Goes to show that different strokes for different folks. I've played around with Asura storyline. And I like it better than shoot the ghosts around with my Asura mezmer. One thing that does strike me about GW2 is that some abilities feel a bit... samey. For casters we got walls, shields that deflect, bubbles that deflect. I just wish the skills were a bit diversified in effects (as in what they do).
I think in practice the abilities are more different than they first seem, but it really takes something like PvP to bring out the strengths and weaknesses of the different stuff.
True, but what is missing atm is some condition interaction. However this is Arena.net they didn't think all their condition interaction on the spot it took quite some time for them to come with them in GW1.
I mean for skills, items and other gameplay system to interact with conditions. Like hitting burning stuff with Searing Flames, that does stupid amounts of fire damage. Or hitting burning foes with Steam causes blindness.
Sounds like Fire Grab doing 2x damage to burning targets? Feast of Corruption doing extra damage to conditioned targets. Mesmer Staff pet also does extra vs conditioned targets. Anyway, the weekend concluded and my guild had a blast in WvW and sPvP. Here's some of the highlights of the weekend. This was by far our best fight to date: Decent sPvP match Here's some great WvW fight vs Sorrow's Furnace besieging a keep.
I should also point out that I LOVE combo fields, and try to use them frequently. Situational frost armor, ae healing, condition removal, retaliation, etc pretty good.
The new PvP map is really boring compared to the first two. And the first one is the best, Svanir and The Chief kind of suck. Combo fields are deceptively powerful but it's hard to get enthusiastic about them.
I played guardian this BWE, and guardian's greatsword is the champion of all cross profession combos. You've got a skill that makes a light field, two whirls and a leap. Guardian hammer also has combos build right into it, like third auto-attack makes a symbol, then you use skill 2 for area retaliation. In playing with my elementalist friend I had an insane number of opportunities to make combos. Guardian's so awesome I am now certain of playing one on release. I spent 80%+ of the weekend in WvW and it was awesome. With two co-ordinated players we were able to take supply camps and easily neutralise or befriend npc ally camps. With a handful of randoms, we could start hitting towers and whatnot. WvW is not in the slightest bit fair or balanced, but it's certainly fun fun fun.
I like the openness of the new map, but the flow and spacing is a bit problematic. Establishing early control let's you react to either side point the other team might make a effort to retake easily. The guild lord mechanic also doesn't seem as important as the trebuchet or npc's. I think the base layout of Khylo is ok, with my main complaints being the numerous los obstructions and props that you can get stuck on. Forest seems to be the best, npc mechanic is important so games flow from the sides and mid pretty well. Not a fan of last hit kill-stealing, but it works in every other game so I'm not gonna complain about that one too much.
So hey swiffle (and anyone else who is definitely good). Are there any classes you'd recommend avoiding on release? Which do you think are top 3 in pvp/why? (And likewise for pve?). I am kind of tempted to play necromancer (in that I really enjoyed necro/mesmer in gw1 and mesmer looks totally different in gw2). e: also tempted by warrior - I played a lot of melee in WoW, swtor, etc. I heard melee were at something of a disadvantage in gw2, though? - Also, I was thinking we could set up a sirlin guild for GW2, since people can join multiple guilds and just invite to party to play together etc. Fim and swiffle mentioned being interested, but is anyone else planning to play?
I'm gonna be on Tarnished Coast (if I can grab the name Shiri I will, I managed before and I have headstart, but...)
I like melee and warrior works fine as far as I can tell. Haven't tried guardian yet, but other classes don't seem to be able to take hits while in melee at all. Even warrior needs to switch to sword and board if shit hits the fan. So... don't play a melee thief if you are alone is what I'm trying to say (unless you only go up against lower level monsters or something). Gun-dagger thief can be seriously cheesy against most monsters, the reverse however doesn't really hold. That's my experience anyway, but I didn't dig into the game much.
Ranger seems ok for taking melee hits, though I tended to bounce in and out of melee range rather than slug it out. Basically my ranger's general idea with a melee weapon + shortbow or axe was to be in the opposite range of what my opponent wanted. Thieves I don't have too much experience, but their ability to escape losing fights PvP was pretty impressive.
