Guild Wars 2

I’m thinking of returning to GW2 but, after poking around the wiki and forums for a bit, I’ve got a few questions:

I’ve seen a few people mention GvG on the forums, but no mention of it in the wiki. What are they talking about ?
Edit: Answered

Which classes have viable PvE or WvW builds that have a lot of bouncing attacks ?

Which US worlds have which unofficial communities on them ?
Edit: Partially answered: Tarnished Coast has a RP community and the megaserver has caused them problems

Ascended items:
Is there any tool where I can plug in which resources I have (gold, laurels, fractal relics, etc) and it tells me which ascended items I can acquire with them ?

By what percentage does a full loadout of ascended gear improve a characters performance over a full set of exotic ?
I can use this to see that the stats on ascended gear is about 6% better than exotics. But that’s just the stats on the item, not taking the attributes a naked character would have into account. I’d like to see something like taking a character built for maximum possible DPS. Calculate the DPS on a full exotic set and a full ascended set. Or maybe only calculate the average damage on their #1 attack (or a full chain if it’s a chain skill), as that seems a reasonable approximation.
Looking through the wiki, power, precision and condition damage scale differently, so it looks like different builds will get a different percentage increase. If so, the more accurate numbers I get the better.

Edit: Answered: Between 11% and 18% damage increase for a raw damage build using berserkers . Before taking any on-crit effects into account.

Less serious questions:
I did log on before the April 15 update to find that the trait points on my necromancer had been reset. But not on my other characters. Does anyone have any clue why ?
Because I’m sure I left that character with the trait points allocated. Not that it’s something to complain about. Before the update it was just a free, unexpected, trait reset. After the update, all trait resets are free.
Edit: Answered: There were free trait resets with some balance updates.

Am I the only one who feels it would be a bit wrong to level a character to 20 using the experience scroll that character got for its birthday ?

Can’t answer most, but I can answer the question about the necromancer trait reset.

One of the previous patches did touch on traits in a major way. Any class with a major overhaul in traits (several traits moved tiers, etc) got their traits reset so that builds could be rearranged based on the changes without costing the player money. That and it was probably easier to code for that than if player has X skill in Y tier change it to Z skill.

I feel no guilt using the level 20 experience scrolls.
Tarnished Coast is the unofficial RP server.
Guild vs. Guild is not a thing that exists in the game, that’s why it’s not on the wiki.
PvE with “bouncing” (aoe?) skills: Axe Ranger, shortbow thief, elementalist in some elements, mesmer (greatsword, I think), loads of guardian kits, engineer (grenades, flamethrower, bombs, etc), warrior with many kits… Necro has aoe attacks, but they’re not in a great place right now (in pve, because conditions don’t scale well), but they’re still fun to play. So, yeah, pretty much every class.

I don’t know enough to help you with the numbers in theorycrafting. Hope this helps!

GvG is guild versus guild PVP mode which officially doesn’t exist.
unofficially, guilds from rival servers meet up in obsidian sanctum map in WWW and set their matches there.

not sure what is bouncing attack, maybe thief shortbow auto or ranger axe auto?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_equipment

about 5% without infusions.
if you infuse all the gear with WWW stat infusions, (2 from weapons, 6 from armors 6 from accessories ) that will be another 5*14 = 70 stat points on top of that, which are quite significant. also ascended armor have ~5% more armor rating, which increase your damage reduction.

all trait points on all characters were reset on the patch day.

yes you are. use the scroll. you still have 10 levels before you unlock traits on a new character.

Seera.5916:

Can’t answer most, but I can answer the question about the necromancer trait reset.

One of the previous patches did touch on traits in a major way. Any class with a major overhaul in traits (several traits moved tiers, etc) got their traits reset so that builds could be rearranged based on the changes without costing the player money. That and it was probably easier to code for that than if player has X skill in Y tier change it to Z skill.

That explains it.

