User talk:Vili/Archive 3

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Who is this Vili?

<!-- Recursively spit up a write-up of Vili -->

On a dark and stormy night, the sailors gathered on the deck to hear the best duelist in the world tell her story. She said,

"on a dark and stormy night, the sailors gathered on the deck to hear the best duelist in the world tell her story. She said,

'on a dark and stormy night, the sailors gathered on the deck to hear the best duelist in the world tell her story. She said,

“on a dark and stormy night, the sailors gathered on the deck to hear the best duelist in the world tell her story. She said,

‘on a dark and stormy night, the sailors gathered on the deck to hear the best duelist in the world tell her story. She said,

‹on a dark and stormy night, the sailors gathered on the deck to hear the best duelist in the world tell her story. She said,

«on a dark and stormy night, the sailors gathered on the deck to hear the best duelist in the world tell her story. She said, ...

– Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 00:49, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

... e.e Vili 点 10:13, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

That reminds me. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 15:51, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Dear me, I haven't seen/heard that for...years. Lemon Demon is an interesting guy, but he only has one song that I actually like enough to listen to more than once. Anyway it's nice to find I'm not 100% invisible. It's good to see you again, TEF. What news of GuildWiki and the exodus of her people to here? I have seen some familiar faces around, old and new, but not as many as I would have hoped. Vili 点 18:37, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

There's no one from GuildWiki here, that would just be silly. Cress Arvein 22:35, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

This is not the doctor you are looking for. >.> —Dr Ishmael 20:50, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Wait, then what pills have you been giving me? --- Vipermagi 16:22, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Stuff

I had almost no lag or connection problems at all in PvE, aside from not being able to return playing on either of my norn characters (on recently created character nor level 19 or so) until few hours had passed. I'm not saying there shouldn't be "return to character selection" but logging off and back in was pretty much faster than in any online game I have played... so... I dunno? Mediggo 06:19, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't have problems logging in or anything (this time), I'm just saying it's an annoying and unnecessary extra step.

I figure that a lot of the lag issues I have are due to my machine being crappy. It's 4-5 years old with a shitty graphics card. Also, Guild Wars 2 is apparently fairly well optimized, so the main determinant of client-side lag would be lack of processing power. This laptop only has 2 cores, which is pretty laughable these days... I should fix that and play on my quad core laptop. Been too lazy to download the beta client all over again, though. Vili 点 06:37, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually, there has been talk that most of the graphics are processed by CPU and not graphics card, at least for some people (AMD CPUs?), so that's why the game runs like... well, I wouldn't call it running. But yeah, the client is pretty lightweight, I really appreciate that, but I'm not sure whether it's genuinely light or just not using available processing resources. Mediggo 06:48, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmm... well that would be good news for me, since other laptop also has a crap onboard graphics card. Pretty sure it's an Intel though. Vili 点 07:06, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Effects of overclocking have also been in question... The official word-of-god being that overclocking might cause issues, but my friend was able to run the game quite smoothly. Though it may have something to do with his computer being not capable of running without overclocking at all. :p Haven't heard of anyone else having trouble with OC'ing either. Mediggo 07:14, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Well for reference I have a desktop computer with a core i5 2500K running at 2.4 ghz, and a GPU that is a radeonHD 6870 overclocked. For the most part I get about 30 fps at max settings, but there are parts that's very laggy. The GPU is only running at 20-30% load so it's definitely CPU bound even on my core i5. I'll try overclocking the CPU next time and see how it goes since the core i5 has a lot of overclocking headroom. Another issue is that GW2 can't use more than 1 core effectively, so having 4 cores is meaningless right now. The devs are aware of this issue so hopefully they'll optimize it for the next BWE. Edit: This is what GW2 looks like on my comp... lost some image quality through conversions but you can see that it's choppy in the town. [1] --Lania 18:29, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Contest! (or I keep spamming this until there's enough users participating in it)

There's still room for one more in the jury, or you can just enter the contest and still vouch for others' entries - details are on the page. I talked to Konig about what kind of characters can be accepted as entries so you may wanna check his talk page if the rules seem somewhat complicated (still, let me know if they are). I'd really appreciate it if you took part in this! Mediggo 09:24, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't touch lore, roleplaying, etc. with a ten foot pole, but thank you for the invitation anyway. Vili 点 10:46, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Ah, alright. It's not really a roleplaying character contest, though - you could simply enter with a chain of five events which would make sense to complete "together" as I showed in one of the examples. Nevertheless, if you're not interested - my apologies! Mediggo 12:41, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

It's the entropy!

Entrooper #543 reporting in! --El_Nazgir 22:26, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

It makes me giggle that people still remember that :D Nice to see another friendly face. At first I thought that no one from GuildWiki was here, but people have been popping out of the woodwork here and there. :) Vili 点 22:36, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not very active (yet) here, in terms of editing, but I do lurk here. I mostly use it to do some theorycrafting etc, but I think I'll become more active once the game is actually released and I feel like I got time to experiment etc unlike the BWE which are "OMG MUST PLAY MOAR".

Anyway, some thoughts on your userpage: Elite skills are at lvl 30, not 40 :P And you can have major traits from lvl 20 (since you get your first trait point on lvl 11). But it's a good idea to write some thoughts out on the wiki here, I should get to that too. --El_Nazgir 22:46, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't know why but for some reason I had a hard time making the connection that Vili = Entropy back in 2010 when i semi returned from the dead. I still remember way back when in guildwiki (2006) when you were trying to get at least one smiting monk build vetted :P... good times.! ^_^ --Lania 21:22, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, I already knew her GWW account was Vili when she was still active on gwiki, mostly because of the WTF chain. :P --El_Nazgir 09:11, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Smiting builds, WTF chains and gender confusion. I think that sums everything up pretty nicely. Mediggo 09:14, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

WTF? --snograt 12:23, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Stop right there, criminal scum! 16:15, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

You don't need to see his identification. Also:

Power Drain|Signet of Judgment|Bane Signet|Holy Strike|Banish|Mantra of Inscriptions|Smite Hex|Drain Enchantment

It was something like that. Vili 点 17:30, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

because no one watches mediawiki pages and I assume at least one admin watches this hive of scum and viliany

Seems like a lot of images need to get deleted because they got uploaded in .jpg format. Maybe we should consider editing the MediaWiki:Uploadtext to inform people of the preferred format for images? (I'm assuming it's .png or something) Vili 点 23:13, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

That's mostly a transitional thing. We used to use .jpgs for icons (as they were based on screenshots), now we use .pngs for them (as they're taken direct from the source). For non-icon stuff, .jpg remains standard. As it stands, there's already a link to the image formatting guideline, but it might be worth considering making it a bit more prominent. - Tanetris 00:32, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

In general, and I've seen this on multiple game wikis, .png is preferred for icons obtainable direct from the game files (as Tanetris said) because it's a lossless format - since we have the complete, original texture (usually in a DXT or DDS format), there's no reason we shouldn't present it in the most accurate representation, rather than introduce compression artifacts. Also, icons are typically small, thus the larger file size required for a lossless format isn't a major issue.

