
Elon Riverlands around The Deadhouse
Desolation the garrison in northwest
Desert Highlands has an event at south way point to defend the outpost
Obsidian Flesh dervish deserved to die. It was the highest burst damage by a country mile and you were all but unkillable save for a tiny window between stripping obby and reapplying.
On a GW2 note, should I be saving those skulls and nougats for something important? Google isn’t super helpful so far. They’re marked as crafting components but I’m not sure for what exactly.
I'm saving mine up for the gift of souls so I can make The Crossing for my Necro.
100 mystic coins though... thats silly for an exotic, heck there is tons of old recipes for exotics that need to be tweaked imo.
Obsidian Flesh dervish deserved to die. It was the highest burst damage by a country mile and you were all but unkillable save for a tiny window between stripping obby and reapplying.
On a GW2 note, should I be saving those skulls and nougats for something important? Google isn’t super helpful so far. They’re marked as crafting components but I’m not sure for what exactly.
I'm saving mine up for the gift of souls so I can make The Crossing for my Necro.
100 mystic coins though... thats silly for an exotic, heck there is tons of old recipes for exotics that need to be tweaked imo.
These are the kinds of things that really grind my gears about GW2.
Insane amounts of work for what is just a skin. Maybe I'm just looking at it wrong, but the work should be for character improvements, not cosmetic additions to Pretty Pretty Princess Dress Up Wars 2.
Fuck that, I don't mind some skins being a lot of work and stuff because no one is forced to do that. But being able to grind out character improvements or any other kind of progression through serious time grinding is a definite turn off. I dont want to be 5% less effective because I didn't make legendaries instead of ascended for instance, I love that an ascended weapon is just as good as a legendary, but that I can grind out legendaries for better skins.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
In Goals News: Finished Crystal Oasis Griffon achievements. I'm actually only about 100 gold away from having all the gold required for that particular sink, and I honestly think just bumming around the various maps & running Lab should get me there pretty quickly. Depending on what Magic Find buffs you have, Labyrinth can be up to 25 gold for about 2 hours of a solid run. Caveat being you need a Commander who knows what they're doing and to not have griefers who deliberately open doors when the zerg isn't present to fuck with you
Also, you need the zerg to know how to fight some of the bosses (last night I was with a squad that had several members staying at range on lich preventing the skeletons from being cleaved down quickly before they started killing people) AND be able to actually stomach lab runs for that long.
It's profitable for sure but I just do not enjoy doing anything that repetitive for too long. I can't even stomach Tequatl most days lately.
Fuck that, I don't mind some skins being a lot of work and stuff because no one is forced to do that. But being able to grind out character improvements or any other kind of progression through serious time grinding is a definite turn off. I dont want to be 5% less effective because I didn't make legendaries instead of ascended for instance, I love that an ascended weapon is just as good as a legendary, but that I can grind out legendaries for better skins.
I wish they had made some kind of through-gameplay-achieveable glider skin. To this day, the only way to change your glider is the gemstore. And it looks like they're going to do the same with mounts.
I do like, though, that even after being 5 years old they've made a single staff skin that is desired by Necros everywhere.
Fuck that, I don't mind some skins being a lot of work and stuff because no one is forced to do that. But being able to grind out character improvements or any other kind of progression through serious time grinding is a definite turn off. I dont want to be 5% less effective because I didn't make legendaries instead of ascended for instance, I love that an ascended weapon is just as good as a legendary, but that I can grind out legendaries for better skins.
Different strokes, my man. I don't find skins sufficiently motivating enough, so it just feels like a shit ton of busy work to get the stuff together so I can make a thing that is statistically identical to the weapon I have, but looks a certain way.
I feel like this is the core reason I end up not clicking with GW2 after but a few weeks. I log in and go "... To what end?"
I deeply enjoy sPvP conceptually, but the complaints on this very page are super relevant.
I know I was super jacked when I put together my first few ascended pieces, and will probably remember how happy I was at my first ascended ring drop for a long while. Conversely, I was downright sour at having to spend a bunch of my resources building another unnecessary ascended back piece because I really wanted a quiver on my back since it fit what I wanted my character to be, better than some sail.