GvG is guild versus guild PVP mode which officially doesn’t exist.
unofficially, guilds from rival servers meet up in obsidian sanctum map in WWW and set their matches there.

Thanks.

not sure what is bouncing attack, maybe thief shortbow auto or ranger axe auto?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bounce

While it’s easy to find a list of bounce skills, I don’t know which classes have viable builds that make heavy use of the bounce skills.

about 5% without infusions.

I’d like the total amount, with infusions.

Or someone to point me at a build calculator tool that calculates for exotic and ascended gear and give me some complete builds that I can plug into it to see the numbers myself.

I found a raw damage DPS build for a necromancer. I plugged it into this build calculator. It’s bit out of date, but it’s the best I’ve got right now.

Ascended loadout. The dagger #1 chain does:
990×2, then 768, then 1317. For a total of 4065 damage.

With exotics dagger #1 does 890×2, 690, 1184 for a total of 3654

That’s a difference of 411.
411/3654 = 11.2%

That’s an 11% difference before taking crits into account.

Exotics get a 61% crit chance and 90% extra crit damage, ascended gets 63% crit chance and 99% extra damage.

To account for crits, take the damage calculated earlier and multiply it by (1+crit chance*bonus damage)
Exotics: 3654*(1+.61*.9) = 5660
Ascended: 4065 (1+.63*.99) = 6600

6600-5660 = 1040
Or an 18% increase in damage.

Now I know that crit damage has been reduced. So, until I get hold of the new numbers, all I can be sure of is that full ascended gear increases DPS by somewhere between 11% and 18% over full exotic gear for a raw damage build.

Well, before taking into account any other on crit bonuses like barbed precision or sigil of strength. Which would widen the gap, since they provide a bigger bonus to ascended gear.

You may have chosen a bad time to return – currently communities are in bad shape and tc is especially in a bad way. May pay to wait a while till the megaserver gets fixed in towns and server choice matters again.

Treebeard The Swift.9620:

You may have chosen a bad time to return – currently communities are in bad shape and tc is especially in a bad way. May pay to wait a while till the megaserver gets fixed in towns and server choice matters again.

Back when I left GW2 I was already seeing some zones as mostly deserted. So I like the idea of a megaserver to repopulate those zones.

Are the problems people seeing because their worlds population is mixed in with others across multiple instances of the same zone ?

Or is it that there aren’t many people from one world and they are being drowned out by the people from other worlds sharing the same instance ?
The first is a problem that should get fixed. The second is an unavoidable consequence of a megaserver, and one I find preferable to a nearly empty zone.

As for roleplay, I’ve got no interest in RP within an MMO. They simply restrict my freedom too much for any RP that I can enjoy.

There is an area in the EB jumping puzzle (Obsidian Sanctum) that was created as a free for all zone where people could GvG. GvG is not sanctioned by Anet and in fact the only reason this area exists is because of a major public relations debacle where an Anet employee griefed a GvG at the windmill (in BL).

This new area is not affected by the extra stats that may be gained from the (failed) ruins area of the BLs.

I’d like to know more about that griefing. Specifically:
– Did the ANET employee use any dev tools, or did he only do things a player could do ?
– What happened to the employee afterwards ?

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

I’d like to know more about that griefing. Specifically:
– Did the ANET employee use any dev tools, or did he only do things a player could do ?
– What happened to the employee afterwards ?

He didn’t “grief” anyone. He told several players that they weren’t playing WvW the way they were supposed to be, then popped his company tag. No one was banned, no one was punished, and I find it funny how the fans here like to neglect that the two guilds in question were harrassing and telling the A.net employee to “gtfo” of their GvG before he popped his tag.

A lot of feathers got ruffled on both sides, some egos got bruised, but at the end of the day, nothing happened to anyone. It was much ado about nothing.

That’s good to hear. Still, when someone says griefing it’s always best to ask questions about what happened.

I’ve updated the OP to mark the answered questions.