For screenshots of in-game objects, however (NPCs, armor, weapons, scenic panoramas), it's already a few levels removed from the source textures, so we've already lost a little quality. File size is a more pertinent concern, since these images are typically much larger than icons. Thus, the lossy-but-compressed .jpg becomes the preferred format for these images.

I think .gif is still the only reasonable option for animations, but it's generally considered a horrible format otherwise. —Dr Ishmael 16:30, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense, thanks. Vili 点 17:30, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

GW1 account

Because I'm a stalker and I saw your post on wyn's talk page... My friend has a 50/50 HoM GW1 account with GWAMM and another account with 28/50 in the HoM and isn't getting GW2. But the person isn't going to donate it to anyone. I'm still hoping my friend will get GW2 and play with me :>. --Lania 21:12, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it would be legal to "sell" an account, but certainly I know there would be buyers...it's just a shame, really, to spend all that time in GW1 and not use it for anything. There are going to be plenty of players who are new to GW2 and didn't play the original game at all, and at this point in GW1 life it is quite a pain to start from scratch and get 50/50 HoM. So I feel sorry for them. Vili 点 22:09, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I thought the point of HoM was to provide something nice extra to long-time fans instead of farmers. Oh, wait... Mediggo 07:06, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

My friend used to be excited about GW2, but now is wholly unimpressed. Doesn't like the fact that you can't play solo on your own instance except for dungeons. Also doesn't like the combat, movements, etc, and said that "It just looks like a stupid game with a pretty scenery". --Lania 14:24, 01 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what more people can expect from MMO combat/movement. It's realistic, simple, responsive and customizable, makes sense and feels like a game. Mediggo 14:34, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

In gw1 I disliked casters because in most situations it's just standing still and casting your spells, there wasn't much dynamics with them in normal gameplay, while with melee (which I almost exclusively played) you ran around and did stuff. Now, I love the casters in gw2 because you can run around and movement really matters, and not just in (high level) PvP like in gw1. The gameplay feels much more fluid and natural to me than gw1, especially with the addition of ground-targeted skills over enemy targeted ones.

As for HoM: yeah, it was ironic that to give you something extra in the game that would "remove grinds" you had to grind like never before. I got lucky through some friends and other members of gwiki who shared stuff and managed to get to 45 without too much trouble and playing casually over a few months, but those last 5 points would require more grind than all of the 45 previous ones together. And I doubt people would buy gw1 to then go through all of it and grind through the 30 HoM points just to get some more things in gw2. Account selling will happen of course. people that aren't impressed with gw2 or those that couldn't care less for cosmetic rewards (though I doubt they would have gone for full HoM anyway, or even sticked around for the gw1 dusk days) will be doing selling, though I doubt those accounts would go for more than 50 euros, or even that much. --El_Nazgir 16:23, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I think for some people the combat is on a uncomfortable spot between traditional point and click and true action combat. GW2 has elements of both with hit boxes that isn't dependent on the model of the weapon hitting things but at some fixed range regardless of how the weapon model is rendered. You don't have to aim, just have your screen pointed in the general direction of the enemy. For me, I feel that they could have done better if they added more action elements to the combat and make it even more dynamic. I'm going elementalist as my main because you get access up to 25 skills at a time, 5x4 for the elemental skills and 5 for the utility skills. Flipping back and forth to apply burning, vulnerability, bleeding, stunning, knock backing, snaring all the while DPSing is pretty fun. You gotta juggle a lot of keys but its not so bad... especially compared to MMO's with multiple hotbars with 30-50+ skills to use...? --Lania 17:25, 01 June 2012 (UTC)

Well... level 85 Hunter in WoW might have 3-4 skillbars full of stuff to use, but for 90% of the time you're only actually juggling stuff on the first bar, so maybe 10 skills max. Depends on spec, but at least for what I played the rotation was exceedingly simple. Maintain your dots and never get resource-capped if you could help it. As long as you did that, didn't stand in fire, and attacked the proper targets, you did just fine. I'd say that combat in Guild Wars 2 is comparatively more difficult, especially if you are using something like an Elementalist where you are forced to swap out skillsets to be effective. I'm also still not used to the fact that things can actually aggro on me and I don't have an easy way to shake them off. I miss Feign Death. :( Vili 点 21:23, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I think the game that I really got finger tangled was dragon nest. You get 2 hot bars max with 20 skills max. Most of the time you have to keep moving around with wasd keys, aim with the mouse while activating skills and still keep dodging attacks. Some skills can be activated by a combination of jumping, dodging, moving, and the attack mouse buttons so that frees up some space on the hot bar. For example you can jump then hit left click twice to activate a skill called eagle dive, which is a diving AoE attack. Most of the dungeons are pretty easy even on abyss mode (the highest difficulty) so fancy finger dancing isn't necessary, but the nests (raid-like dungeons) are a whole another story... unless you have insane gear, then you can somewhat bulldoze it. Even though dragonnest has less number of skills to use than a GW2 elementalist it's harder IMO because of the faster pace of the game play.