That's just me, though. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just doesn't jive super well with me after a little while.
Fuck that, I don't mind some skins being a lot of work and stuff because no one is forced to do that. But being able to grind out character improvements or any other kind of progression through serious time grinding is a definite turn off. I dont want to be 5% less effective because I didn't make legendaries instead of ascended for instance, I love that an ascended weapon is just as good as a legendary, but that I can grind out legendaries for better skins.
Different strokes, my man. I don't find skins sufficiently motivating enough, so it just feels like a shit ton of busy work to get the stuff together so I can make a thing that is statistically identical to the weapon I have, but looks a certain way.
I feel like this is the core reason I end up not clicking with GW2 after but a few weeks. I log in and go "... To what end?"
I deeply enjoy sPvP conceptually, but the complaints on this very page are super relevant.
I know I was super jacked when I put together my first few ascended pieces, and will probably remember how happy I was at my first ascended ring drop for a long while. Conversely, I was downright sour at having to spend a bunch of my resources building another unnecessary ascended back piece because I really wanted a quiver on my back since it fit what I wanted my character to be, better than some sail.
That's just me, though. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just doesn't jive super well with me after a little while.
:?
GW2 is different from a lot of MMOs in a number of ways not immediately apparent to people because core Tyria overland stuff is so facerollingly simple as you level up.
There is a lot of mechanical depth many players don't notice and it's unraveling that that's the real progression IMO. A lot of mobs have telegraphed attacks that go beyond "dodge out of the circle" and being able to learn how to read a lot of those has been a far bigger boost to my capability than adding the next bit of ascended gear. And that's on top of things like how to make good use of combo fields, adjust builds for specific encounters and situations, work best with different support builds, and more that isn't immediately obvious on a character sheet. In a lot of ways, it's closer to an action RPG than the dikuMUD base most MMOs trace their lineage to. Specifically the kind of action RPG that isn't a Diablo-style loot fest and better players often complete objectives with lower levels than the rest of us.
The other part is that GW2 is a collection game. What one chooses to collect can vary though skins is by far the most common answer but the game really is like Pokemon with skins, achievements, and odd items in place of monsters. You can ignore that aspect of the game just like some players plow through Pokemon with just their starter but you don't get as much out of the game doing so.
If you are interested in getting started or getting better at fractals this is an excellent resource.
while I like the idea for the builds and such, according to that you "must" go druid of you want to play a ranger and run fractals. Obviously this is for the high-end stuff, but... bah.
They are the fractals equivalent of what the Quantify guild is to raids. They focus on speed clearing at high efficiency.
That said. They still have a wealth of information for clearing fractals even without speed clearing. You do not need a chrono, a PS warrior, and a druid to complete fractals. I would say a solid 80% of my T4 fractal clears had no druid if not more, and I can't remember the last time I had a chrono.
"This is the best method for clearing this content" does not equal "This is the only method for clearing this content".
Take from it what you need to improve regarding mechanics and methods and go have fun. I fully intend to take my necro back into fractals, because I enjoy it and I know it is effective enough for clearing the content, despite it not being listed on their site.
If you are interested in getting started or getting better at fractals this is an excellent resource.
while I like the idea for the builds and such, according to that you "must" go druid of you want to play a ranger and run fractals. Obviously this is for the high-end stuff, but... bah.
The site's maker has stated the build section isn't quite up to date and finished. They were expecting a balance patch on Tuesday and when that didn't drop, they didn't start work on updating it.
That said, what is there comes with a few caveats:
1) Druid often is run as a condition damage setup and not a full heal setup. Druid healing is so strong experienced players feel its base healing is good enough. More healing focused setups are there for PuGs and less experienced groups.
2) A healer is only really needed for specific situations. Note that the guides only discuss the challenge modes of 99 and 100. I'm not sure if normal 100 is feasible in a PuG without a healer mind you, but I've run through every other t4 in normal mode in a PuG with no dedicated healer. That's not to say it didn't take a lot longer and wasn't subject to multiple attempts on some fights, but it's not strictly necessary to have a healer in even most of these.
