Yasi.9065

> @"vesica tempestas.1563" said:

> simple question, a cheat is running a cheating program alongside GW2 and has been doing it on multiple occasions - what is the probability that the game cheater intends to cheat in GW2 as well?

>

Actually, these kind of broad generalizations are whats wrong with the world today. Someone has a history of cheating in games? Yeah, he or she will probably have a low**er** threshold to cheat in gw2. BUT THEY ARE STILL INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY.

What Anet posted isnt evidence, it is **CONJECTURE**.

And because a certain person likes car anecdotes so much... its like you are a bystander duing a car crash and get convicted just because you stood there and COULD have caused the crash.

> @"Kunzaito.8169" said:

> > @"Ashen.2907" said:

> >

> > Nope.

> >

> > A player's computer is not on Anet's property.

>

> I misread your response initially, revising:

>

> This is where you are trying to stretch the analogy too far. It's not going to fit every dimension of this situation physically and doesn't have to.

>

> ANet can monitor your computer at any time for any reason while you use their software as per the terms you agreed to when you created an account - see the user referencing the EXACT section of that EULA above. Don't like it? Uninstall.

>

You are missing the point. They didnt just monitor. Anet went that one step beyond that makes this whole thing distasteful and shady. They gathered data, they send said data to their server, and they did that unexpectedly nearly 6 years after I signed my UA without informing me about it. 3 out of 3 makes it spyware in my book.

> @"misterman.1530" said:

> > @"Yasi.9065" said:

> > > @"Gaile Gray.6029" said:

> > > Hello,

> > >

> > > I wanted to be sure that folks who are following or participating in this thread are aware that we've provided a lot of additional information this evening in [this post](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/476255/#Comment_476255 "this thread"). I hope that in reading that update, you'll find your questions are answered.

> >

> > This is a disgrace. You just admitted to:

> >

> > a) snooping around on my computer, gathering AND SENDING data to your own servers to do who knows what with

> > b) suspending people for having a program running in the background and NOT having other evidence of them ACTUALLY cheating in gw2

> > c) being unable to stop hackers without using such underhanded methods.

> >

> > No, Ive not been suspended. Thankfully due to security risks I have to do my debugging work on a separate computer.

>

> Steam does it. WoW does it. Many other MMOs and MOBAs do it. Not sure if this is any different. What's happening now is you are taking one person's word that it was sending data back to Anet. One person's. That's what, in the TrumpWorld we live in, we'd call Fake News.

>

See, the thing is... I dont use steam, I dont play WoW, actually atm I dont play any other MMO or moba. I got a refund from EA because they didnt tell me beforehand that they would install something similar with a game I bought from them. I dont own or play any EA games anymore because of this. Do you even realize how much private data this kind of polling can gather?

Also... you might live in a TrumpWorld, I for one... luckily... do not.

> @"Gaile Gray.6029" said:

> Hello,

>

> I wanted to be sure that folks who are following or participating in this thread are aware that we've provided a lot of additional information this evening in [this post](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/476255/#Comment_476255 "this thread"). I hope that in reading that update, you'll find your questions are answered.

This is a disgrace. You just admitted to:

a) snooping around on my computer, gathering AND SENDING data to your own servers to do who knows what with

b) suspending people for having a program running in the background and NOT having other evidence of them ACTUALLY cheating in gw2

c) being unable to stop hackers without using such underhanded methods.

No, Ive not been suspended. Thankfully due to security risks I have to do my debugging work on a separate computer.

> @"evoker.7968" said:

> Can we get an API-Endpoint for the instabilities to see which fractal has which instability for the current week?

Theres no api endpoint (yet)? Or word on how likely it is that there will be?

> @"Benjamin Arnold.3457" said:

> > @"Grogba.6204" said:

> > Vindicators in cm99 were/are much worse on ensyloss during the capture phases tbh.

>

> Vindicators are going to be disabled for the capture point phase only. The point of that phase is that one person can carry a whole team of 5 through if they are good enough. Vindicators make that nearly impossible if the other four go down quickly.

Tbh, thats really sad. When someone goes down, you have to cc and kill the vindicator to keep it from snowballing you, which makes this phase quite a lot more fun.

I hear you, I get 1-2 each week.... but then, its the only sure way to indicate more than at least 6 kills ;)

> @"Grogba.6204" said:

> Vindicators in cm99 were/are much worse on ensyloss during the capture phases tbh.

My favourite was vindicators, no pain no gain and toxic trail (old version).

