User talk:Auron/GuildWarsSucksSoMuch/Factions, Hard Mode, and Buggy AI

Me too

I ran into the exact same problem you did with Danika, only it was in Viz Square. Mhenlo wouldn't go to the first square. Mhenlo wouldn't quit healing hte minions to talk to Togo. Togo decided to sit in the second square and not advance the plot. Mhenlo decided to sit in the second square and not advance the plot. Imagine Danika and her twin sister tag-teaming you, and you get a fair idea of what Togo/Mhenlo turned into.
Never had the issues you had with Arborstone, but it was a pain in the ass in its own right. Took me two triesto beat it the first time... which became 4-6 when I tried to replicate the feat with allies in tow.
But the worst had to have been Zen Daijun. Forget the massive spike from killing Afflicted. Forget that that Rit boss can about one-shot your entire party because you have to fight on the bridge. When you get across the bridge and realize Togo never followed you the whole way, and your 6th and most successful attempt is down the tubes, that's frustration. SarielV 00:57, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

lol hardmode --Cursed Angel 01:08, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

lolpve--71.197.66.241 02:15, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

lol ANet. -Lt Death 22:55, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I am a lucky one then. I never had to experience the problems you had to face. Did you manage to get the titles though? 145.94.74.23 11:33, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

My mesmer wasn't even going for the title, that was my friend :>

He got it eventually. -Auron 11:46, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok, tried NM on my necro (Not too good with necros, so NM it was) First attempt -got to end boss, DC and it didn't let me reconnect. Second attempt, danika chooses a comfortable place between a fallen pillar and a kurz chest (Have a screenie of that one). Third success, masters too. They do desperatly need to re-design HM and that mission. Lt Death 17:05, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Disagree

Funny you mention these difficulties, because I've never encountered them. Here's an idea: try actually bringing a tank the next time you go into PvE. If you don't know what a tank is, I'm sure you can avail yourself of the wiki to find out. STALWART 01:13, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

They're too good for tanks. In PvP I run a warrior, in PvE it's normally a hundred blades warrior or imbagon, and when I did this with Sane, a r500 GvG ranger (he was on a palm strike sin at the time) we blew through this. And yes, I had a UA prot hero, and I was running arcane mimicry HB for huge bonuses from healer's boon. And yes, I'm normally not a good monk. Also, sabway with a paragon will do arborstone easily. 82.34.128.19 14:51, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

lollllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

you're funny. serious suggestions next time though, k? -Auron >8< 07:04, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I must say, you must be pretty bad at PvE to find HM factions difficult. 84.65.5.24 17:02, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

0/10. Work on your reading comprehension. The content was not difficult. The content was full of bugs - bugs so severe, in some cases, that it prevented us from completing the mission.

If you're pretending that Factions isn't buggy... well, I've nothing more to say, since you'd just be lying through your teeth. -Auron 19:47, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Difficulty due to bugs or poor design is still a form of difficulty, back in the 80s it was the most common form of video game difficulty. It's much rarer today, but sadly, it's still a staple of escort missions, fortunately Guild Wars' designers abandoned escort missions in Eye of the North, however the pre-GW:EN escort missions seem to have been grandfathered in. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 06:23, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Some games tend to do well with have passable escort missions, but yeah, they're probably going to be buggy for a long time. WoW's aren't too bad - if you can find the motivation to do them, anyway. The NPCs don't get stuck on inanimate objects, they don't aggro the whole map, and if they die, you can just backtrack a bit and pick them up again (instead of being instantly killed, like the proph missions with rurik or the entire underworld). I think ANet realized their mistake, so EotN had NPCs whose deaths did not matter - but that was silly to the other extreme. People would just walk off and let the npcs die like 20 times. Both scenarios are pretty cheesy, but I definitely prefer the latter kind to the former. -Auron 17:24, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, the latter makes more sense in the world of Guild Wars since you can always res someone. It never made any sense to me why I couldn't just use a res spell or something on Rurik. <>Sparky, the Tainted 17:34, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