Still, the hardest online rpg I've ever played is Vindictus. Brutal timing on dodges, exploiting openings, memorize boss attack patterns, etc etc. Some of the end game boss attacks are so fast it's hard to follow it with your eye so you kinda have to rely on practiced reflexes instead. But the controls are easy. WASD for moving around, mouse for camera movement, left click for normal attack, right click for smash attack, space bar for dodge/guard/hop depending on the class, and shift for sprint. You're basically completely concentrating on not getting hit (since 2-3 hits = dead {unless you have insane gear}), doing as much DPS as possible, and try to rez people that are incapacitated. Levels 1-39 is pretty easy, 40-59 gets a bit tough, and level 60+ raids are pretty intense. This game is an example of how even with simple controls, the game can still be brutally difficult. It's not a MMO so it can't really be compared with GW2 since it plays more like a 3rd person shooter. --Lania 22:04, 01 June 2012 (UTC)

Aye, Vindictus is even less an MMO than GW1 and definitely one of the most action-oriented online games, even amongst shooters. I still think that quality of actions available wins over quantity~, and I really liked juggling on the elementalist. The difference to traditional mages, like compared to WoW mages, is that you actually have to juggle and it's actually a part of the gameplay, rather than part of how your interface/controls work. Elementalist is now THE mage for me, and I can't imagine any other similiar magic-user that could possibly be more fun to play while also making sense in-universe style. Except maybe D&D wizard type... Mediggo 12:11, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

so what the hell is this?

can't change skins to vector or myskin, am I stuck with terrible default new wiki forever :< ps got an http 500 internal service error while uploading Vili 点 19:57, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Just for the record, this happens when I try to change ANY of my preferences. Pretty frustrating. Vili 点 14:25, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikitable borders

You know how much I love wikitables, but from what I can tell, your cell borders are currently being governed by the "class = seasonal" line. "class = wikitable" has cell borders defined. The cheatsheet doesn't tell me too much about cell borders. (Apparently "border = 1" just makes copy-pasting a table off-wiki not break.) Where exactly is "class = seasonal" defined? I dunno. -- Armond Warblade 19:57, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Borders are set by the CSS attribute border. Our site CSS currently suppresses all borders within table classes except for the basic class wikitable. —Dr Ishmael 20:29, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Venoms

Picking my traits so I can equip every possible venom trait and going ranged-only felt like a strange build at first, but it turned out to be quite fun (with three utility venoms and Basilisk Venom, though it's still not quite as good as Dagger Storm but definitely better). Mediggo 13:55, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

It's still silly that to make venoms actually kind of viable in PvE you need to dump all your traits into those lines. Vili 点 14:22, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Speccing 30 into Deadly Arts and 30 in the Shadow Arts still leaves room for other builds, too. I'm not sure if I want to build my thief that way for PvE, though, since I don't really think of her as a poison-user type of a thief, but it quickly became my favorite builds in PvP. Balance of offense and defense. Mediggo 14:47, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Shadow Arts is weird because the whole trait line is about defensive stuff...except both of the grandmaster traits are STAPLE for high-offense builds. Hidden Killer is actually bugged and doesn't work, but still. I don't like the grandmaster traits for Deadly Arts, unfortunately...actually, I don't like the major traits of Deadly Arts period, other than Lotus Poison and Mug. The minor traits are where it's at, so I stop at 25. I also just feel much weaker if I don't have Uncatchable and Expeditious Dodger, no matter what else I'm running. Vili 点 15:02, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Lotus poison is indeed good (read: ridiculous), but it's a minor. I think you meant dagger training. -- Armond Warblade 23:33, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

no sub for you

Most of the factoids would be my tongue-in-cheek responses and I find them very amusing. I actually find underwater combat way more fun than on land. This is mostly because eles are much more powerful than other classes underwater and don't die nearly as fast. Elementalists are completely underwhelming compared to other classes but I love mine anyways, their attunements pretty much guarantee that your build should focus on some support. Dynamic events and meta events can be pretty enjoyable for telling the story of the area, but the dialogue and variation in events gets quite sparse as you constantly fight generic mobs that spawn nearby. It's much too easy to miss what's going on when the only text is the event description and one-liners at each checkpoint. Vigor doesn't seem as useless to me as Might because most profession won't get more than a couple stacks of might for a significant period of time. Aegis and relation also seem nigh useless since their only main source is guardians. For conditions, weakness and blind seem pointless to use when enemies hit way too often and chilled doesn't have enough sources, lasting duration, or apparent effect on enemies. Eles are pretty much the only source for AoE chill. You forget to mention that you get literally no elite skills underwater. There seems to be only one plausible elite skill for each profession in PvE. Elite skills only encourage you to wait before engaging the next group, which causes situations in PvE to slow down to a crawl. I want more elite skills like Signet of Rage that work with the profession's unique abilities and provide synergy with other skills. And I really hope they remove the fixed traits, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to respect traits outside combat; many are tied to weapons, which can be switched at any time and the game encourages doing so to suit the situation.--Relyk 06:24, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Similiar to seemingly undying guardians and thieves who get in and out of combat very quickly, elementalists have the strongest support in the game. They are still entirely capable of soloing the personal story (except Arah ofc) and having fun playing solo as well, and that's pretty much what ArenaNet promised when they said that PvE content would be mostly soloable. Unless you're sitting on fire magic 24/7. Mediggo 07:14, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

The problem, Mediggo, is that the game currently doesn't reward players for support/healing. "Contributing", whether in a dynamic event or in sPvP, is determined purely on damage and kills. Therefore, an ele is forced into a contradiction that no other class has; either do what they're best at, and suffer reduced rewards, or stick with fire attunement and constantly worry about dying due to a stiff wind. The personal story is *doable* by every class, but that doesn't make it easy, and the disparity in difficulty between e.g. a Ranger and an Elementalist is just staggering. I know it's a lot of additional work, but Anet could have at least tried to adjust the personal story to account for class differences.

The hard part of underwater combat for me is that I feel clumsy: I'm not used to playing games where I can move in X, Y, and Z axis simultaneously. I also have a bitch of a time managing aggro, since I can't keep track of things in that many directions at once; for that matter, the GW2 camera doesn't help much at seeing things that are swimming above my head. If there was still a compass that showed enemy dots and stuff, it might be a little better, but...anyway, I am depressed whenever I meet Elementalists underwater, because they stay in fire attunement to lob useless lava rocks all day long. It only took me like 5 minutes underwater to figure out that water is powerful underwater (who would have thought?); earth would be better if they adjusted the hitbox on the projectile, currently it misses way too much. One thing I can definitely say about underwater Elementalists is that most of their useful utilities still work, and at least they get an underwater elite that actually does something. I think they recently halved the damage of Vortex though, lol.

Yes, I agree that unless you're present at an event from start to finish, it's hard to tell what's going on. You can talk to the NPC(s), but this is a bad idea most of the time because you should be busy fighting/collecting items to turn in/etc. That is definitely one of the major advantages of the traditional MMO quest hub style system: it was not possible to "miss" the context of a quest unless you deliberately skipped reading about it.