3) If two rangers are present, obviously both don't have to be druids. And if another healer is present, a ranger doesn't have to run druid. Eles and revenants both have healing builds, they just lack the extremely strong unique boons druids have.
4) The guide is really focused on the most efficient approaches known. More experienced and skilled players have always been able to get away with larger deviations from optimal setups but without a dedicated static group it's tough to get to that point without starting out with the most effective setups and a guide is obviously aimed at less experienced players who will need that extra boost starting out.
I've run full Condi ranger on T4 fracs without any issues - only time I've felt the need to run a more supporty build was what is now 99 CM, and at that point I whipped out my auramancer tempest. I've run the old 100 normal (now 99), and everything else short of 100cm with no healer; not actually done the new 100 (stupid real life getting in the way of my game time).
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Then there is the rampant match fixing at the very top tiers, I think one person (who is actually legitimately top 10 in the world anyway) held 5 of the top 10 ladder positions simply from using multiple accounts to attempt to sync join the same games. The number 2 position on the ladder was allegedly bought this season.
@Perrsun Sometimes I wish we could go back to the glory days of spirit spamming in GW1 or that one time we were #1 because our match finished immediately after the rank reset.
Launch wvw was the best, no one knew what they were doing, friends and enemies were everywhere all over the map so you could get into small or large scale fights often. People actually set up catapults and trebuchets at long range to bombard enemy walls.
On another note, farming the Mad King's Labyrinth is really good money. But not the absolute best money I've made. A few weeks ago I joined this leather farming group in Lake Doric hunting centaurs up in the north east of the map. When the group got big enough, Champion centaurs would spawn quite regularly. Champions had a 100% chance to drop hardened leather sections (which sells for like 16-20s on the TP). And there were plenty of elites and vets who had a good chance of dropping some as well. Doing one rotation of the camp with about 20 other players got me about 5-10 gold worth of leather every 20 to 30 minutes. I spent an hour and a half with them and made 25 gold. But every time I've gone back to that map no one's been doing it
That or have a game that is balanced in such a way that it provides both variety and balance, but it seems like few games achieve that. Even still, it's the players that ruin that too with "the meta". If you have two things and one is very slightly better than the other, not even enough to really matter, usually the whole player base flocks to 'the best thing' and everything else is considered completely useless. I think a lot of competitive players only find the winning fun and don't care how they win so they are fine with that.
I think GW1's pvp was overall more fun than GW2's spvp, and I really wish that was reversed.
This sounds like it would be worth doing a guild event for, how many folks were in the zerg?
I want to say a good 20+ Maybe as many as 30. It was solid cash once the ball got rolling.
GW2: Tavalisk.9463
I didn't...doohhhhh
I would just go and see if there was a commander icon on the map and bailed out when there wasn't as I assumed people were doing halloween content. But enjoy the faaarm!
Ah, those good old days. To echo what others have said, I just don't have the time to dedicate to being good at PvP anymore.
But yeah, back in the day, we were the absolute best one trick pony. Once the metas developed it was harder to stay on top, but the thing I remember most is everybody finding a bullshit strategy, and watching people crumble as they didn't know what to do.
Within a few hours of the Nightfall release we developed the Zulu build with Ranger/Paragons and everybody with spears and mantras. Just a full load of singing and spears and pets.
That is awesome! Hahahaha!
Me too - I'm going to spend a few hours a day in the Maze, and on the last day use gold to buy the last ingredients.
The maze of fun with a good Zerg, I normally watch tv on my second monitor.
Plus, I love opening stacks of bags.
It's great for AP, too, as the Achievents are infinitely repeatable, at 5ap per repeat of open 50 doors, kill the bosses, etc.
I vividly remember winning in HoH with FireEngy way back when it was 6v6 with the two of us running paragons and four heroes. Nightfall was just the best campaign.