@2012

Essence of Celerity and postbuff mesmer: Your victory is invalid. --Boro 07:36, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Not that PvE in this game was ever hard, but re-read the text for the link. It seems to have gone over your head. -Auron 07:59, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Using Cons and OP mesmers and then laughing at pve (no It didn't go over my head) is just as invalid: This same mentality (that anet recieved) led to DoA, EoTN dungeons, and beyond shittyness. --Boro 08:24, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Cons exist. Not using them is retarded. They were introduced and affected the "difficulty" curve of hardmode monsters. Maybe a more logical argument would be that they should never have existed, but because they do, avoiding them is 100% pointless and makes a player stupid as fuck. Your point is like saying that beating a Zelda game with max hearts is invalid because it's theoretically possible to beat it with 3; it makes no sense. I'm not trying to do a junction-less, GF-less, limitbreak-less FF8 run, I'm trying to play a video game. If a game has an item that makes me run faster and shoot faster, why would I turn it down? Do you get more loot for playing without cons? Do you clear areas faster playing without cons? What's that? Essence of celerity significantly *decreases* area clear times, and has no drawback? Hm... why would anyone ever play without them unless they really liked gimping themselves for no benefit?

As to "OP" mesmer bar; lol? Esurge is like fifth or sixth in the list of powerful mesmer elites. Panic and VoR are both far more powerful for hardmode in particular, but since I don't like the playstyles of either, I opted for the more active yet less effective esurge bar. I sacrificed power to gain fun, because damn does GW PvE need more of it. Unlike with cons, taking a less effective (but more engaging) bar does have a measurable effect; it allows me to stay awake playing shitty video games for longer periods.

On the topic of "OP" skillbars though, did you see his list of heroes? Yes, he brought 3 rangers. Remember when rangers were good in PvE? Never. On top of my own skillbar being subpar, his entire hero list was subpar. Neither of us have played in 3+ years. We went into a hardmode mission we were frustrated by the bugs of years ago, stomped it into the ground, and took a picture at the end just because we could. For some reason you seem to have an issue with this, and an immense amount of trouble contemplating the run's purpose. -Auron 10:36, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I take the rangers were barragers from the screen. Barrage/pet + orders is/was a respected build. One of the first speedclears to see the light of day, and rangers are by no means bad. Sure some mobs laugh at poison+bleeding, but barrage wins. Otherwise I think that beating a regular mission on hard mode with b/p and essence is a bad example of why pve is "lolpve". It's more like "meh". And since when is not spending 50 dust, 50 feather, 250g and 1skillpoint for a mission that won't cover the costs of the essnce retarded? You think it's better to waste yourself away inbetween doing two missions in collecting resources that are eventually going to be spent in supplementing hard mode retardedness? If so then please reconsider calling others "stupid as fuck". And if you want some PvE fun you might consider joining me in Last of Pride. And for lolpve, I think there are better examples than your mission success. Which is great, but ultimately feels cheap. Especially on a mission that didn't need it in the first place, since you clearly failed to bring any form of antimelee. --Boro 14:49, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Barrage is the only elite rangers have ever used in PvE, and it's bad. It was outdamaged in 2007 by fire eles, and fire eles haven't been used in years in favor of more damaging caster options like necros, rits and mesmers. Barrage hasn't been buffed between then and now, so it's still bottom rung as far as power goes. His heroes also didn't have the skill to res pets, only Charm (since we didn't know about that update that let comfort count as a pet-bringing ability until after this run). They died and were resurrected every cutscene, and ranger pets are still bad even with a res - more of a liability than a benefit. On another note, you know what would be a good buff for PvE barrage? Making it not remove preps. Because, damn.

We quit the game in 2008/9 after PvPing for years - and back in that era, PvPers were the richest players around. We barely spent money on anything, but we got sigils, gold items with rare skins, mini ghostly heroes from the HoH chest, and zkeys out the *ass* which we sold to PvErs for outrageous amounts (or for real-life cash, in some cases; zkeys were going for $130/stack back then). We came back to the game and noticed we had hundreds of plat and inventories full of random bullshit crafting materials. GW1 is a dead game and we're rich in it - why wouldn't we drop a penny on an item that makes us run faster and shoot faster? It's not like we're going to go poor, lol.

So now you're conceding that our build probably wasn't all that great for hard mode arborstone. We didn't have antimelee, we had shitty anticaster (pretty much just me, with long-cd interrupts and a skill I barely touched because it took too long to cast), and a bunch of "dps" rangers. We obviously weren't powergaming. The only thing we used that was remotely broken was a single consumable, which cost us basically nothing - and as I said earlier, breaking the game has no drawbacks; you simply win faster. And after all of this, you still think our win was somehow invalid - despite, y'know, winning?