Here's what I dislike about Vigor: it doesn't provide any benefit to the player unless they are at less than 100% endurance. Depending on the build, this can be a hard condition to meet. Some builds, like Elementalists with Evasive Arcana, should be rolling all day erry day; others actually get punished for rolling, since they lose a 10% damage boost or whatever. There's also the fact that, in general, you can't do anything while rolling. I'm pretty sure you can activate instant things like shouts, but you can't attack or etc. Therefore, a dodge generally lowers DPS and interrupts your attack chain. What would be neat is if Vigor had some other effect, like "negates weakness", "improves run speed by 5%", "take 5% less damage at full endurance", I dunno. The other problem is that Vigor isn't really well coordinated. For example, Phoenix gives Vigor to you when it returns. But that's a Scepter skill in fire attunement, so it's kind of antithetical to the staff sPvP build... you need 30 Arcana for Evasive Arcana in the first place, and that trait line doesn't really benefit fire attunement, nor vice versa.

Might is a weak boon when it's not stacked and/or when the duration is low. Fortunately, it's also one of the most common and easy to apply boons in the game, so at least in a group setting it's just fine. I agree that when playing alone, it can be very underwhelming. For example, Call of the Wild applies... just one stack of Might. I can beat that just by autoattacking with my 1h Sword (Might on the pet). But let's say you have 5 or more allies - now Call of the Wild is essentially granting 5 stacks of Might, and they last a good duration. The other thing about Might is that it helps all builds do damage, since it also improves damage from conditions. Even a purely support/tank build doesn't spend 100% of the time healing and stuff.

Aegis is a Guardian thing, but we can put it onto allies in a variety of ways. You can also get it from the Ectoplasm? Plasma? environmental weapon, which grants every boon in the game; Thieves steal this sometimes, and it can be found lying on the ground in some places. There might be other ways to get Aegis as well. You're correct that it's a "rare" boon, but I'd say it's still powerful. Obviously Aegis works best against an opponent with a slow attack speed, or that needs one critical move to start a combo; Aegis is worthless against Hundred Blades, but it will annoy a Hammer Warrior who's trying to keep you knocklocked. It's also important to remember that most Blocks/Evades in the game have some other downside, such as taking up a skill slot, rooting you/ending if you move, not able to do anything else during that time, etc etc. Aegis is an unconditional defense that can be activated at any time, while doing anything else.

Retaliation is also mostly a Guardian thing, but I think it's still lovely. It does armor-ignoring damage based on the user's Power, and also doesn't care what the strength of the triggering attack was. It's kind of opposite of Aegis, where it works best when taking a ton of small hits. And since these are both Guardian things...well.

Well, one of the problems with Weakness is that half of its usage is to punish players from dodging. 99% of PvE monsters don't dodge in the first place, so that aspect of the condition is wasted. The 50% glancing blows part I think is still worthwhile, though, since it's a flat reduction that nothing can get around (similar to how Protection is strong since it's a flat 33% reduction). I don't really like how crits completely ignore Weakness, though: it means that Precision-based characters can just ignore the damage reduction. Fortunately monsters don't seem to have especially high crit rates, if they're of appropriate level. I also say Weakness is good *because* monsters attack often. You can't keep Evading, Dodging, and Blocking forever, but depending on build it can be easy to maintain Weakness permanently.

Blind in GW2 is still better than Blind in GW1 because it was just broken as it used to be. The problem is that Blind is basically useless in all fights that actually matter because Unshakable just laughs at it...but that's a problem with Unshakable, not Blind. I agree that sometimes Blind can be hard to use; it's not always ready to be applied exactly when you need it (depending on build), and the blinds that are AoE and/or pulse are super super strong in comparison to those that aren't. But Blind is really just an alternative form of Aegis.

Chilled is a noticeably better snare than Crippled (a Chilled foe may as well be Immobilized), but the skill recharge doesn't affect them at all (as far as we know), and it's a very rare/short-lived condition, as you say. Engineers get Chill in the Grenade Kit and maybe the Bomb Kit too, both of which are popular.

I think it was a mistake on Anet's part to disable so many skills underwater, particularly elites where there are much fewer choices. Some of them make sense: there's no way a Mortar could work underwater. Others don't: Dagger Storm should be fine, there are plenty of spinning moves underwater already. But my biggest beef is that Norn are the only ones with access to underwater racials. The racials are mostly underwhelming, but letting them work underwater would go a long ways towards improving both underwater combat and racial distinctions in general. Incidently, Signet of Rage should be activated on cooldown; the active is so much more useful than the passive.

As to traits, I agree completely. At the very least, there should be an item or something that resets traits, which we could buy from the trainer or such. Even if it was expensive, it would be worthwhile for things like Dungeons, since many of those go by easier when a player can perform multiple roles as the situation calls for it. They could just copy WoW if they wanted and give us dual spec; that isn't ideal for a bunch of reasons, but it's still something. Vili 点 07:42, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

It is still easier to earn kills supporting in GW2 than passively-reactively healing in any other MMO. Eles also have the most AoE damage skills in the game, which helps getting those kills in mass fights, and they can still alternate between support and damage at will. Of course that doesn't erase the problem, you're absolutely right that in that it's difficult to gain event participation rewards in boss fights like Shatterer even if you're virtually keeping the group alive by reviving them. Also, mesmer has access to aegis and retaliation. Both are better than nothing, and Aegis is especially effective when finishing enemies in PvP. Mediggo 08:28, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

"Eles also have the most AoE damage skills in the game, which helps getting those kills in mass fights, and they can still alternate between support and damage at will."

Uh... have you played an ele? Serious question, because I can't tell. You can't switch between support and damage at will; you can switch every 9-15 seconds, depending on how much you've put into Arcana. That's a significant amount of time - you absolutely cannot be effective at support if you're only doing it half the time. Now, I won't disagree that fire attunement staff skills fairly quality, but if you want to actually contribute significantly to damage (especially against a single champion), you roll something that isn't an elementalist. The best part? Since a dedicated damage elementalist will still be bad at dealing damage, it doesn't make sense to do anything other than stack support and defensive stats, which makes it that much harder to grab the event's attention.

Once again we've hit the problem described above: the elementalist is the only class in the game that have to choose between being effective and being rewarded. You can't be effective at a support role while in fire attunement, while flipping constantly between fire and earth/water, or while tossing out lol spikes on cooldown - and in my experience, nothing less is enough to get the game to realize that you're doing more than standing around and give you your rewards. (If that champion is moving around at all, or if you're fighting a flock of weaker enemies, it's much, much harder to get Ice Spike to hit anything, which makes it even more of a waste of time.)

