nerf calls

I don't care if you make legitimate changes to the game in order to balance it.
But please, please, PLEASE... never make changes to this game based on people being bad at something.  I don't mean something legitimately being too difficult, I mean stamping out skill with subsequent patches like every other MMO in the last 5 years.  Brain-on gaming is finally making the comeback it should.

Invisible Enemies

This is what Arenanet have to say on the matter.

For a variety of performance reasons we limit the number of characters that are reported to any given game client. This report limiting (or culling, as it’s also been referred to) is generally distance based and limits both the amount of bandwidth and client side processing (rendering, etc.) required to play the game. Ideally this shouldn’t be something that you notice happening as characters will simply fade in when they’re “far” away from you. In the best case this happens far enough away that even if you’re looking right at them when it happens it isn’t too visually distracting. Unfortunately, there are some situations in the game in which this setup doesn’t work as well as we’d like and it seems that those situations come up in WvW rather more often than in other parts of the game. The higher player densities that we see in large battles are an obvious example of where this system goes awry. If only the nearest N characters are reported to you but there are N+100 characters within effective battle range then many of those characters will be invisible. There’s never a great time to be dealing with invisible characters, but I think that it’s fair to say that during a large battle is one of the worst times.

In WvW one of the things that we see exacerbating the issue is this: From the moment a character is first reported to your client to the first moment that your client is able to render it a non-zero amount of time passes. During this time your client is doing things like loading textures from disk, which can be (at least in computer terms) fairly slow what with all that accessing of spinning, physical storage media. So that means that a character who is moving towards you can potentially appear first at a much closer point even than the one at which they were reported because, of course, they were still moving during that load time.

MajorKong’s screenshot doesn’t immediately look like the situation I just described so it may be that there’s some kind of bug lurking in there as well. We will certainly be looking into that possibility.

That was a lot of detail but really I’m posting to let you know that we’re aware of the issues associated with invisible enemies and we’re working on finding both the root causes and effective solutions. I understand that these experiences can be quite frustrating but please rest assured that we do care and we are working on improving the experience.

Thank you for reporting your issues here on the forums and for your patience and understanding as we work to resolve them.

Also, MajorKong, that really was a great screenshot even if it does show a bug and bugs make me sad.

A good fix

from the patch notes

World-versus-World

• Retaliation: This boon no longer reflects damage received from siege weapons.

Great sPvP article

http://taugrim.com/2012/09/16/the-skill-cap-of-guild-wars-2-pvp-and-the-implications/

A quote

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/6710/Quest-Hubs-Are-Dead-Finally.html

I mean, of course, Guild Wars 2. The incredible success of the game has caused them to suspend digital sales, something I haven’t seen since WoW (which stopped shipping boxes so the servers could catch up in capacity).

Selfless daring

 Selfless Daring, which heals all nearby allies whenever the guardian dodges. In its base form it heals for 129, which is not that impressive, but the trait has a very impressive 1:1 scaling with Healing Power. What does this mean? It means that if you have a high Healing Power, each of your dodges will heal all allies within 600 range for 1.5k health. This alone inspired me to see how far I could push the guardian support capabilities.

I will be referring to this build from now on: http://gw2skills.net...4lwLbXuukdt/Y B 

The formula for calculating the health return of Selfless Daring is ‘Healing Power+129’. This means, that if you stack the highest possible amount of healing power (currently 1373), the trait will heal for 1502 health. The endurance it takes to dodge is 50 (half the bar), which takes 10 seconds to recharge. This means you can dodge 6 times every minute for a total healing of 1502*6=9012/min. That’s not very impressive on its own. But what happens if we equip Sigil of Superior Energy on both of our off-hands? This means that every time we swap weapons, we get a free dodge. The amount of dodges we can perform each minute is now 12, for a total of 1502*12=18024 healing/min. It’s getting better.