> @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> The ones who suffer are regular T4 players and there goes my critics because a lot of them have left due to this change. It cannot be the intention of a game developer to scare people away from their game!

Tbh, before that change, daily t4 was a joke. They were easier than a lot of the t3 fractals, which cant have been intended either.

In my guild btw, there are more people running t4 fractals again compared to before the patch.

But more people really *should* look at the dhuum clips of the raid tournament. Mostly bombs were dealt with very efficiently with minimal travel and without killing people on green.

I mean, dropping bombs near green is something I expect to have to deal with on trainingsruns. But there's 30+ kp runs where people do that, simply because they never took a minute to consider best way to deal with bombs. Thats pretty sad, considering long traveltime means low dps, and having to go up instead of green because you downed that person means even lower dps.

It really absolutely eludes me why most people are so bad at that.

Hey,

something that really bothers me on dhuum lfg squads... bombs are getting dropped randomly, usually always near green spawn or kiter, nearly or fully killing the person willing to do that stupid mechanic.

So... here's a sure way to avoid that:

During pre-event, always go FORWARD to next skeleton spawn point.

During dhuum, go BACKWARDS against green spawn rotation. Your grp dps would have to be really good or extremely bad for that to overlap with greens.

Thanks.

> @"CptAurellian.9537" said:

> > @"Yasi.9065" said:

> > I get that "I want a relaxed clear" mentality. But the thing is... is it *really* relaxed for your dps if they have to do max dps because you willingly sacrifice around 30k+ grp dps just by bringing minstrel chronos and 2 druids? You end up overhealing **MASSIVELY** with that setup, while not having enough heals for outhealing things like not clearing shrooms at sloth.

> >

> > And isnt it more relaxed to kill Matthias in 3-4 minutes, compared to taking 6-7 minutes for the kill?

> >

> > Is it really *that* strenous/exhausting to position yourself correctly and use your skills at the right time?

> >

> > I can understand the "relaxed run" argument when its about things like bringing a domi/insp chrono or fb (tank) for more aegis so you can just stand there and facetank big mechanics. But minstrel on druids or off-chrono? Imo, those are just selfish and a strain on the squad.

>

> Having more heals than the bare minimum actually is quite relaxing and enough people won't care about that amount of overhealing. Better than the lack of it. By the way, getting your numbers right certainly wouldn't hurt. The difference between offensive and defensive supporters isn't "3-4 minutes, compared to taking 6-7 minutes", it's in the range of 4 min vs 5 min plusminus a few seconds.

You are expecting your dps to play topnotch, but your supporters are allowed to slack? How is that in any way fair?

And there simply is no reason for playing minstrel except to slack and facetank mechanics you would have to sidestep/block on equip without toughness and vitality. Contrary to popular belief minstrel does **not** mean better support. With harrier being available, it actually means *less* support.

Also, I cant stop re-iterating this: toughness and vitality from minstrel doesnt allow you to survive big mechanics, only small ones. And its not the small mechanics that wipe a squad, its the big ones.

I get that "I want a relaxed clear" mentality. But the thing is... is it *really* relaxed for your dps if they have to do max dps because you willingly sacrifice around 30k+ grp dps just by bringing minstrel chronos and 2 druids? You end up overhealing **MASSIVELY** with that setup, while not having enough heals for outhealing things like not clearing shrooms at sloth.

And isnt it more relaxed to kill Matthias in 3-4 minutes, compared to taking 6-7 minutes for the kill?

Is it really *that* strenous/exhausting to position yourself correctly and use your skills at the right time?

I can understand the "relaxed run" argument when its about things like bringing a domi/insp chrono or fb (tank) for more aegis so you can just stand there and facetank big mechanics. But minstrel on druids or off-chrono? Imo, those are just selfish and a strain on the squad.

> @"Miellyn.6847" said:

> Actually that's not true. You can outheal almost everything so getting more support makes mechanics that don't wipe you instant actually easier regardless how often they happen. The only thing that matters are the pulls you need to kill the boss. If you kill everything first try it doesn't matter if you run the optimal setup or not.

For one thing, what most people dont understand - in raids AND fractals - optimal setup /= speedclear setup. Actually, the speedclear setups posted by guilds like SC, DnT, dT are NOT optimal setups for 90% of the playerbase. Best example is the fractal setup with 2 weavers. If your support isnt good enough for fast ccs, popping aegis and stability at the right times, running 2 weavers is worse than running a condi setup without druid. And thats where that misconception comes from, that you can dismiss the meta in general in fractals. Not true at all, theres just different metas according to skilllevel and playstyle.