This is a problem a lot of you PvErs, and even some of the shittier PvPers, had with the game, and I never understood it. You know what Guild Wars rewards? It rewards winning. You know the only way to increase rewards? Winning faster. You know what it doesn't reward? Playing honorably. There is no gold trim for the most honorable guild in a monthly tournament. There is no HoH chest for the team that played the most "balanced" build in HA. There is no PvP title for playing fair. Those only exist for winning. This means there's no such thing as an "invalid" victory. If you killed the bad guys and they dropped loot, you won - the end. If there's an item that makes you win faster, and it costs next to nothing and has no drawback, all you're doing by avoiding it is hurting yourself and winning more slowly. In a video game that rewards victory and only victory, it's pretty obvious to me that anyone knowingly slowing themselves down is stupid and doesn't comprehend what the fuck the point of the game is.

Maybe you're unfamiliar with my GW history, but I won the PvE content back when it was actually "hard" (and by "hard," I mean the PvEtards couldn't beat it because they were all too busy playing with fucking terrible Heal Party monk heroes or whatever - we had no trouble with it). I full cleared DoA before speed clears of it ever existed - because every pug took 4+ hours if everything went "smoothly." The guild I was in cleared it in 2, and Mallyx hardmode in an additional 15-20 minutes. We set the Urgoz, FoW, UW and DoA speed clear records before consumables ever existed - and lordy, if they had, the clears would have been even faster. I've beaten the game without cons. I beat the game before most PvErs did, and PvE wasn't even my focus. I know how to play the game, and I know how to powergame. Beating a HM factions mission with rangers and esurge and a single consumable is not powergaming, and even if it were, a win is a win.

In other news, do you know what I'm doing now? Hardmode 25-man WoW raiding, which is both much harder than anything in GW's joke called PvE and much more rewarding. -Auron 23:39, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

O_O?! Auron I can barely believe I read those lines from your keyboard. Well, for first you don't understand what playing honorably means and why those who play honorably do. Then you call those who do - or did - stupid (and you implicitly include [EvIL], [WM], and the old korean guilds).

But first things first. When you take 4 barragers in a b/p scenario you take 4 dshots and 4 savage shots. That's common knowledge since... 2007. Then you can take Throw Dirt as well, since you got a high expertise, and TD should shut down melee long enough for the barragers under OoTV/OoP to make quick work of. Not taking them is... unnecessarily gimping yourself, while there is no drawback of taking them, except for other skills you don't even use since you are constantly barraging. That's a lot of shutdown especially with 3 heroes.

As for your mesmer bar, I concede - it could have been better: Both in terms of effectiveness and in rewarding more skillful play: Signet of Weariness, Chaos Storm, and with Waste Not Want not - a better interrupt could have been taken, or better anticaster, although you should have had 8 hard interrupts with your buddy, and since utility>damage has been the basic premise of this game, you should have taken empathy+Signet of Weariness+Esurge, drainenchant+cry+WnWn+optional+res. Or go bonkers and play fastcast Bsurge for fun with some minor shutdowns. So as for mesmer consider it taken out from the list of reasons I wrote in the OP.

However if you look at yourself, playing horrible bars (my mistake @ not analyzing it throughly first) and using cons to cover your ass, is a bit in odds with your whole claim of being skilled enough to take on anything Hard Mode can throw at you. Because instead you could have played skillfully, taking builds that reward you for playing skillfully and are consistent to a level, and then evaluate pve as lol instead. And guess what? If you did that, this section wouldn't exist in the way it does now.

On the topic of victory validity: You technically won the mission, and nothing can change that. In a way those who buy item-pack DLC-s (which usually contain OP and gamebreaker for the player) win games they buy the DLC-s for. It's called bribing your way to victory. Before that it was called exploiting mechanics, and was - in some cases still is - considered an equivalent of cheating. No need to tell that breaking the game is dishonorable.