Avoid Mesmer, it might get fixed eventually but currently looks frustrating, squishy, and all around useless. One of the more interesting and strategic classes from GW1, but it's nothing like how it used to be. Just a pet class now, and a terrible one at that. Everything else has some merit, although for WvW, having tons of ele's around seems great for AE, adequate survivability and versatility. All other 7 classes bring something to the table for sPvP too - find some sort of role you want to fall into - power builds, condition builds, mobility, point control/holding build. My guild hasn't decided on a server yet, we're waiting to see where other people roll, so we can end up on a server that isn't going to have ridiculous zergs on our side, but not be totally useless fodder either.
I disagree about mesmer, it was a lot of fun in PvP (no idea about PvE.) The clones were annoying to fight against and could be pretty fun to fight with. Avoid Necromancer, unless they made drastic changes. ;(
I wouldn't worry too much about profession selection based on balance. I'd expect a lot of little tweaks as far as PvP balance goes in the first month or so. Anyway, played a little just now (Got kicked off the server) and so far thief seems fun. A lot of things in common with the GW Sin as far as fighting style goes, which is pretty awesome.
So far skill balance isnt terrible. Eles got hit hard, mesmers got buffed too hard. Necro is kinda bad, but still has a place. Got to 80, 400 cooking, lot of wvw, some pvp too. Having a blast.
I don't have any experience in PvP but certainly in PvE my Thief is able to solo quite happily but you have to be pro-active with avoiding attacks via evasion, blinding, interruptions and of course little bursts of stealth. She's far less able to handle a crowd though and I find it much easier to kill one much higher level mob than 2-3 even level ones, but then she's also a great escape artist when a fight goes south I whole-heartedly recommend this guide, which is PvP oriented but gives plenty of food for thought for the PvE Thief as well.
The awesome thing about GW2 is that if you're curious about a class but don't want to invest your life and find out it's rubbish is that you can just roll up and try the sPvP - get a fully formed character right away and spend a weekend playing around with different builds, getting a feel for it. If you like it then make one to level up and do WvW with, otherwise just move on to the next class
Thief got tweaked here and there to some skills and traits. Seems to be in a pretty good spot. A lot of people complain about it's survivability, but for PvP good thieves are hella annoying and dangerous. They can always pick good fights for them and typically get away if it goes bad, or make you invest a lot of time even if they get downed. Lowell's guide is top quality, and his guild is the most successful PvP guild to this point.
I got permabanned - t2 karma weapons were available for 21 karma instead of 21000 (no special execution required - you just walked up to the vendor (store) and bought them. I guess someone forgot to put the 3 0's in?), so I bought a bunch. This was not a wise idea!
Oh MMOs. So ridiculous. This is part of the reason that, while I do enjoy some MMOs, I don't really take them seriously. Dev puts items up for cheap and it's YOUR fault you bought them using no special means and only what was available in the game? Ridiculous.
It was kind of clearly not intended (other similar vendors sold them for 21,000), I just did not expect an immediate no warning permaban based on previous exposure to mmo's/games generally + # of friends/guildmates doing it - usually companies just fix bugs and occasionally tempban, warn, or rollback players. Permabans never really happen and if you don't exploit things like that you fall behind the economic curve in the game. Alas.
Yeah, anet is clearly out of line with banning over this. They made a mistake, players exploited it. The best solution is anything but to ban the players that abused it. I didn't personally, heard about anet banning over some language nonsense already and figured this was a death sentence. It's ashame since they had the total correct attitude for so much gameplay stuff, it's weird to see them use the draconian MMO policy of 'we'll ban you when we make mistakes'. If Sirlin were not at pax I'm sure he'd have much to say about MMO player rights and devs being accountable for their bugs.