There's other builds besides support staff, but they're even worse at balancing damage and support (except maybe using scepter, which gets badderstone and stone "you're in the wrong attunement" shards, but it gives up healing rain and geyser, which is a major, major hit), so I won't spend too much time discussing them.

-- Armond Warblade 19:14, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Many of the ele's damaging spells contribute to support as well, from a staff perspective. Lava Font opens up spammable fire fields for aoe might stacking(3 stacks of might on the entire group, me likey), Eruption timed with another field is a blast finisher, Static Field stuns and damages its contents while opening up Lightning Fields for AoE Shocking Aura or 25 stacks of vuln over its duration with the right coordination.

Oddly enough, eles synergize a lot better with other eles than any other profession in general, since a scepter dagger ele comes with so many blast finishers for area might and healing compared to the staff ele.

The real issue in the end is the fact that eles can't stack pure damage and still stay alive/relevant compared to other professions like the warrior or ranger. Giving them a base health buff would go a really long way to increase ele viability. Not that it's not already one of the top picks for dungeons, but it needs to also go beyond that for other modes of play. Pika Fan 19:32, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Ele's still better at combining and swapping roles in combat than than any other profession, except perhaps engineer (turretspam lol). Like I said in my comment above, I'm not denying there isn't a problem, but saying that playing an elementalist cannot be effective and rewarding at the same time is against my experience. Mediggo 20:04, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Comparing GW2 to any other MMO is an irrelevant argument because we're discussing GW2, not GW2 compared to other games. Unless I totally missed something. But if you want to pursue that discussion, then consider this: in a game like World of Warcraft, a truly good raid team will have dedicated master healers that coordinate the job with the others. They time everyone's big cooldown heals for best usage, make sure buffs are staying up, make sure mana is not being burned too quickly, etc. It's a dedicated job, support and healing, and it takes a person's full attention; the raid leader, the tanks, the DPS, they're all busy doing other things and so they can't be the ones keeping an eye on those red bars (well, green in WoW) and blue bars. And yet... in WoW, healers are always at the bottom of the DPS charts, and in fact it's perfectly acceptable for them to never launch a single attack. But that game does an admirable job of still rewarding them. People can tell the difference between a backline that does what it's supposed to and one that doesn't, and healers aren't penalized by the game for doing their job well. In GW2, it's hard to even notice when good support and healing is going on; not just because of a lack of addons like Recount, but because the party UI sucks, the combat log sucks, and the game is designed from the start to teach players "don't rely on others". It's like Random Arenas. Everyone is expected to bring their own healing, condition removal, etc. because unless you take the time to form a group, review builds, and etc you just don't know what's going to happen. "Oh, I got a Guardian on my team. Are they specced for Battle Presence or Pure of Voice? Pure of Voice means I can stop worrying about conditions entirely, and Battle Presense means I can drop my Healing Turret for Med Kit." ← but this sort of thinking doesn't happen because your build should already have condition removal of some sort, and should have the best general-purpose heal for the occasion. No one even really notices or appreciates buffs, condition removal, or healing from allies because it's not expected. On the other hand, it is super obvious when an ally is dealing tons of damage, because foes are dying left and right.

Also, unless they changed it, Static Field does nothing to things inside the field. Foes have to touch the ring itself to take stun and damage.

I think what I'm trying to get at here is that the attunement system doesn't really compensate for not being able to swap weapons overall. Let's compare to a Thief. I can take multiple weapon combinations to rack up insane damage: sword/pistol, dagger/dagger, dagger/pistol, even sword/dagger to some extent; pistol mainhand is questionable but decent if minmaxed. Anyway, I have all these options. How do I add some defense to my build? Simple: just throw a shortbow in the other weapon slot. It doesn't matter if I've dumped all my traits into pure offense. Just swap to shortbow and bam - instantly gain the ability to cripple while dodging multiple times, do AoE weakness, and shadowstep around the map like crazy, none of which depend at all on stats. But wait! Even though it has these defensive capabilities, the shortbow still manages to do decent damage, and if something(s) is right in my face I can just mash Cluster Bomb for dangerous offense too. Well, so much for having to make a trade-off between offense and defense.

Now the Elementalist...scepter and dagger can't touch the staff at all in terms of AoE, range, and raw healing. I know the staff best, but let's generalize to the other weapons too. In water and earth attunements I can be rather defensive, but my autoattack is pretty pathetic for damage, my "nukes" have a long cast time/long cooldown/hard to hit if things move around, and then I get some miscellaneous skills that are situational or fillers. Outside of water, I have almost no way to heal people whatsoever or remove conditions; have to rely on other people's combo fields and my own finishers (but ele water is the best way to get a water field). In air, I get...mediocre damage, some form of speed-boosting thing, blinds. It's a hybrid attunement that doesn't do any one thing particularly well and isn't even that synergetic with itself. Finally, fire. Here we get some actual damage skills that can be reliably used, even if it is "only" to inflict burning. Fire fields can be used to offensively buff others. On the flip side, I no longer have any way to defensively buff, mitigate incoming damage, heal, etc. The Elementalist's utility and elite skills don't really remedy this problem, because they either have an effect based on the current attunement (doing the same thing that attunement already does) or are attunement-agnostic. You could argue that Mist Form and Arcane Shield (others?) give you powerful defensive options in any attunement, but those are laughable most of the time due to the huge cooldown.

Finally, the other big issue that Elementalist has, which exacerbates this problem, is that the trait lines are not very friendly to each other. Arcana is pretty general-purpose, but the other four have a ton of effects (especially passives) that only work in the given element. Theoretically one could put some points in all of them, but that spreads out stats too thin, and the high-end traits in each of those trees are way too good to pass up. There's a big and noticeable difference between an ele who has all water/earth/arcana and one who has 30 points in fire and air, when it comes to damaging things; similarly, that "fire/air ele" is going to suck in water attunement and really shouldn't even bother using it anymore. I'd have to say that earth attunement is the only one that is pretty friendly to any build, since "become invulnerable for 4 seconds", "reflect projectiles", etc don't care about stats. If you compare this to, say, a Guardian - the Guardian can put all points into toughness, vitality, healing power, and then do strong healing and support. But the Guardian should still not be underestimated if they pull out a greatsword on that same build, because standing in Whirling Wrath hurts no matter what. And if that Guardian chooses to put all points into power and crit / conditions? Then they can still do amazing support because things like Shield of Absorption and Consecrations don't care about stats. Actually, for that matter, Tome of Courage alone instantly turns the Guardian into an amazing healer when they need it, so... Vili 点 21:32, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

My favorite part was when I said I couldn't remove burning as often as I wanted during CoE story mode against that fire golem. The burning just kept killing my party members. One complained that it's because 3 condition removal every 45s didn't help much. I then pointed out that I've been rolling at him half the time along with switching to water attunement. I was spamming burning and bleeding while timing Magnetic Aura in front of other players so they don't get hit by the flame projectiles that kill them. It would've been much easy if any of the other players brought condition removal themselves, including the other elementalist who was doing god knows what. The only feedback I get when I do an AoE healing explosion (Triggering Cleansing Wave, Water Attunement heal on switch, and blast finisher on Geyser is damn amusing) with water magic, are my skype buddies. And only then because we didn't have a guardian.