Of course the game doesn't award you for playing honorably. Games usually never do. Why? Because they don't NEED to. Playing honorably is a reward in itself. Challenging yourself and winning is usually far more enjoyable than breaking the game, and frankly, no virtual rewards can replace that. That's why kids play football outside in the park with each other, and when one team is clearly stomping the other, they rearrange until they are more or less balanced out, because whenever you put everything into your victory, and play your best, work yourself to your limitations, even failing an (otherwise virtual) objective - such as Dunes of Despair NM bonus in one of our cases when we were done with the waves - is enjoyed, because it doesn't matter in the long run: You can go back anytime with CC/Necrotic if you want to and do it the easy way. But hell, you put everything in it, you enjoyed yourself, and the gameplay itself was fun as hell(methinks I played an enduring infernal axemaster). You can never reach the same level with the goal-oriented gaming, and breaking the game: There is no tension, and a healthy tension is key to enjoyment. And enjoying yourself in a game is by no means "stupid as fuck", "retarded", and calling those who can actually enjoy themselves "shitty" is wrong.

I already knew of some of your past victories and achievements (I'm talking about the real thing obviously) and I don't doubt that you were great back then. But from these few edits you made one thing is painfully obvious: You don't know how to play right now. Be it GW, WoW, Baldur's Gate, Warhammer 40k Dawn of War, Starcraft1&2, FF1-99, a D&D 3.5e lvl8 campaign with house rules, anything. It's not anything skill-related. It's your mentality. I don't know if WoW rubbed off you or what, but it's going to come back and bite you back in the ass sooner or later. Not just in GW, not even in WoW, but in your life. --Boro 18:52, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Not really that he doesn't "know" how to play, auron just realises this game is such a pushover you can run crap bars and it still works in 99% of places. Even in hard mode. Also lol@ thinking throw dirt is good on a ranger hero - implies you've been standing on a soapbox for 4 years not playing at all... File:User Chieftain Alex Chieftain Signature.jpg Chieftain Alex 20:13, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Actually, it's been five years since I used that on a ranger. Maybe not hero, yes, but when I used that most of the time I played with players. Seven other players. Fun times... Still, It can be used in a pinch to give you that extra ten seconds you need without the big judge hitting you 300 damage at a time. Or to shut down the Onis long enough to kill them. It was used in Tomb Ruins, and it would still be if the A/Mes didn't empty the place out. It's not the best skill, but not the worst either. --Boro 20:42, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I actually tldr'd your post after you tried to claim that EvIL won by playing honorably. Do you remember the build they won with? Hexes and sins. Sins were the most broken pieces of shit ever added into a video game until dervishes came around a year later - they could teleport across the map, knock down a single foe 2-3 times in the middle of healsigs/troll unguents, and when the whole team fell back to deal with them, they'd click off recall and be completely safe.

They ran a bullshit gimmick build in a world championship and won with it, because they understood that victory was the only thing that mattered. The first-ever guild to win a Monthly Automated Tournament was Heart of Ashes and Dust, a japanese guild running... guess what? Hexes and sins. A few months later, Supernova Japan won a gold trim, running... hexes and sins. By then, it was pretty fucking obvious that hexes and sins was a bullshit gimmick, and anyone running them was "dishonorable." HAnD and SpNv both got a lot of shit talk for their wins. But you know what? They did not give two fucks. They had gold trims, and 95% of the naysayers didn't.

Please do not spew bullshit about korean honor play. Koreans played to win, not to be nice to the losing team, nor to play fair. ArenaNet gave them broken tools, and while americans were being too honorable or too stupid (or both) to use them, the koreans won both world championships, almost won another, and then quit the game when it was obvious ANet couldn't balance for shit. They are nice players. Their attitudes are great, especially in a really competitive environment. They will not, however, play a less effective build or gimp themselves when victory is at stake. Don't mistake chivalry for stupidity, which is what pretty much all Americans did, and why America didn't win a gold trim for 2+ years after release when all the koreans quit playing. -Auron 10:44, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Hold on a second.. Have you checked out the builds ran on the specific matches? EvIL played by playing what they felt like playing - most of the time. They played to their strengths, which was that they had the best warriors and best monks at the game. So they either played with warriors or sins in the frontline. They believed that they didn't need to buildwars to win. And as such they didn't use the "most broken piece of shit" strategy of that era (mind me - more broken than assassins and hexes): They did not turtle their base till VoD, just to try to settle things with trappers and glyphsac showers. iQ however did.

EvIL didn't always run hexes, and when they did, it was mostly water hexes and some domination (mind wrack, spirit of failure, and the occasional Diversion), with the sole exception being Iron Mist on a second ele. They loved to play with one or two domination mesmers, and this was to assist their warriors.

There were matches (in gwwc) when their only hex was Mind Wrack, and they didn't use a single sin. They had their defeats, but if they thought they should run Auspicious Parry on a sword warrior, they did.