For example:

Easygoing meta: scourge, fb, chaos chrono, condi bs, slb

Fast&easy daily meta: 2 power dps, illu or domi/insp chrono, power bs, druid

Tryhard meta: 2 weaver, chrono, power bs, druid

Speedclear meta: 3 weaver, chaos chrono, power bs

Regarding defensive vs optimal strats, f you need twice the time for killing a boss because of defensive strategies instead of optimal setup, chances are twice as high that someone fails a crucial mechanic in raids, snowballing the whole squad. My experience is, if you can kill everything first try in raids with chronos/druid(s) running defensive sets, you could have killed everything with more optimal builds also. Theres just no need for it and it doesnt give as much of a boost to surivivability and support as most people think. Also, something a lot of players simply forget in the 1 healer vs 2 healer debate in w1-4, you arent replacing the 2nd druid with just any dps, you are supposed to replace it with someone that can fill the special roles of the 2nd druid - best example sabetha. You absolutely do NOT need a druid kiting flak. Its ridiculous. Use a scourge (full dps) as kiter, put that scourge and the druid in separate grps each and you gain epidemic and barrier, while having the same amount of effective healing and boons. Same goes for MO.

And as for outhealing making everything easier, especially in fractals, people have to stack for that. But most of the time in non-meta grps, I see the druid hogging the space at boss (especially ugly behaviour if you have social awkwardness), dps ranging from around 300-400 range, and chrono putting wells on boss because snap to target groundtargets. Just because you bring more defensive and / or supportive builds doesnt automatically mean you can outheal and have an easy time. You still have to watch positioning, cc, and... yes... dps. Your defensive strat just allows you to recover from *minor* mistakes more easily. But you will still wipe on big ones.

Some of those builds listed arent for support, they are for "I can stand around, push buttons randomly and not die" mentality. You want to play a real support chrono in fractals? Go mix of berserker and harrier on chrono. Absolutely no reason to go minstrel except for high tou and vit, which in itself means you just want to slack. Might sound harsh to you, but thats the facts. Same goes for minstrel druids. Actually, there is no content in the game where you need minstrel/magi to survive and support as a druid / chrono when you play decently.

To make it short:

1. Positioning + mechanics > defensive stats or dedicated healers.

2. Defensive stats only keep bad players alive a little bit longer.

/edit: added a few more examples :)

The only inconvenience about it is that I have 9 items in my inventory / bank for days now that I cant turn in. I can understand the desire for having "real" recordings as well... recordings ;) and the icons, as always, are quite nice looking. But when something like this happens, its just annoying.

Maybe its time for a questlog, where you unlock questitems when killing a certain mob or gathering etc. instead of having them in your inventory?

> @"shinta.8906" said:

> ofc anet needs to act upon their ToS. anet is the ONLY party who got hurt in that transaction. but the lvl of grieve from uninvolved people in such a fashion is just a huge shtshow and the actual damage.

>

You could also say, the only party really hurt by real money trading is Anet, since those sellers and buyers are so dedicated gw2 players and only Anet looses out on revenue. Same bs you just wrote about how some whales "deserve" the title because he pays lots of money to streamers on twitch, and those poor streamers have to get compensated for all the hard work they are doing.

Lets be clear... the reason those gizmos and titles are not worth anything, is BECAUSE of wintrading and rewardselling. Not the other way around. Please keep that straight.

And this sense of entitlement the majority of pvp streamers seems to have in gw2 is just pathetic. Greed destroyed pvp in gw2, its just that easy.

> @"arnitheking.8427" said:

> I mean, people act like this affects them on a deeply personal level. What they did ultimately didn't actually affect the games, r55 would have won on any account. The only negative thing for the community is that some guy got (and now lost) an undeserved gizmo and some underserved rewards. Yet ppl everywhere, especially on reddit, loooove getting out their pitchforks because wintrading amirite? Even though wintrading is different and the latter actually DOES affect other people (the 4 other ppl in a wintrader's team) What happened is against the ToS of course, and ANET handled that which is good, but players asking for perma bans on every other account need to take a step back and take a look at who's really directly negatively impacted by this (the answer is no one btw)

Thing is: rewardselling itself might be harmless, its debatable, especially consindering those doing the rewardselling now, are the ones demanding better rewards, which in itself makes this whole thing have a really bad taste. However, the message the rest of the pvp community is getting from this, is that the system isnt fair, its rigged and if you have enough rl money you can just buy everything.