As far as traits, I avoid putting points in fire because I need points in other places to reap constant attunement swapping. I found most fire magic traits are nigh useless and the points in power are far inferior to bonuses provided by the other traits like Bolt to the Heart and Piercing Shards which line up with more useful attribute lines. I find that you can swap weapons pretty effectively, going from d/d to staff consists of switching to Staff Blast. But eles only get less variation on their set of skills, so one trait spread doesn't translate as well for a given weapon set like it will when you have two independent weapon sets available. Also, focus is useless ^^--Relyk 22:26, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

The entire point of Static Field is to zone enemies; if they don't attempt to enter or leave the zone, then you fulfilled your purpose in any case. The ability to place 25 stacks of vuln in 4 seconds is not something to be scoffed at anyway.

Scepter/Dagger has the damage if you want to go a glass cannon ele at any rate, but each weaponset for eles would fulfill a niche that inevitably leaves a glaring weakness only swapping weapons would solve, which is what you pointed out for the most part.

In all honesty, Burning Retreat is actually extremely useful for self-survivability, and is probably on par with or better than Mist Form considering its cooldown and the fact that it rolls you a lot further away than dodge rolls do, while still giving invulnerability.

Finally, considering it's rather easy to switch to WA, cast a few spells, then swap back to another offensive attunement, I would say having few options to heal outside of WA is a bit of a moot point.

P.S. With the exception of sPvP and open-world farming that do not center around event tagging, Elementalists are on par, if not better, than Guardians in terms of viability, that is even moreso for WvW as "siege spells" such as Meteor Shower are extremely valuable there. Pika Fan 22:35, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Just wish staff came with more blast finishers, one of my utility slots is permanently slotted with Arcane Wave as a result because the only other 2 blast finishers are either clunky to time(Eruption), or need to be saved for avoiding mechanics(Evasive Arcana). Pika Fan 22:40, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I really want to like Piercing Shards, because 21-45% bonus damage is MASSIVE. But it only applies to water magic, which is pretty underwhelming in the damage department, especially without power/crit/whatever. I'm not sure if it also works for any "spells" which your utility skills might cast? Since Arcane spells auto-crit, I wonder if that might be worth considering... taking enough water magic for Piercing Shards and then dumping the rest into Fire for power and Air(?) for crit damage.

The minor traits of fire magic are pretty ass, I'll admit that; who the fuck cares about a permanent fire shield that only works some of the time? You're not supposed to be getting hit if you're in fire attunement, and it doesn't even work against ranged attacks. Even if Anet made it work 100% of the time, unconditionally, against everything, it wouldn't be very good since eles have such low health and armor to begin with. Now, if eles had a skill like Epidemic that could turn it into massive AoE burns, that might be something. Or if gw1's "They're On Fire!" existed, that might be something. But even then, it's not like it's hard to inflict burning; scepter does it on autoattack and staff has the AoE burn, and dagger has Ring of Fire. Maybe they should just copy Molten Armor from WoW which gives +crit chance and stuff. As for the other ones, Sunspot is boring and useless, and Burning Rage isn't very good because it's only a 5% bonus; most (all?) other classes get 10%, or even more, although the conditional is arguably harder for them. It's also bad because outside of fire attunement, ele can't inflict burning easily. But anyway, the major traits are fair enough. Burning Precision with high crit isn't bad, and Internal Fire is an unconditional 10% boost for fire magic. Pyromancer's Alacrity is a generic recharge reducer, and Conjurer is a necessary trait if you're going to be at all serious with conjured weapons. Persisting Flames is an interesting one, and Pyromancer's Puissance lets you keep might up all day erry day. So I don't think it's an awful trait line. Certainly it has more interesting traits than Zeal for the Guardian.

Pika-chan, I was just pointing out how you were wrong in saying that Static Field itself causes damage and stuns to things inside the field. It's an amazing skill, one of the most annoying in the game, but we shouldn't praise it for things it doesn't do <3

Well, for casual PvE of just grinding hearts and stuff, it doesn't really matter what your build or class is at all. As long as you have some sort of movement buff and some AoE damage, it's fine, and ele does that rather well. Since that's a very low bar I would not say it means much to say eles excel at it. Being good in WvW is also like being good in Alliance Battles, so...meh. I mean, it matters more in this game because WvW is "all there is" outside of sPvP, but still. Being good at a bad thing is not a good thing. As to the personal story... I don't know. I have a feeling it will be not much fun on my ele, but honestly can't say for sure anymore. My Thief had a lot of trouble because of low health and other lack of defenses; my Ranger just stomped everything; my Guardian mostly stomps everything, but I definitely notice the low health pool. My ele will have the same low health, but can conversely nuke things even better than Guardian, so we'll see.

My personal issue with staff is that the radius of fire is a lot less than I'm used to; it makes circle strafing harder. When I'm using a pistol or a bow or whatever, the target can be almost directly to my left/right and I can still fire at them. With the staff they definitely have to be "in front" of me. Some of the skills are also not ground targeted when I wish they would be; on a Thief shortbow I can shoot Cluster Bombs and Choking Gas behind me while I run, but on fire attunement staff that only works with Lava Font. Vili 点 03:16, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

That's not what I meant, though, I know it only damages and stuns those that touch the edges, but you really don't expect the things inside the circle not attempting to run towards you to rip you out, do you? In that respect, it was just a sweeping assumption I made.

Having a ranged AoE is a huge advantage with the current amount of competition for event tagging, I might add, and given the way the game is designed to make you farm and farm to no end for some semblance of gold(for legendaries and whatever), I would say being good at the low level content(which you refer to as a "bad thing", and I don't disagree), is in fact a good thing in this case. It's harder, for one, to try and tag running mobs on a guardian than a ranger or an ele, both of the latter having spammable aoe circles and able to put them at a range in anticipation of AI pathing. Being good at WvW is important too, helps secure the buffs which ease gameplay in PvE, and ultimately contribute to faster farming. Also needed for legendaries.