It was WM who was more "pragmatic" in the end: They "pulled an iQ" in match one against iQ in the GWFC finals by sending a trapper in to blow up NPCs, they ran a tainter in their second match, and they actually won GWFC. After that they left instead of playing the actual broken meta of the time.

And finally no: I'm not mistaking chivalry for stupidity, in fact, it is you who do so. And please do some research before trash talking the best players of gw's history. --Boro 18:31, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

EvIL won running hexes and sins. Look it up. Hexes and sins was a gimmick. Sins were such a ridiculously gimmicky class that they spent 2 full years being nerfed over and over until they saw no use anymore, then they'd get 1 elite made into a stupidly ridiculous skill, that bar (and only that bar) would be run for months, and then it would be nerfed and sins would disappear again. But the GWFC happened before any of the balancing did - when sins were still in their prime of ridiculousness.

Despite your claims, you're still the one confusing chivalry for stupidity. The best players in the world ran the most broken bars, because they knew it gave them in edge in combat. Nobody but the Americans ran gimped bars in the name of honorable play; as even you said, Koreans ran what they felt was best - the most powerful builds they could find. Instagibbing assassins with cross-map teleports were on the top of that list of powerful builds, and they ran it. They were good players, and I haven't said a word to the contrary, but they ran gimmick builds because they played to win.

Have you ever watched starcraft or starcraft 2? There's a term called "cheese" which refers to anything deemed dishonorable - a gimmick, in other words, that has a low chance of success if the enemy sees it coming. Against low players on the ladder, or most americans who don't scout, they obviously don't see it coming, so winning with cheese is incredibly easy... but cheese builds happen even in the most prestigious SC2 tournament in the world. Just last night Naniwa got shit on several times in a row by terran cheese from MVP, a korean. Naniwa even saw double proxy rax in the third game and failed to stop it. Koreans aren't some magically superior race of players - they just play to win a hell of a lot harder than Americans do, and that's exactly why Americans didn't start winning Guild Wars PvP until all the asian competition left the game. Playing the best possible build, practicing hours a day, and scrimming against really good opponents are all part of the korean progame scene.

SC1 was fantastic because "best possible build" was a very fluid concept; in Guild Wars, it was not. There were bars clearly better than any other bar, and those other bars quickly fell out of use. GW PvP from 2006 on was pretty much everyone copying bars from the top 10 guilds until a different top 10 guild made a different bar after a skill "balance" update. The only problem Americans and people like you have is avoiding good bars because they are considered cheese. Koreans consider all powerful bars equally; if running balanced gives them the best chance, they'll run balanced. If ranger spike gave them the best chance, they ran ranger spike. If hexes and sins gave them the best chance, they ran hexes and sins. Guilds like Dei Victorae and Delta Formation ran "honor balanced" regardless of anything, and ended up losing to guilds that were willing to cheese - even guilds with worse players but stronger builds.

Ultimately, the failure of balance falls on ArenaNet's shoulders. Their lack of creative vision drove their own PvP game into the ground. But the best players ran the most broken builds, because they knew the only thing Guild Wars rewarded was winning. Being good at the game but running a subpar build led many guilds to defeat in tournaments - only the ones willing to play cheese rose to the top, because they were the true masters of the game. Trying to deny this is fruitless - the entirety of Guild Wars PvP history stands behind my statement. A lot of stupid drama rose up around guilds winning with gimmick builds, but no cape trims have ever been taken away for winning with cheese - far, far more guilds simply failed to obtain a trim at all because they were unwilling (due to chivalry, which in this case is stupidity) to cheese. Great players are great, good players are good, and bad players are bad, but the guilds with the best win records are the ones most willing to play gimmicks, regardless of skill level. All the korean guilds, iQ, eF, QQ (who invented thumpers, my most hated gimmick), and rawr all cheesed like hell, and they were, easily, the winningest guilds in the game.