With 30 points into the honor line, we can pick up the trait Battle Presence, which makes nearby allies gain our Virtue of Resolve as well. With our healing power of 1373, our passive virtue heals for 166 (Formula: 0.06*Healing Power+84. The virtue ticks every second, which totals 166*60=9960 healing/min. With the trait Absolute Resolve, this is further increased by 25%, which sadly only is applied to the guardian himself. One cool thing though is, that the virtue is still applied to allies even though you activated it and have it on cooldown.

It’s getting better yet. With the mace as main weapon, every 3^rd auto-attack hit heals all nearby allies for 582 (Formula: 0.18*Healing Power+335). The auto-attack chain takes 3.25 seconds to perform, which means you can perform it 60/3.25=18.5 times every minute, for a total of 18.5*582=10767 healing/min. The mace auto-attack actually hits harder than the scepter's auto-attack, and you have a few traits to increase damage as well. Elusive Power (10% when not full endurance) & Power of the Virtuous (1% extra damage per boon).

The mace also includes this skill called Symbol of Faith that places a symbol which pumps out regeneration every tick. Even though the duration is 4 seconds, it actually ticks 5 times. With your +60% increased boon duration, this means that you get 8 seconds of regeneration on an 8 seconds cooldown, which allows you to maintain almost permanent regeneration, except for the 1 second cast time the symbol has. You can easily fill this with “Hold the Line!” though. It’s With 1373 healing, your regeneration heals for 302 (Formula: 0,125*Healing Power+130) each tick for a total of 302*60=18120 healing/min. With the Writ of Exaltation trait, you symbol is 50% larger, which allows you to dodge inside of it and makes it much more beneficial for you allies to use.

Putting those four together, you have a total of 18024+9960+10767+18120=56871 healing/min for you and your allies. Now, I understand that this number is not very relevant: You want be able to use your auto-attack and Symbol of Faith at the same time, it’s unlikely that your allies will fully benefit from your Symbol of Faith and you can’t use any skills while dodging either. The actual number is probably closer to 40k/min, but that’s still quite impressive considering all of it is AoE and you are dealing damage while healing.

The healing from these 4 methods is just one of the many useful things you can bring to a team. I’ll once again be referring to the build above:

• 50% upkeep on protection through “Hold the Line!” and Shield of Judgment and a 8s protection on Virtue of Courage.
• 33% upkeep on stability through “”Stand Your Ground!” .
• 67% upkeep on retaliation through “Stand Your Ground!” and Virtue of Justice (with Virtue of Retribution trait).
• Tome of Courage(30 seconds thanks to Elite Focus): Spammable 1687 AoE heal, 16 seconds of AoE protection and regeneration on a 15 second cooldown, x2 3 second dazes and of course the full heal.

I know some people will be worried about the low health pool, but I honestly don’t think that will be much of an issue. With 3000 armor, you are very resilient to direct damage, and you have enough stability and stun breakers to counter those heavy burst builds. The passive condition removal from Purity and Signet of Resolve along with the on-demand condition removal from Contemplation of Purity and Virtue of Resolve should also be enough to handle most condition pressure, except if you have multiple necromancers, engineers and rangers on your back. Your dodges make it very difficult to effectively chain anything on you to take you down fast, and honestly, with the heals you can end up having much more than 20k health, depending on the length of the encounter.

This turned out to be more of a guide than I had originally planned, but oh well. I will see if I can get some tournament footage in the next few days, as I’m curious as to how the build performs in such an environment. Thanks for reading, let me know your own thoughts/ideas on this. 

Vitality or toughness

Vit vs Toughness is heavily debated but here is the math reality for those who want hard numbers over opinions.

First off, different armor classes get different amounts of armor by adding toughness.
Heavy armor classes get +36% armor by adding 798 toughness
Medium armor classes +39% armor by adding 798 toughness
Cloth classes +42% armor by adding 798 toughness

Result: low-armor classes get larger armor bonuses by stacking toughness than heavy armor users.