Personal story can be slightly frustrating for the ele. You don't have the guardian's innate tankiness, nor a meatshield to distract mobs while you shoot them from afar like the ranger. At least the thief has some semblance of burst damage in melee, for ele, you get to constantly grapple with a dilemma - stand in a spot and take fatal damage while actually dealing damage with your aoes, or kite but deal negligible damage. Here's where having summons would go far to taking some heat off while you get long casts off.

You could try Ice Spike and circle strafe, but it would really take a long time. Definitely have blasting staff, else you are even more gimped. Oh, and try D/D or S/D if you intend to do personal story just as you hit the recommended level, much better than staff. Staff only becomes fantastic when you are overleveled and have more than up-to-date gear as an ele. Pika Fan 05:48, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Water attunement will linger for 5 seconds due to Lingering Elements. You can just cycle both while you cast other stuff, or cycle in the middle of a cast, especially healing rain and cone of cold, I atleast know geyser cancels when you swap attunements though. I know this affects Soothing Mist so it should be the same for everything else.--Relyk 05:58, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

5 seconds, huh? Assuming Piercing Shards does carry over... that's just long enough to get off Churning Earth. Which hits like a truck. I must try this at some point.

I'm not sure what ranged AoE spammable the Ranger has unless you are going Trapper's Expertise. Which is...ehhhh. Frost Trap shouldn't tag things at all. Viper's Nest is rather pitiful for PvE; Spike Trap does some nice bleed damage (I think, tooltips are misleading), and Flame Trap does good damage for the recharge in addition to being a large fire field. I guess that's a valid strategy, considering that for casual PvE the Ranger doesn't even really need utility skills. It's unfortunate that the Trap traits are in Skirmishing, which is crit and crit damage - neither of which affect traps at all. I'm not too fond of the minor traits for Skirmishing either. Tail Wind and Furious Grip don't feel useful if I have Call of the Wild and Rampage as One. The 10% flanking damage bonus is not bad, but has the same problem as other flanking things, where most things in PvE pivot to track you flawlessly. I can get 10% bonus damage by not having my endurance full if I spec 10 into Marksmanship, anyway. Vili 点 06:47, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

With churning earth, I'd just swap to water attunement near the end of the cast and bring arcane wave with Shard of Ice. If it works that that way.--Relyk 06:56, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Traps have amazing damage, especially for PvE. Viper's Nest pulses 3 times like Flame Trap, so it's actually a lot better than it seems to be. Traps are the way to go for a condi-aoe ranger. Spike Trap pulses only once, though, but it does put 3 stacks of bleeding right away on the target. Pika Fan 07:37, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to butt in here, but what you missed was that the point of the developers was, according to interviews, that while they (and players) love healing and supporting in games like WoW and other RPGs, no other games would reward the supporting players similiarly to DPS or tank roles. GW2 does, because you can still deal damage while supporting and, in most cases, earn those kill rewards. I only mentioned this difference to other games because it was designed with that difference in mind. That was their goal. Sure, you're less effective in either role than pure damage or 100% support (tbh is that not something to be expected? if a thief and a rogue would duel, I'd say that the rogue wins), but I, for one, am not going to go back to the old model, ever, even at the cost of occassionally losing kill credit. That is obviously a problem, which I'm not denying, like I said above, but to fix it the kill reward system should be further tweaked instead of buffing the elementalist (obviously skills like Arcane Shield are less than useful so an update to those lacklusters is still needed). Elementalist is the only profession which is suffering from this, but same can be said of any other support role any other profession would play. Mediggo 07:51, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Then what do you consider "rewarding" a supporting player? If accolades from your comrades, identical chances at loot, lower repair bills, and high demand for all content ever isn't a reward, I don't know what is. By comparison, DPS are a dime a dozen in most games. GW2 doesn't reward me for being healing/support any better than WoW does; I'd say it does it worse.

Also the Thief would win because WoW stealth breaks on taking damage (without certain modifiers). Vili 点 15:05, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I only meant the kill rewards. Naturally, support is ever valuable and rewarding by other measures, which should still be taken into account. Most games won't credit you for a kill if you didn't directly participate in it. In GW2, you can still gain kill rewards while playing mainly supportive role... that's what I've been saying. And that is the game's point, by design, in comparison to other games. Mediggo 15:33, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

You don't need kill rewards in other games, though, which is what I'm trying to say. Vili 点 16:26, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Then you'll be missing out on majority of exp, loot as well as achievements and whatnot score. Mediggo 16:49, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Nope. I know I'm using WoW as an example again, but you get most exp from questing and completion, not raw kills (but even then I'm fairly sure kill xp is shared across party, don't actually remember anymore). Loot assignment can be changed to be free-for-all or various other options for sharing. Achieves are given to everyone on finishing a dungeon or whatever. And so on and so forth.

Basically - in solo play, dual spec exists so you're not in healing/support anyway. In parties it doesn't matter since you get the same rewards, assuming the party leader isn't a total asshole, and if they are you can just leave/kick him/whatever. Therefore not sure what the loss is. If we want to talk purely about tagging open-world mobs for loot, then I dunno. The first person to attack a mob is the one who tags it, but unless we are talking about rare spawns, I don't see it as a big problem, and it didn't affect me leveling my characters. Open-world mobs with loot that actually matters would be world bosses, and those aren't really doable on your own (some exceptions, maybe, dunno). There are some exceptionally rare spawns which drop things like unique mounts, and maybe you have a point there; it can be incredibly frustrating to lose those to some random scrub who pops out of nowhere and hits the mob before you do. As for regular mobs, I find that there's mostly enough variety of things to kill in WoW that there isn't a huge problem with other people camping spawns/farming mobs before I can get to them. I can always move to another area to quest, or do a dungeon, or farm resources in other areas. It's also certainly less of a deal when it's not the latest expansion so the area is kind of deserted. Vili 点 17:10, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I don't remember how sharing of kill credit in WoW party play worked exactly, either. However, I was on more about gaining credit from kills and participation towards events than exact usefulness of loot and such (you'll still miss out on some cash, if nothing else). An example I had in mind was from Call of Duty: Swapping Predator Missile killstreak for UAV killstreak does a huge service for your team, but you'll only be credited for activating it. You won't actually gain any credit for any enemy revealed by your killstreak and subsequently killed by your teammate. Elementalist can, even in a support (staff) build, still contribute towards kills and earn rewards just like anyone else because they can still deal damage while playing support. More examples: Vindictus. Playing Fiona character/class and absorbing enemy attacks with blocks will hinder your end score because you're not dealing as much damage or earning combo score as much as the other classes, even if you're virtually carrying your group through the harder encounters; In Company of Heroes, suppressing enemies with automatic fire does not directly reward the squad with exp if another ally kills them while they're exposed. All of these examples from those games contain a support element which is necessary to provide but won't actually directly reward the party which made it possible for somebody else to gain that kill. That is very similiar to GW2 mechanic, but since the threshold for gaining credit from the kill is considerably lower than in other games AND because each support player can still bring considerable amount of DPS, it's easier for support characters to not only help their side win the situation but also to gain that participation towards both individual kills as well as event participation. That's how I see it, at least.