Please stop talking out your ass on matters about which you know little to nothing - this shit is obvious to anyone who paid even the slightest attention to the PvP scene. There were entire websites devoted to high-end PvP discussion; TGH, team-iq.net, MH forums, and QQ forums (before it turned to shit mid-08). There are websites devoted to documenting what builds were run in what tournaments - if you spent even 5 minutes doing research before spewing bullshit you could find what guilds ran in what tournaments. Many guilds build warsed against other guilds, some even swapped up playstyles, using classes they weren't good on simply to try to "juke out" the other team, but the most successful guilds were the ones that picked the strongest builds, gimmicks and non, and played them equally fiercely. Their goal was always to get the gold trim... a trim only awarded to the winningest guild in a tournament. The one awarded to the guild that wins the tournament, regardless of build. Trying to claim that EvIL et all avoided cheese just shows your lack of knowledge on the topic. -Auron 20:12, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

EvIL did not even utilize sins in the first seasonal playoffs. On top of hat, their most hex-heavy team in that season was pretty tame: Two blurred visions, some water snares, and the spirit of failure, mind wrack and a single diversion trio. in the first season finals, it was War Machine who started out with a hex-heavy team, and progressively added more necros in their second game. season two was a whole different cake however. They lost to a team using less hexes but a sin. Their builds were also different, and stayed true to the EvIL style 2mesmer offensive midline. in the season three finals, they faced the much more hex-heavy WM again, and won. their second match is also buildwarsing by now, taking expunge enchantments to disable shadow form an counter the assassins. However in Leipzig they did not do so for the final match against iQ. You already know what happened. EvIL did not win by running hexes and sins. In fact they LOST running sins to a team that was running - you know what? - NEITHER. Contrary to what you think I looked the builds up. When EvIL played sins, they played it in place of their warriors, and both won and lost with it. You also seem not to mention that our dear and beloved Anet added a bunch of crap to sins with Nightfall (shadow prison brr...), and that in the gwfc era sins were rather tame compared to THOSE.

If you have any other places where the other seasonal playoff matches (s2 and 3) are documented, feel free to put a link here, so we can discuss that topic further.

As to bring the whole pve topic to a closure: You breezed through HM with barragers, orders and a conset. No big news. People did that before. It doesn't support that you were skilled players back then, and is rather at odds with your whole article from my point of view. However, by breezing through everything while breaking the game, you are throwing away from yourself what a game is about: challenging yourself and winning. The satisfaction of a job well done, a work you enjoyed through every single minute, that didn't get boring. As for why, it doesn't matter on the long run. --Boro 16:20, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

"You also seem not to mention that our dear and beloved Anet added a bunch of crap to sins with Nightfall (shadow prison brr...), and that in the gwfc era sins were rather tame compared to THOSE."

Er... shock assassins with recall that literally teleported them across the map were *far* more powerful and dangerous than 123456 glass cannons with radar range. You would know if you played PvP back then, which you didn't. Again with the talking out of your ass.

You've been proven wrong pretty much every time. You literally have no idea what you're talking about. You didn't PvP seriously, you didn't obs, you didn't follow the PvP community or post on its forums. You try to champion the fanboi cause of guilds about which you know nothing, running builds about which you know nothing, in a game type that's 8 years old now. You can't even figure out that unkillable split assassins that could solo any single character without *any* trouble, and most likely solo 2, is leagues more powerful than anything they got after Nightfall came out. Yeah, Palm Strike was stupid. Yeah, Shadow Prison was stupid. But neither of them were unkillable. Aura of Displacement Shock assassins were deadly because of literally broken mechanics - namely, that teleporting had no range limit. Once that limit was fixed, assassins as a whole were much less of a battlefield threat, regardless of what any singular skill did. That bugfix, along with several skill nerfs, removed Assassins from play until, as you say, Nightfall came out, and Shadow Prison brought them back as a very faceroll build, but a much less uncounterable one in GvG - Shadow Prison was a one-way trip, and even if they brought return/recall, the range on it was severely capped, so an aggressive warrior or ranger could force a kill if needed. All of this would be obvious if you played PvP on a serious level when these builds were out. As it is, it sounds like you started playing after Nightfall, and assumed everything before then was somehow weaker, despite the mechanics being inherently broken (and the mechanics, in this case, were what made pre-NF assassins unkillable on the split, because any amount of pressure could be completely negated by simply clicking off a buff and finding yourself back in your base).

