Guild Wars 2

~~~~Nourishment consumables (food and utility)~~~~
~~~~(And why you should use them)~~~~

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More than three months after release, I’m still shocked how underestimated these type of items are. When I’m running dungeons, only a minority uses food, and next to no one uses utility, which is just wrong. I blame their lack of use on plain ignorance on their existence (and I’m confident lot of the people reading this will hear about some of these items for the first time).

So I figured I’d try to make a short list of the best nourishment consumables, and why you should be using them in certain situations:

(Note that you can consume only one food and one utility at a time)

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~~~~~~~~Magic find (Food)~~~~~~~~

This is the most commonly used food. They range from +4% to +30% bonus magic find, and last for 30 minutes. The most popular food here is the Omnomberry Bar, which also gives +40% gold from monsters.

However, I wouldn’t consider Omnomberry Bars the best of the +30% food. They are ridiculously expensive, and I doubt you recover the additional inversion with just the gold bonus (Except classic dungeons, because bosses drop between 7 and 15 silver).

Instead, you have two good alternatives: Cup of Lotus Fries and Spicy Pumpkin Cookie. Both give +70 condition damage bonus instead of the gold bonus, for a far cheaper price. Even more, Spicy Pumpkin Cookies last 45 minutes instead of the usual 30. The pumpkin cookies are a clear example of the ignorance I spoke about earlier: Right now, they’re cheaper than the lotus fries.

Well, and why should you use magic find food? Pretty simple: You get better drop. You may not notice it at first, but your drop rewards will see an increase on quality. Where should you use these? They’re a must in all dungeons, and on event chains (if you plan on completing them entirely). The enemies of dungeons and events give better loot than the normal enemies, and you should always eat some food to maximize profit. You won’t regret it after you start to see the first rares and T6 materials.

If you are interested on this type of food, I’d recommend buying the cheaper one at the moment of the purchase, and if you stack both types, using each one depending on how much time you’ll need the buff.

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~~~~~~~~Karma (Food)~~~~~~~~

Wintersday introduced a new food type: Bowls of Ice Cream. There’s seven different ice creams, and all of them give +5% karma, so just get the cheaper ones.

Unfortunately, they aren’t specially cheap, so I don’t recommend getting them unless you want to farm karma above anything else, even items. If you want some extra experience, too (I’m looking at people farming karma for the Legendary), then get Bowl of Candy Corn Ice Cream which gives an additional +15% experience from kills.

Again, make sure you’re really going to make the most of them, because they are expensive.

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~~~~~~~~Experience (Food and utility)~~~~~~~~

If you just want experience, you won’t have many problems getting some cheap food or utility. Pretty much all of them give an experience from kills bonus. The current higher bonus is set up at +15%, so let’s focus on those.

Only the Halloween food gives +15% (the exception being the ice cream mentioned above). But don’t worry, there’s a huge stack on the trading post, and prices are reasonable.

There’s a total of twelve Halloween recipes. Just take the cheaper ones if you only want the experience bonus: Candied Apple, Candy Corn Cake, Strawberry Ghost, Glazed Pear Tart, Glazed Peach Tart, Spicy Pumpkin Cookie, Piece of Candy Corn Almond Brittle, Bowl of Candy Corn Custard, Glazed Pumpkin Pie, Candy Corn Cookie, Glazed Chocolate Raspberry Cookie and Omnomberry Ghost.

As for utility, all utility consumables give the same bonus: +10 raw experience (not to be confused with +10% experience), no matter the level or the type. Just get the cheapest ones.

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Continues next post…

~~~~~~~~Potions of Slaying (Utility)~~~~~~~~

One of the most valuable, and one of the most undervalued. Potions of Slaying give you two specific bonuses against an enemy type: bonus damage against them, and bonus defense from their attacks.

There’s potions for the main enemy types of all the 9 dungeons, and you should always use these potions when running them. Their maximum bonus is +10% damage to the enemy type and -10% damage from the same enemy type.

The best quality potions may be a bit expensive, but the ones just below it are incredibly cheap. Trust me, I made my group drink these once, and you notice the effect: Enemies die faster, and you resist their attacks better. Nearly no one uses these potions (and utility consumables in general), and they’re probably the most valuable consumable for running dungeons.

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~~~~~~~~Power, precision and condition damage (Utility)~~~~~~~~

When you are in combat and not using potions of slaying, you should be using any of these. All of them give a bonus depending on your toughness and vitality. Sharpening Stone gives power, Maintenance Oil gives precision and Tuning Crystal gives condition damage.

All of them are usually cheap on the trading post. They don’t really give a very special bonus, so there’s no point at abusing them: They just come handy on big or hard fights, specially for characters with lot of toughness and/or vitality.

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~~~~~~~~Combat stats (Food)~~~~~~~~

I don’t really recommend these, unless you’re having a hard fight and need some extra stat. Using them in normal situations is a waste of money (unless you bought them at cheap prices) and in situations where you fight harder enemies, like events or dungeons, you should be using the magic find food or the karma food for maximum profit.

The list is huge, and it’s divided in three: Direct bonus, bonus on kill, and bonus on critical.

Some of these may prove specially useful on World vs World, but that depends entirely on your build and profession.

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And that’s all (I think). Use consumables! They are cheap, and totally worth the money, for real .

Just to comment about the +40% gold from monsters:

In AC some of the gold tier mobs drop 5s (augmented to 7s) and the final boss drops 15s (augmented to 21 silver). In a good group, you can do all three paths in an hour which grants you an additional 24s over all 3 runs for 2 bars. Unless the bars cost more than 12s each, then its profitable in AC.

I can’t comment on their use outside of AC, but I can imagine it’s not nearly as nice as doing AC runs.

Woops, I forgot. Yes, Omnombery Bars work fine now that all dungeon bosses (Except fractals) give silver. In those cases, yes, it’s worth it.

Outside of them they aren’t, so that’s the only exception. Editing the first post because just making the first miniboss pays the cost of the Omnomberry Bars .

Edit: I get some edition error, so I’ll try later.

Edit2: Seems right now. I wanted to include some more lines, but it seems the bug was related to the post being too long :/. I’ll check the rest of the text and see if I can cut some line to add the explanation, something like:

Use Cups of Lotus Fries or Spicy Pumpkin Cookies for everything (Fractals of the Mists, events…) and only use Omnomberry Bars on classic dungeons.