Thats absolute toxic for any kind of competitive gamemode. PvP is dieing, and rewardselling, as well as wintrading hasten its demise, making this whole gamemode into one big fucking joke.

Yes, I think permaban for such a behaviour is the only possible answer. But I also think Anet has to revise the rewards for AT and tone them down quite a lot, to make such behaviour simply not profittable. Maybe reward that title only until next mAT, then you have to re-earn it. Reduce gold gain drastically, maybe even just remove it... reward tracks are good enough imo to cover costs.

Soon™.

I have a sneaky suspicion, that same event was the reason for delayed release ^^

I really dont care at all if others sell raid/dungeon/whatever slots to players that can afford it. Let them, it helps the economy as long as there is no RMT involved.

However, I also think that all those ADVERTISEMENTS from sell-guilds ARE lfg abuse, and Anet should either:

a) Create a lfg tab for advertisements in general, or for raids/dungeons/fractals/guild each its own.

b) Create a forum sticky where people can post their sell details + links. Probably doesnt even have to be sticky, it will stay alive anyway.

In LFG there should be only groups that are forming for the immediate future, not afk accounts for advertising purposes.

Id really love to have a sub-category for selling/buying/advertising in raid lfg. Not only as a normal player, but also for my guild advertisements. Maybe Anet could change the sadly underused "looking for group" part of the raid lfg into an "other" sub-category?

The amount of pleasure I felt when I FINALLY got to slay Trahearne was really quite indecent.

You know that moment in the lvl60 Personal Story? Where Trahearne "sacrifices" himself and tells you to close the doors? I did a little happydance at my desk because finally he was gone.... just to realize he is BACK in the next chapter.

With Braham I kinda see the same developement :cry::

Maybe he will hit the end of his puberty soon :> ... and hopefully grow a beard ;p

But tbh, what annoys me the most isnt so much his lashing out in grief waaaaaaaaaay out of proportions... its his shield5 use. No matter where you are, if there is a Braham, there WILL be a badly timed shield 5 scattering perfectly stacked mobs just when you are dropping all your dps skills :anguished:

Heres an explanation for your "real fight" problem:

Signet of Inspiration radius: 600 (around chrono)

Shield illusion alacrity radius: 240 (mid of boss about)

Nearly 3x the range makes it way easier to spread quickness, than getting people to stay in range of avengers.

And heres another thing. While most chronos can play a halfway decent rotation, at the same time most of those chrono do not have a clue where their alacrity is really coming from. If you play a decent rotation but dont use shield illusions, you get what... 30% alacrity? And you get 100% quickness.

Now, I always thought "it cant be THAT difficult to keep your shield phantasms up", but apparently... it can be. After all, Im seeing a lot of chronos having only 1 shield illusion up during most of the fights. Without shield illusions, your alacrity wont reach 100%. Doesnt have anything to do with Tides of Time, or a "surplus" of quickness. Its just that concept of keeping up 2 shield illusions for most of the fight seems to be impossible for the majority of chrono players.

And which kinda makes me happy they change that. Lets hope its for the better :)

Where should I start... theres so many misconceptions here ;)

Lets start with Chrono alacrity uptime and gw2raidar logs. Arcdps doesnt "pause" during invul phases, hence why every boss except MO has below 90% alacrity uptime. So can we please stop compairing apples and ... cars... and focus instead of what is achievable alacrity uptime during dmg phases?

Chrono alacrity, main source is... especially on commander/minstrel gear... shield phantasms. 2 shield phantasms and you are golden. So, the only difficulty is atm rotating your phantasms in a way to not loose those shield phantasms.

Rev alacrity, main source is... well, tablet utility skill... so, you spam that, you are golden. Imo a bit easier than keeping an eye out for your phantasms, but still NO rocket science.

Renegade alacrity, main source is command skill. Press on cooldown and manage energy. Also, no rocket science.

So, saying stuff like "alacrity is way more difficult to apply on a chrono and thats why chrono will be replaced by rev/renegade" is kinda really really ridiculous, if you think a bit about it. Quickness, now, thats another matter in most situations, and imo fb has an easier time to upkeep that then chrono. But thats just my subjective view. Even quickness 100% is still not rocket science, neither for chrono, nor for firebrand.

I see this change positive for now. It removes one more special buff, which I approve heartily off, and at the same time keeps the effect in a way that it now can be countered in WvW/PvP.

