Guild Wars 2

I’ve got 40 of these ‘points’ sitting unused because I can’t figure out which of the various abilities on offer is the best – or any use at all.

A few % damage to/from guards? I never have trouble with guards anyway.
Carry a few more supply? Seems like a waste for just 1 or 2 extra.
Arrowcart/ballista skill improvement – meh.

Has anyone any thoughts/advice on this?

Depends on your playstyle I guess. I do a lot of roaming and capturing camps so I spent most them on increased damage to guards. I sometimes defend keeps so AC mastery is a must have as well.
If you run with the zerg you might use it on decreased damage from siege or something like that. It’s up to you really.

in the end it looks like youll be able to unlock everything (if you choose too).

yeah they are medicore at best in the beginning but hey its something.

Royce nailed it.

for someone who has some/all the supply carry unlocked, could you tell me if guild claim stacks on top of it to carry 20?

ie. instead of normal 10 you can carry 15.

Well, the best deal in the entire Rank system seems to be the very first Tier 1 in Arrow Cart Mastery, which increases your Range for only 5 wxp. Start there, even if you rarely use Arrow Carts. extended range makes a bigger difference than 1% damage to/from anything, whether it’s siege or guards. The Tier 2 of most Siege Mastery ranks, +25% Damage, is kind of ridiculous, and likely to be rolled back a bit at some point, but if you have the points for it I suggest you enjoy those while they last.

Otokomae.9356:

Well, the best deal in the entire Rank system seems to be the very first Tier 1 in Arrow Cart Mastery, which increases your Range for only 5 wxp. Start there, even if you rarely use Arrow Carts. extended range makes a bigger difference than 1% damage to/from anything, whether it’s siege or guards. The Tier 2 of most Siege Mastery ranks, +25% Damage, is kind of ridiculous, and likely to be rolled back a bit at some point, but if you have the points for it I suggest you enjoy those while they last.

Seconding this. AC1 is incredibly strong and AC2 is as well. Those are must haves if you ever use an AC ever, and if you play any defense at all you should. If you’re the kind of person who just runs in karma trains/zergs, get the siege bunker or supply boost. Yea, 1 supply isn’t much, but it can be the difference maker when that ram blueprint gets tapped during build. Spreadshot on the ballista is very situational, but it is hilarious when someone rushes your ballista and gets 1 hit ko’d – and they pretty much will at point blank regardless of their spec. The high level guard killer/defense ones can be quite significant too, but the low level ones are so minor that the build up doesn’t seem worth it. Until rank 8 on both, you’re not getting much.

I mostly run with my guild, looking for open field combat with other guilds.
We rarely will attack a position, mostly when asked by the field commander.
On the rare occasions we set down siege , it’s in the hope of drawing out a sortie. More often than not we abandon it unused.

By the sound of it, the AC points are voted best but I honestly can’t remember the last time I used one.

Is there any chance that Anet might add more options?

Contiguous.1345:

I mostly run with my guild, looking for open field combat with other guilds.
We rarely will attack a position, mostly when asked by the field commander.
On the rare occasions we set down siege , it’s in the hope of drawing out a sortie. More often than not we abandon it unused.

By the sound of it, the AC points are voted best but I honestly can’t remember the last time I used one.

Is there any chance that Anet might add more options?

Well, if you’re looking for something like “+5% damage to Players from Enemy Servers” I can say that it’s 99.9999999% likely that will never happen, since it directly affects balance, even if it is eventually available to everyone. I know that maxing out the Rank abilities affects balance now, if you use siege, but something where 1 person can with essentially the same build, gear, & level as you can run up to you and do 5% more damage to you simply because they’ve played WvW longer will probably never enter the game. This is probably a good thing. Arenanet still views WvW as a casual PvP environment, where anyone can purchase the game, log in for the first time, run around their starter area for 30 minutes and then jump right into WvW and start having fun. This is how it was described to us all way back in very early beta and right up until launch. The “hardcore WvW” community kind of ruined this idea within the first week of release, and there are still lots of people who are “playing to win”, not just for open-field combat or just for fun or whatever. So if you’re talking about something that will allow you to just straight up do more damage to your enemies than they do to you, or have extended condition durations, or anything like that, it’s highly, highly unlikely to ever enter the game.