One guild I was in we had this build for Tombs the guy who made it called 'Mittens' after his pet. It was 5 Rangers with Black Widows (I seem to recall some reason for this but for the life of me I can't remember) with Punishing Shot, Savage Shot, Distracting Shot and Distracting... Leap? The pet interrupt. Then 3 Monks to keep us up. The enemy team would accomplish nothing under the weight of 20 interrupts, with half of those Interrupts putting the skill cooldown on 30 seconds. Also Dual Shot on every Ranger so 5 Dual Shots and 5 Punishing Shots could spike down a target. One group told us we were the most annoying team they'd ever fought. Which was ironic coming from Spirit spammers.
One Australian guild I was in got into the top 100 with a pair of Obsidian Flame warriors (Eviscerate warriors with high Earth stats to contribute to a ranged spike) and a Fire elemenalist with Meteor and Fireball (that was my spot).
Overall I think I preferred GW 1's PvP because it was so much simpler. Less stats, less rune and sigil combinations, simpler mechanics. It was pretty easy to whip up something absurd and it could work.
Though I still think Factions was the strongest expansion they did. I liked the classes it added more, I liked the areas more (holy shit the Jade Sea was amazing) and I feel their experiments with PvP were better.
Fort Aspenwood for life!!!
Right around when Nightfall released I brought in a pre-nerf Dervish/Warrior build that was:
[enchant w AoE condi when stripped] [same] [same] [same] [same] [enchant strip + dmg for each enchant stripped] [VICTORY IS MINE (Mana + Health for each condi on a foe)] [A Rez]
It was a P A R T Y lemmie tell u wot
I was so pissed when the Dervish nerf utterly destroyed the functionality of the Enchant + Strip thing, like... it completely took away what was interesting about the class
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
On a GW2 note, should I be saving those skulls and nougats for something important? Google isn’t super helpful so far. They’re marked as crafting components but I’m not sure for what exactly.
I'm saving mine up for the gift of souls so I can make The Crossing for my Necro.
At the moment you can buy the higher tier skulls/fangs/nougat from TP for ~1.86 gold.
1000 of the lower tier it takes to craft them vendors for 2.50 gold.
So you will save ~0.64 gold for each by buying the higher tier from the TP and just vendoring your stacks of the basic versions.
GW2: Tavalisk.9463
Yeah I learned this the hard way last night
In Goals News: Finished Crystal Oasis Griffon achievements. I'm actually only about 100 gold away from having all the gold required for that particular sink, and I honestly think just bumming around the various maps & running Lab should get me there pretty quickly. Depending on what Magic Find buffs you have, Labyrinth can be up to 25 gold for about 2 hours of a solid run. Caveat being you need a Commander who knows what they're doing and to not have griefers who deliberately open doors when the zerg isn't present to fuck with you
*Edit* Related, it is more reliably profitable to just sell the ToT bags on the TP instead of opening them. Plus you don't have to deal with piles and piles of worthless trash food and utility items.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Elon Riverlands around The Deadhouse
Desolation the garrison in northwest
Desert Highlands has an event at south way point to defend the outpost
GW2: Tavalisk.9463
100 mystic coins though... thats silly for an exotic, heck there is tons of old recipes for exotics that need to be tweaked imo.
These are the kinds of things that really grind my gears about GW2.
Insane amounts of work for what is just a skin. Maybe I'm just looking at it wrong, but the work should be for character improvements, not cosmetic additions to Pretty Pretty Princess Dress Up Wars 2.
If you are interested in getting started or getting better at fractals this is an excellent resource.
GW2: Tavalisk.9463
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
Also, you need the zerg to know how to fight some of the bosses (last night I was with a squad that had several members staying at range on lich preventing the skeletons from being cleaved down quickly before they started killing people) AND be able to actually stomach lab runs for that long.
It's profitable for sure but I just do not enjoy doing anything that repetitive for too long. I can't even stomach Tequatl most days lately.
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I wish they had made some kind of through-gameplay-achieveable glider skin. To this day, the only way to change your glider is the gemstore. And it looks like they're going to do the same with mounts.
I do like, though, that even after being 5 years old they've made a single staff skin that is desired by Necros everywhere.