Second, different professions get VERY different amounts of health by slotting vitality.
Warrior and Necro get +39% health by adding 798 vitality
Mesmer, Engineer and Ranger get +47% health by adding 798 vitality
Ele, Guardian and Thief get +64% health by adding 798 vitality

Result: Ele, Guardian and Thief get huge benefits from Vitality whereas Necro and Warrior get almost half the benefit.
Mesmer, Engineer and Ranger are in between.



This is why there is little point in slotting full defense and sacrifice health on say, a Guardian that would get huge health amounts from vitality (which would end up largerly outperforming toughness stacking).
Slotting your Guardian with +798 VIT means he can take +64% damage than normal.
Slotting your Guardian with +798 TOU means he can take +36% damage than normal.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/39575-toughness-or-vitality/page__st__30

SpvP Forge

A good read.

http://www.mmomeltingpot.com/2012/09/how-guild-wars-2-contributes-to-world-peace/

Taugrim on fanbois

I enjoyed this.

Guardian maths

GENERAL ADVANCED FORMULAS

• Every heal skill (including the boon regeneration) is a combination of two things: LvlHeal, which is based on a ratio times your level, and a H/H Heal, which is based on another ratio (H/H) times Healing Power (HeaP).As such the Heal amount formula is: Heal= (Level*LevlHeal)+(H/H*HeaP)

Skill damage will be added once I find reliable defence stat targets.

• The burning condition has a leveled part and a  part based on your Condition damage stat (CON). The formula is: 4*Lvl +0.25CONdmg This is the dmg per second.
• For PvP, this means burn does 320+0,25CON damage per second.
• The real formula for the boon regeneration is Heal per tick=1.625*Lvl+0.125HeaP. Do not believe the wiki at the moment, you can do the math yourself if you doubt.

From this point on, all heal data is based on lvl 80 characters.

ON VIRTUES

The cooldowns in the tooltips of the virtues are unaffected by the Virtue Recharge Rate you get from the virtue trait line . The cooldowns themselves work as meant.
Virtue of Resolve: Both parts improve with Healing Power(HeaP). Passive Heals for 84+0,06HeaP every 3s. Active Heals for 1625+0,75HeaP. Check out the General section for explanations.

• Radiance5:Justice is blind: when activating Justice, nearby foes are blinded for 3s.
• Radiance15:Renewed Justice: Justice recharges on killing a foe. Valid foes include: Pets, minions, ........
• Valor15:Courageous Return: Virtue of Courage is recharged when you rally. This does not happen if you simply regenerate your health back, and that is intentional, you need to kill or assist to rally.
• Virtues5:Inspired Virtues: Virtue activations grant you boons which are 5s long.
• Virtue15: Virtue of Retaliation: You gain 3s of Retaliation when activating a Virtue
• VirtueVII: Supreme Justice: When activating Justice, the burn duration is increased by 25% (to 5s)
• VirtueIX: Absolute Resolve: Virtue of Resolve's passive effect is 25% stronger.Does not work with HonorXII:Boosts passive effect

ON SYMBOLS

Basic symbology: the damage and/or heal indicated on your tooltip is sometimes the total amount, divide it by the amount of seconds if you want to know the effect per tick. Ticks are 1 per second, starting immediatly after cast. The boons/conditions are applied during every tick, so the total effect time can be longer than indicated.

Symbols' damage ticks are weapon attacks from the weapon which made them, which means they use Justice's attack counter, power, precision, critical damage increase, your weapons strength values, your weapon rune and weapon related traits.

All symbols are Fields of Light for Combo purposes. This means they all give the same effects:

• When blasted (Hammer, Focus)they give you and allies around you retaliation for 3s.
• When leaped FROM (Greatsword) you get 5s of retaliation
• ­ When fired through, the projectile will remove a condition (if the target was friendly)
• When whirled in (Greatsword), all allies around you lose a condition

The symbols are the only combo enablers the Guardian possesses; as such I advise Guard to carry one of the three weapons with symbols in their skillbar (Mace, Staff, Greatsword)
The four symbols are nearly identical; the big difference is in which buff they give.