On tuesday we will see the hard data, but Id be quite surprised if chrono couldnt still maintain 100% alacrity, just now with a new rotation. Im a bit scared anet will cap alacrity at 5 (like quickness) and force chronos/renegades/revs to go 100% boon duration, which would suck tbh, at least until we finally get a good dps variant of harriers.

For chrono, Im slightly hopeful and excited for new rotations that dont revolve around having to upkeep 1-2 shield illusions anymore.

Its a big meta change, thats for sure. So far, the majority of all balance changes was towards less restrictive comps in raids, so Im hoping Anet keeps it that way and lets both variations get 100% uptime... chrono and ren/rev + fb. And who knows, maybe the new minstrel chrono rotation is actually interesting and gets to replace the off-healer, or even main-healer ;)

> @"BikeIsGone.8675" said:

> As for the "alacrity and dps":

>[...]

> Quite surprisingly, at least for this specific Warrior build (restricted utility slots and all), the dps boost you get from the current alacrity is only about ~7%.

> Thats for 33% CDR (cooldown reduction). Meaning 1% CDR is about 0,2% more dps, meaning that with the new alacrity you _only_ get a ~5% boost.

> Rather minimal.

> If you even factor in, that the average group on a tank and spank boss (like MO) only can maintain that 7% boost for about ~70% of the time that is an average of 4.9% dmg increase throughout the entire fight. So if you have a 25% CDR buff with a 100% uptime, there is barely any change to this "rework" dmgwise.

The pitfalls of napkin math ;)

You cant really compare full rotations with and without alacrity, and then extrapolate a coefficient for alacrity dps increase out of that. Doesnt work that way for a lot builds, berserker being a prominent one... holosmith being another one. Basically every build you have to fit in burst skills into a certain time limit. To think of it... thats probably all but mirage and slb?

See, the thing is... if you can just fit in one more high dps skill into photon forge/berserk mode because of 33% alacrity, and you cant do that anymore with 25%, thats not a flat dps decrease.

______________________

On topic. Id like to see, in addition to this change, 5man/10man special buffs being removed (or reworked into personal buffs) and all boons made 10 man. Banners could be re-worked into something like spirits, with pulsing boons, spirits "special buffs" should be removed. Flat dps increase buffs like GoE should be removed. Firebrand aegis application frequency has to be looked at anyway.

Sounds radical, but if you think about it, its the only real solution out of this balancing nightmare that boons/buffs have become. And its the only real way to end the mirrorcomp while keeping squad-dps roughly the same.

And after that, on to elementalist... reducing a certain air trade to 10%, reworking all impact aoe skills into pulsing aoe dmg fields, nice, constant, balanced dmg... off to dream some more.

VG -> Weaver top dps, but squishy

Gorse -> Weaver top dps, but needs insta cc

Sab -> Weaver good dps, but looses a lot when doing cannons

Sloth -> Weaver top dps, finally a boss without a "but"

Trio -> Weaver top dps, not that it matters

Matt -> Weaver no-no boss

Escort -> Weaver top dps, but not on tower duty (most pugs havent realized that yet btw)

KC -> Weaver top dps, thanks to one trait

Xera -> Weaver good dps, but needs chronos to pull and really only can shine when you skip lasers

Cairn -> Weaver good dps, but squishy

MO -> Weaver good dps and brings cleave

Samarog -> Weaver top dps, too bad the squad will have to compensate the lack of cc

Deimos -> Weaver good dps, but on cm tactic you have to move too much and on ranged tactic you loose dps overall because of lacking buffs

Desmina -> Weaver bad dps and too much cleave, for me also a weaver no-no boss

River -> Weaver too squishy

Statues -> Weaver good dps, but then out of 3 statues, you dont care too much about dps on 2 of those

Dhuum -> Weaver good dps, but squishy

On every boss that I put down as weaver having good dps but at the same time being squishy, I only want good weaver players. And thats the crux. Yes, weaver can be played on nearly every boss, and a good player will be top dps with that, especially when he/she gets the group support they need.

However. Mirage, Holosmith, Dragonhunter/Firebrand, Renegade, Daredevil, Soulbeast... they arent too far behind, and they are way easier to incorporate into lfg groups. Be it because of the utility they can bring, or because they simply dont get downed as fast when someone fails something.

Except on 1-2 bosses, as long as the weaver isnt really good, that benchmark dps gap translates into max. 1-2k more boss dps. Most of the time though, its actually less dps because meteor get interrupted or fields/conjured weapons mis-placed.