Different strokes, my man. I don't find skins sufficiently motivating enough, so it just feels like a shit ton of busy work to get the stuff together so I can make a thing that is statistically identical to the weapon I have, but looks a certain way.
I feel like this is the core reason I end up not clicking with GW2 after but a few weeks. I log in and go "... To what end?"
I deeply enjoy sPvP conceptually, but the complaints on this very page are super relevant.
I know I was super jacked when I put together my first few ascended pieces, and will probably remember how happy I was at my first ascended ring drop for a long while. Conversely, I was downright sour at having to spend a bunch of my resources building another unnecessary ascended back piece because I really wanted a quiver on my back since it fit what I wanted my character to be, better than some sail.
That's just me, though. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just doesn't jive super well with me after a little while.
:?
GW2 is different from a lot of MMOs in a number of ways not immediately apparent to people because core Tyria overland stuff is so facerollingly simple as you level up.
There is a lot of mechanical depth many players don't notice and it's unraveling that that's the real progression IMO. A lot of mobs have telegraphed attacks that go beyond "dodge out of the circle" and being able to learn how to read a lot of those has been a far bigger boost to my capability than adding the next bit of ascended gear. And that's on top of things like how to make good use of combo fields, adjust builds for specific encounters and situations, work best with different support builds, and more that isn't immediately obvious on a character sheet. In a lot of ways, it's closer to an action RPG than the dikuMUD base most MMOs trace their lineage to. Specifically the kind of action RPG that isn't a Diablo-style loot fest and better players often complete objectives with lower levels than the rest of us.
The other part is that GW2 is a collection game. What one chooses to collect can vary though skins is by far the most common answer but the game really is like Pokemon with skins, achievements, and odd items in place of monsters. You can ignore that aspect of the game just like some players plow through Pokemon with just their starter but you don't get as much out of the game doing so.
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while I like the idea for the builds and such, according to that you "must" go druid of you want to play a ranger and run fractals. Obviously this is for the high-end stuff, but... bah.
That said. They still have a wealth of information for clearing fractals even without speed clearing. You do not need a chrono, a PS warrior, and a druid to complete fractals. I would say a solid 80% of my T4 fractal clears had no druid if not more, and I can't remember the last time I had a chrono.
"This is the best method for clearing this content" does not equal "This is the only method for clearing this content".
Take from it what you need to improve regarding mechanics and methods and go have fun. I fully intend to take my necro back into fractals, because I enjoy it and I know it is effective enough for clearing the content, despite it not being listed on their site.
GW2: Tavalisk.9463
The site's maker has stated the build section isn't quite up to date and finished. They were expecting a balance patch on Tuesday and when that didn't drop, they didn't start work on updating it.
That said, what is there comes with a few caveats:
1) Druid often is run as a condition damage setup and not a full heal setup. Druid healing is so strong experienced players feel its base healing is good enough. More healing focused setups are there for PuGs and less experienced groups.
2) A healer is only really needed for specific situations. Note that the guides only discuss the challenge modes of 99 and 100. I'm not sure if normal 100 is feasible in a PuG without a healer mind you, but I've run through every other t4 in normal mode in a PuG with no dedicated healer. That's not to say it didn't take a lot longer and wasn't subject to multiple attempts on some fights, but it's not strictly necessary to have a healer in even most of these.
3) If two rangers are present, obviously both don't have to be druids. And if another healer is present, a ranger doesn't have to run druid. Eles and revenants both have healing builds, they just lack the extremely strong unique boons druids have.
4) The guide is really focused on the most efficient approaches known. More experienced and skilled players have always been able to get away with larger deviations from optimal setups but without a dedicated static group it's tough to get to that point without starting out with the most effective setups and a guide is obviously aimed at less experienced players who will need that extra boost starting out.
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I've run full Condi ranger on T4 fracs without any issues - only time I've felt the need to run a more supporty build was what is now 99 CM, and at that point I whipped out my auramancer tempest. I've run the old 100 normal (now 99), and everything else short of 100cm with no healer; not actually done the new 100 (stupid real life getting in the way of my game time).