• Symbol of Mace:Regeneration. In the tooltip, the healing amount shown bases its calculations on 4s of regeneration, but in total it is 5s. The heal is 25% better than shown (when in the symbol the whole time). The Heal uses regeneration, see gerenal formulas. The damage tooltip shows damage per tick.
• Symbol of Greatsword: Retaliation.Gives a total of 5s retaliation in ticks of 1s. The retaliation can be lengthened by comboing with leaps or whirls(greatsword has those). The damage tooltip shows total damage.
• Symbol of Staff: Swiftness.Gives a total of 12s swiftness, although you probably won't be in the symbol the whole time. Damage shown is per tick.
• Symbol of Protection: Can only be obtained through ZealIII. Gives 1s Protection for 3 ticks. Your weapon's damage does not affect this symbol's damage, although Pwr does. I think there is a hidden weapon that applies this symbol. Further testing is needed to discover the stats of this hidden weapon.

And now for the traits you''ll be interested in if you like symbols:

• Zeal5:Zealot's speed: Creates a Symbol of Retaliation when you reach 25% health.
• Zeal15:Symbolic Exposure:Symbols apply 1%vulnerability for 3s to foes every tick
• Zeal25:Symbolic power: Increase symbol damage by 10%
• ZealIII:Protector's impact: Creates a symbol of protection when you take falling damage. See above. Falling dmg is reduced by 50%or more
• HonorIII:Writ of Exultation: Increase size of symbols. This seems to make them about 33% larger in radius.
• HonorVII: Writ of Persistance: Increase duration of symbols by 40%
• HonorX:Writ of the Mercifull: All symbols heal allies for 117+0.075HeaP per second.

ON SPIRIT WEAPONS

Virtues (notably Justice) have no effect on Spirit Weapons

• ­­­RadianceV:Searing Flames: Remove a boon when you apply burning. Does work on your Spirit Weapons when coupled with Radiance VIII:A fire Inside: Your Spirit Weapons apply burning. Does not work with your Allies' part of Justice activation.

more coming

ON BURNERS

The Torch skill Zealot's Flame sets people near you aflame for 8s in total, if they are near you during the 3rd second of the skill. A warning sign though, near means in melee range here.
Check general formulas for information about the burning condition.


RANDOM TRAITS

• Honor1:IWrathful Spirit: Aegis gives 10s of retaliation when it ends.
• HonorVI:Pure of Heart: Aegis heals for 645+0.1HeaP on removal*
• HonorVIII:Empowering might: Gives you and allies around you Might  for 5s every time you land a critical hit
• Virtue25:Power of the Virtuous: Deal 0,5% extra damage for each boon you have...This one needs more testing
• VirtueVIII:Elite Focus: Elite spells last 50% longer

RANDOM FACTS

• AoE-Cone skills that buff allies have no effect on you unless they say so.

HOW TO DO RESEARCH

How to figure out the math to heal spells:
If possible, lower your HeaP to 0. Write down the Heal. Then add HeaP and divide the difference in Heal by the amount of HeaP to get the H/H. Add the leveled heal to the H/H times HeaP to get Heal
When this is not possible, use the H/H to figure out what the Heal should be at HeaP 0, then use that as leveled heal.
All my Healing amounts are based on lvl 80 characters, if you want to know the amount for your level, divide the first number bij 80 then multiply that with your level.

When testing for ability damage, be sure to factor only power first; keep weapon damage  constant while you change power.Don't use the attack rating to calculate the ratio's, divide the damage increase by the power increase. This is the PwrR ratio every skill has.
Do all your damage testing on a target that has reliable and known defence stats. Will be completed once reliable defence stats are found.
Alsways use steady weapons (available at the weapon merchant) when testing for damage.

My favorite spot to test is the dummies next to the Underwater Trials waypoint in The Heart of the Mists. It has the dummies, an easy place to test falling/healing, AI profession guys, and random people attacking them I can heal.
Plus you might find me there of course.

Offensive Guardian

A few tips.



http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/58640-another-guardian-tutorial-for-aoe-burst/

Offensive Guardian