Yo Ehrgeix, go get your account back. http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/z44ml/karma_weapons_exploit/
Love how they define the terms in order to set the frame and take control of the conversation. In this context, 'exploiting' means walking up to a vendor selling an item for a listed price and buying it. Edit 40 minutes later: Now I'm just reading this reddit thread and getting mad. Someone light the Sirlin Bat Signal.
What is particularly baffling is how they decided their bans. To those who bought less than 50, it was not exploiting and they received a 72 hour ban. To those who bought more than 50, permanent ban. Meanwhile, players who used third party programs to bot in GW2 received a one time 72 hour ban with the promise that any future botting would be an instant perma-ban. Wait, what? So the thing that everyone knows is against the rules and which requires the user to actively seek to break them - 72 hour ban. Abusing a totally transparent in game bug - permanent ban. For those who are not playing there are two important things to know: First, yes it really was obvious that the vendor was bugged. He was selling high end rare fancy-lookin' gear for less than low level karma vendors sell you useless knicknacks. This still doesn't excuse banning anyone, but it's good to know that people aren't being banned over extremely amorphous squishy shit that is near impossible to tell if it's a bug or not. We're not that deep, yet. Secondly, I remember in IRC Thelo mentioned that just reverting the economic damage caused would be hard, since people can sell to others who then sell to others etc. This would normally be true, but since release the trading post for buying and selling items has been down 90% of the time and certainly while this bugged vendor existed. Players also may not trade with eachother face to face. At most, players could have mailed items to other players and the mail server had been down for most of the day to protect players accounts from being looted after a wave of hacked accounts and phishing scams. This makes the bans even more mind boggling - the economy is under really tight control right now! It's not as if people could have used the 'free' gear to make not-obviously-bugged gear that was then sold and resold etc etc. Reverting the damage anet caused to themselves would have been simple. All the more maddening that they banned to begin with. On the plus side: Anet is now restoring accounts that bought from the bugged vendor for 'only' 72 hours. It's better but it's still 1/10 rather than 0/10. I would love to see anet go 10/10 and take responsibility for their mistakes and give players rights in their virtual world. Instead they have chosen to be draconian overlords would can ban serfs for finding their mistakes and taking advantage of it.
That is some nice language I think. I added in the subtext: We also believe and respect that people make mistakes. [We mean the players, we don't mean ourselves.] This is in fact the first example of a widespread exploit in the game. With this in mind, we are offering the members of our community who exploited the game a second chance to repair the damage that has been done. [Our generous offer to you unworthy peasants. Gaze upon it, and tremble.] Thus, just this once [Just this once, you hear!], we will offer [Generous offer, made by magnanimous saints] to convert permanent bans to 72-hour suspensions. Should those involved want to accept this offer of reinstatement, contact us on our support website--support.guildwars2.com—and submit a ticket through the "Ask a Question" tab. Please use the subject heading of "Karma Weapons Exploit Appeal" [Alternative heading of "We knew that buying things was wrong, and we prostrate ourselves in contrition, genuflecting energetically while flagellating ourselves with barbed whips" also accepted], then confirm in the body of your ticket that you will delete any items/currency that you gained from the exploit. You should submit only one ticket. Once you have done so, we will lower your ban to 72 hours, and following your re-activation we will check your account to make sure that you have honored your commitment. [We can't trust filthy scum, so we will be watching you.] If that commitment is not honored, we will re-terminate the account.
One time when I worked at Gamestop they made an error in how they priced an item and it's resale (Gamestop buys used games, and this was when they gave cash for them still). It turned out that the sell price was more than the buy price for the used game. One of the employees brought and resold the game 10-20 times during the day and made a little bit of money (like <100). He was fired immediately.
Shameless plug: I wrote a Bitmob article about this exploiting nonsense. It's called "Stop the witch hunt: exploits aren't cheating." http://bitmob.com/articles/stop-the-witch-hunt-exploits-arent-cheating
(Related - unbanned now! PvP is pretty fun. I'm running a sword/mace + hammer warrior and crushing people). e: backstory - this guy previously got banned for advertising an exploit when he was buying peppers to cook (using karma), cooking peppers into some product, then selling the finished product to a vendor. (Unusually high gold return).