You lost the PvE argument ages ago, and it's hilarious that you continue trying to bring it back to that. I beat PvE. I beat PvE before cons existed. I beat PvE before 7 hero teams existed. I was in the guild that got the world first hardmode mallyx kill, while the flocks of shitter PvErs were stuck in their terrible mindset of "must abuse glitches to win" instead of just taking a build he can't counter and winning with it. I'm beating PvE in a game with actually good PvE - difficult, challenging content that requires 25 people to know their class, to minmax buffs and stats, and to perform flawlessly for 10-15 minutes to kill a single boss for shinies and server first achievements. I know how to minmax - quite a bit better than you, gauging by this conversation, as you started throwing around the "omg powergaming" card without even noticing the subpar skillbars, heroes and lack of the majority of cons. This is without even mentioning your failure to grasp simple concepts like "Guild Wars rewards victory, and only victory" (also known as "a win is a win," followed by several examples of gimmick play by top level guilds and korean progamers in starcraft). You had to backpedal quite fiercely once you took a minute to actually look at the screenshot, and realize that literally none of your arguments applied - ones that were wrong to begin with. After that point, you simply spewed bullshit and your argument got more and more hilarious as you attempted to backpedal into a position that made sense, despite there not being any left, because you jumped into a losing conversation without attempting to understand it and then tried to win using loser's logic (omg you should gimp yourself to make GW a challenge, and any wins that drop loot are arbitrarily considered not wins, despite actually being wins, because I want some way to feel better about myself despite playing a PvE game that died in 2007) and shitty pseudo-honor arguments (omg none of my favorite guilds ever used a gimmick build).

It's been amusing, but I would have preferred if you had brought real arguments to the table, especially regarding PvE. It's sad to have an argument won before even starting it, because one side doesn't understand basic concepts like "a win is a win," and vehemently ignores it while building up a pile of bullshit on a false premise that Guild Wars rewards gimping yourself. -Auron 20:27, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

No. I didn't lose the argument. Maybe I would have if you were better, but you aren't. I've never assumed that it's Guild Wars which rewards gimping yourself. Yes I know what GW rewards winning. And you know what GW also rewards? Grinding your ass off for pve-only skills. And you know what? I don't give two fucks about what GW rewards. I know however that breezing through any content in any game is rather boring and unengaging. I understand (after that messup with the image) that you at least tried to bring bars that reward some skill and I respect that fact. I hovewer disagree with calling anyone who chooses not to cheese through HM, and play GW as it was played before that crap existed stupid. I know what enjoyment comes from actually challenging myself in a good way, and believe me, that enjoyment, those epic victories are WAY more memorable than cheezing through anything. And what did YOU get for winning? A virtual pat in the back? A few purple pixels on an obscure progress bar? Come on! Is that all you play for?

As for honor it was you who brought it to the table in the first place, while throwing insults left and right at those who didn't use cons to cover their arses. I don't care how good you were back in the day, because it is of no consequence now (except for the riches you collected) as you apparently felt the need to go with essence, and simplify the game by removing IAS/IMS tactical options by permaboosting your whole party, and dumbed your game down to damage vs defense. I know what it looks like. I've played Abaddon's mouth lately (3man w/o henches), and we were joking about the Chimera of Intensity, which was the enchie the vizier used to help - With almost the same effect.

I actually intended this section to be a joking comment, but apparently I forgot to use the emoticons designed to convey that over the internet if the above is any indication... --Boro 09:24, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Factions

I never liked it for precisely this reason. The whole campaign just leaks this aura of "Wait, you're PvEing in this? Why aren't you PvPing like a good little person?" Pretty much every mission from Zen Daijun to Arborstone and Eternal Grove are just absolute shit. I remember back in my early days, waiting for it to get fun. It didn't until the last three missions or so. (Unwaking Waters actually is pretty fun) -- anguard 16:46, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Oddly enough, Factions was the only campaign I bothered to get guardian in, mostly because I could do it without going out of my way (and because it had far fewer missions to do). Either the mission worked properly, in which case nothing bugged, monsters died and you got a master's reward, or you just got *assraped* by bugs - NPC's healing minions (mhenlo, danika), cutscenes not triggering (viz square with togo), NPC's getting stuck on inanimate objects (togo in several missions/quests), etc and you either couldn't complete it at all or got a shitty reward for having to tangle with bad AI to get him around a Luxon Chest for 10 minutes. Factions basically had nothing that "hard mode" made harder - none of the skillbars were a challenge, and the hardest bad guys to tackle were the melee mobs with 100-200 autoattack hits, which also weren't really a problem unless you had hidden spawns on top of boss monsters. Nightfall got a lot more silly with Searing Flames bosses hitting for 350 in AoE, but I lost my care long before starting to guardian that expansion. -Auron 20:36, 3 May 2012 (UTC)