Guild Wars 2

bolam.6294:

I feel that the crafting menu could be improved by making it easier to navigate through, such as favoriting items, as opposed to keep navigating to them every time. It needs to be more dynamic and easier on the eyes, like there’s no point including the title of the weapons if they’ll disappear past the scroll menu (“ The Amazing Pistol of … “) I personally keep having to select each weapon until I find the one I want.

Even though it’ll take a while before I reach a substantial crafting level for one profession, let alone 6, I’ve been told that it’s completely reasonable when comparing it to other MMOs. The process can be quickened by buying the needed materials instead of farming, even quicker by buying gems if need being.

From leveling a character from 1-80 you should have obtained enough materials to get two professions from 1-400 without having to go out of your way or buying anything. If you need a boost but don’t want to buy gems or use the TP, the laurel merchent sells starter kits for each profession that get you to 75. (400-425 is also essentially free due to refining mats)

It’s possible you’re not crafting in an effective manner (not your fault it’s not super intuitive) Each time a new tier of materials become able to be refined you should refine them all for easy levels (exception being iron) then use discovery of new items to level to the next tier (don’t spam craft the same item again and again that is the single worst way to level and quite expensive, again exception cooking).

bolam.6294:

I feel that the game needs to be more informative with “the point of no return” type of situations, like buying two ascended rings or when story instances are free for a limited time only. Yes you’ll learn after the fact, but you still have to pick up the pieces; it’s going to cost me about 30gp to unlock the missing story instance.

Some of the story achievements are just too unrealistic. With every new episode, you’re guaranteed to get them. Out of all the episodes in season two, there were at least three where I had to get through bugs/glitches; most likely they’ve been “fixed” by now, but not the challenges themselves. Seriously the developers need to understand that not all players have legendary gear and a guild full of helpful players who are willing to go out of their way just to help you when you ask. Yes they’re optional, but that’s not an excuse to make them like this, like survive a 30 minute boss fight without getting hit once or something, like did they even try it for themselves at least? I want to look forward to every new episode, but I get stressed when they come out because I know there’s going to be achievements like this, and I’m very OCD about uncompleted things.

Thank you all for your replies.

Those are challenge achievements, the basic story is reasonably completable by anyone solo but those achievements are meant for more advanced players as a means to show off and earn the prestige armor (Luminescent), they are also solo-able but require a higher skill level.

As a note MMO’s are never going to be OCD friendly as an element in them is that you are never finished you will never have everything by design.Then there is the skill level required for activities, there will be activities for people across the spectrum and those at the lower end will likely be unable to do the higher end.

In these respects however Guildwars 2 is still the compatible MMO you’ll find in the market.

Welcome to the world of MMOs. Where I came from, it took 15-20 hours to raise your level up once, being punished severely if you die by losing a ton of exp and/or your gear. Crafting was a luxury and most casual players got their gear from mob loot.

Guild Wars 2 is so casual friendly in every department (except the crafting UI, yeah, it’s horrible) that for a veteran MMORPG player, it’s TOO easy.

Personally, I’ve completely given up on PvE and have put my focus on WvW and sPvP as they are the “hardcore” endgame content in this game.

In other games, I would simply sit down, dedicate 3-5 hours and repeatedly whack away at mobs in an attempt to farm currency and exp, or spend an hour or so preparing for a raid that took 20 minutes to complete due to the “Trinity” system. There’s none of that in Guild Wars 2 and it’s extremely EXTREMELY lenient on players making mistakes due to its casual nature (it’s very easy to solo 5 man instanced content because of how faceroll-easy dungeons are).

If you are having trouble getting certain achievements, perhaps you need to adjust your gear and build and approach it from another direction. All the achievements in the Living Story chapters are very achievable, if not a sometimes a little frustrating due to bad luck (lag spike here, missed timing there, happens).

bolam.6294:

Reverence.6915:

If you are having trouble getting certain achievements, perhaps you need to adjust your gear and build and approach it from another direction. All the achievements in the Living Story chapters are very achievable, if not a sometimes a little frustrating due to bad luck (lag spike here, missed timing there, happens).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqelUUpEr9ZxvLseNCbBNqxA6UEiM85DEgkC

This is my build at the moment. I’m using exotic berserker armor and weapons, I have an exotic backpack (vitality, toughness, healing) and I’m using ascended trinkets I got from season 2; ranging from power/precision/condition/vitality (I think). Any tips/advice would be great, thanks.

You’re using a condition skill/utility setup with zerker weapons. Switch to rifle. Save up for berserker ascended trinkets (not too difficult these days with increased laurels). If berserker isn’t working for you, start substituting in Valkyrie or Knights gear in. In a lot of these new living story instances, there’s no real reason to be full berserker except to complete them faster. In quite a few circumstances, you’d want more bunker stats to complete some of the achievements easier.

bolam.6294:

The way I see it, Condition Damage is what makes Engineers great, so I want to exploit it.

If anything, I want Precision, cause from what I remember, conditions are only applied through critical hits; if that’s the case, I want critical hits to happen as much as possible.

Increase Condition Damage would also be a plus.

I would also want my Vitality to be improved. People say that Toughness and Vitality are more or less the same, except I don’t think Toughness considers Condition Damage.

Overall I want Precision, Condition Damage, and Vitality. However I don’t think that combo exists (e.g. Power, Precision, and Ferocity is Berserker).

Some conditions proc on crit; for instance, burning with incendiary powder and the bleed on crit from sharpshooter. You’re right that precision is important for engineers for this reason. There are lots of ways to ensure you crit enough though. If you’re using berserker’s stats, your crit chance should be passable as-is, especially once you get your trinkets sorted out. You can further enhance your crit chance if you feel you need to – sigil of intelligence is great for this, as are skills that grant fury (+20%) crit chance. You can get fury using Elixir B, utility goggles, or through cooperation with other players.

You’re also correct that toughness does nothing to help you vs. conditions, and vitality does since it simply gives you a larger pool of health. Engineer has pretty good baseline vitality, so you might not need to add as much as you think to feel a difference. Try traiting a bit into alchemy, especially for the traits invigorating speed (more dodges, less dying!) and backpack regenerator, which regenerates health while you’re using a kit. Those two traits are amazing defense for an engineer. If you still feel you need more health, get a couple trinkets with defensive stats. I personally recommend celestial for this, since you get a small amount of everything. Even healing power is useful to you as an engineer. I prefer keeping toughness/vitality about equal when I’m looking for defensive stats (this works well for me), but YMMV. Carrion stats (condition damage, power, vitality) might suit your purposes as well.

Engineer really does excel with power/condi hybrids. Celestial stats aside (which rely a great deal on boons like might for adequate damage output) it’s probably wise to prioritize one over the other. In PvE, I would absolutely recommend focusing on direct damage, since the condition cap can be problematic in PvE. Anywhere else, it’s up to you.

Do keep in mind the difference that might stacking can make. Even if your condition damage is on the low side, might stacking increases it. You can time might stacking to follow your best condition skills (shrapnel grenade, fire bomb) while the conditions are still ticking, and follow with your hardest hitting power based skills (like big ’ol bomb, grenade barrage).

Pistols are condition heavy weapons. They do very little direct damage. If you’re focusing heavily on condition damage, they’re the way to go. Rifle is better for power builds, and hybrids too in my opinion. I do wish we had access to a main hand weapon with decent direct damage, since the shield skills are great and highly utilitarian. Tool kit at least offers a block (as well as respectable direct damage and condition skills) so keep that in mind if you end up using rifle.