At any rate, I haven't had memorable issues with gaining event participation rewards while playing elementalist or any other profession. The only times I've gained something less than gold reward have been those when I've arrived to the scene late. I haven't made it to high level content yet on anything else than warrior, but I don't see how it could be more difficult to gain participation rewards as AoE-nuker/support (staff) elementalist than mostly toe-to-toe warrior (although I did spend a great amount of time on greatsword and longbow). Mediggo 19:09, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Here's the issue I was oh-so-articulately trying to point out earlier. Say I'm an ele, and I want to support things. Maybe I really liked the monk from GW, maybe I'm just in the mood to heal some bitches, maybe I'm under the delusion that ele damage is balls and I never want to touch a dps button, who knows. I should be able to do that. GW2 was largely advertised to be playable the way the player wanted to play it. The moment I switch to fire attunement so I can tag mobs and get gold rewards, I'm not playing the way I want to play - I'm being pidgeonholed into the same flawed combat system other games have been using for years (decades?). Now, maybe ANet wants to say "Armond, why is it that you want to go into combat without doing damage, which you have touted for forever as the most important leg of the combat triangle, and expect to be effective?". To which I will say, "<Mike/Emily/Regina/Martin>, perhaps you are correct that such is an unrealistic expectation, but if that is the case, perhaps I will look into other games that allow me to fulfil a support role for the entirety of my character's lifetime, since I am not so intensely fond of GW2 as I was of GW." -- Armond Warblade 22:31, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Full support doesn't mix with guildwars 2 gameplay as healing by itself is quite passive while combat is active and fast-paced, they were likely aware it would turn off some players. I prefer to sit on support when enemies have perma burn and 25 stacks of bleeding. I can support my party with water magic for healing and condition removal along with the frozen ground for stacking chilled. Lightning has plenty of control effects that provide defense as a support role. Fire and earth have no synergies with water magic, which I think they could've implemented in the traits, like having fire fields remove conditions or Unsteady Ground provided Protection to allies that walk through. Also make Rock Solid last 3 seconds, move it to master, and add a cooldown to balance out. Earth magic doesn't have enough defensive skills that buff allies, a skill that inflicts AoE weakness would be great as well. A grandmaster Water Magic trait should have Signet of Restoration heal nearby allies since we are sorely missing a Mist Form. There's plenty of wiggle room in traits to allow people to focus more on support, they don't have to stick it all in water magic and fill other traits with half useless crap.--Relyk 23:10, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

The game was not designed so one player can drop all but one aspect of combat and sit on one of them through the whole game, so yeah, if that's what you wanna do, GW2 is obviously not the game for you. Mediggo 07:31, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Here's where you are misguided - you only need 1 person running support in a dungeon and the rest can go full-out dps. So yes, the game is designed exactly for players to focus exclusively on 1-2 combat elements and still rip through the game easily. The thing is, support is rarely rewarded in its own right as opposed to dealing damage. You cannot just support and gain credit, you must dps to gain credit. Hence it reinforces the mentality that if you support, you lose out over the people who are dealing damage, and that support elements are inferior than damage elements. Which isn't fair no matter how you look at that. The poor guy stacking 10+ stacks of might, debilitating adds, healing and purging allies as well as protecting them is not being rewarded over the rest of the party who is just letting the autoattack button go off for dps, even though the former essentially is the MVP of the group. Pika Fan 07:44, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Best commit ever

"(single ugly grawl seeks same for mass destruction in ascalon)" I saw what you did there, and I appreciate it. Just thought you should know. -Jyavoc 04:41, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't happy with a lot of Eye of the North, but at least the quest names stopped being so monotonous and uninspired. Vili 点 04:48, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Sharing game insights

Hello, sorry for the awkwardness we meet each other:

I found your user page from the discussion at GWW:User:Yoshida_Keiji/GUILD_WARS_2_SUCKS!!!, was pointed to you. I chose to do a Category rather Userbox because it makes it easier for GW1 who didn't bought GW2 to track down others comments. As usually a category can list all pages tagged with it. Which userboxes may not, unless included. Yoshida Keiji (talk) 08:25, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't really see the point of keeping track of these sorts of things. There are a million opinions out there about GW1 and GW2. Some are worth reading, others are not, and most are steeped in ignorance, bias, and irrationality instead of facts. I don't claim to make a better case than the next guy; I only write about GW2 (and previously, GW1) as a hobby for my own amusement. It's good to vent things and get them out of your system, you know? If people end up reading what I say, that's great, but it's no skin off my nose if no one ever sees it. For that matter, wikis aren't even very good places to share such subjective opinions in the first place. They are places that are designed to house facts and other objective information. A forum - be it the official ones, Guru, or elsewhere - is better for having these sorts of debates. Even a blog is better, since blogs are expressly for sharing opinions.

But anyway, I say that anyone who is interested in reading about GW2 can do their own searching and find voices that they trust. It would be unbecoming, possibly even pretentious, to try and sort out the wheat from the chaff in terms of quality opinions, which is what would result from attempting to add them to a category. One can make a judgment based on the quality of the writing, the facts presented, etc. but when it comes down to it, everyone's ideas of what is trustworthy and truthful are different when it comes to a topic like MMOs. The other alternative is to just include everything that anyone says ever, but then the category ends up being useless. It's the same situation that the Guilds namespace ended up with on GWW. Unless someone is going to devote time and energy to cleaning it up, such a dubious category should not exist.

That's just what I think, though, and I'm no longer an admin. You're free to argue your case to the ones who do have that power stll. Vili 点 10:09, 11 November 2012 (UTC)