Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the response, I appreciate it. I took a glance through both links you sent me and I was just curious about if you had any specific rotation of skills you go through for general combat scenarios. Do you just throw out your clones and watch the conditions ramp up or do you set up with Cry of Frustration or anything else?

Hey guys so here goes..

I just finished my first set of ascended armor (berserker’s) for my mesmer and I’ve been running around the Silverwastes bouncing back and forth between phantasm boosting traits (GS + Sword/Sword) and shatter-oriented traits with (Staff + Sword/Sword). I’ve been curious about how a build using rabid armor would work on a mesmer using my clones to spam winds of chaos and build up conditions. I’d use it for general PVE map completion, events in the Silverwastes, and a little bit of PVE/Fractals. I just blew the majority of my money finished ascended armor so I don’t want to waste what’s left buying a set of gear if the build isn’t that useful in PVE events/dungeons/fractals. So basically it comes down to this…

(TL;DR)
General berserker shatter/phantasm build vs condition spammer via rabid gear and staff clones for PVE (World completion/Silverwastes/Dungeons)?

AlexanderFalkor.4765:

they have told us its for new players many times now but were too much in a rage to care they need to get money somehow obviously you don’t know how much a video game costs to make and the matter of transparency hah you don’t know business then they don’t have to tell us anything they could say oh yes this will happen and not give jack crap about what we say the fact Anet does care is that they are the rare exception to big business

The rare exception huh? I didn’t think the “rare exception” would stoop to cash grabs. Putting the game on sale multiple times, telling players they need the core to play the expansion, and then revealing only after they start the pre purchase that the base game is forcibly included with the expansion.

I didn’t think the “rare exception” would then try to HIDE their cash grab by editing the FAQs and cover it all up.

Poor show, ANet. Poor show.

shugo.8396:

I’ve been playing almost daily since the game released. When I saw the pre-purchase icon today I got all giddy and was ready to buy. Then I saw the price and it immediately hurt my feelings. I just don’t see any conceivable way that I’ll get $50 worth of content with the expansion. Unless these new zones are nearly the size of the all the current zones combined, it doesn’t seem worth it to me.

Now I don’t even feel like doing my dailies anymore. I’m just disappointed and annoyed. Maybe it’s time I take a break from the game. It hurts saying that, but I just can’t justify playing anymore. Not after this.

Time to take a break from the game indeed. I’ve lost any desire I had to play the game now. I’ll keep up with the news but Anet definitely took a turn for the worse. Maybe I’ll hop back to Guild Wars 1 and hop on the nostalgia train.

Definitely holding off on HoT until they prove that they give enough content and features to justify $50. I know it’s feature heavy and not content heavy so your features BETTER BE kittenING AMAZING ANET. Otherwise I’m just sticking to GW1 where their campaigns and add ons are solid and well done and I’ll save that $50 for a game worth buying.

Thumbs down from me, Anet.

Finally found a mix of armor skins that I liked on my little asuran engineer

I like Anet thinking a little outside the box but in the end it’s still all RNJesus. A guy playing days on end might not grab a portal but another guy might hop in for a few hours and grab it after an event. If anything it’s a little more disappointing than the traditional way beta invitations are sent.

Now I’m not blaming Anet for any of this obviously they knew this ahead of time and this is necessary for the system to work. They can only have so many people in this beta event and the drop rates reflect that. Not everyone is going to get one and that’s (on paper) how it should be. The only big con is the natural flaw which I stated above. I hope Anet keeps on thinking of ways to push the envelope with beta invitations to see where they can go with it but it will probably be a looooooooong way away until we see any more beta testing unless there’s another session for HoT xpac before release.

One thing I found was awesome was Wooden Potatoes’ short series on the lore of GW1. If you look it up, it follows (sort of) the henchmen from the original trilogy up through 1/3 of factions. I don’t know why it is incomplete but the stuff they have done is really nice. On top of that, the art style they used for it isn’t that bad either.

I run a staff on my ele as well and I think that arcane wave is a really solid skill and compliments the build.

1. The only other blast finisher is the earth 2 skill but that takes more work to set up and pull off. It’s easier just to throw out Fire 2 -> arcane wave instead of switch to earth attunement -> earth 2 -> switch to fire -> lay down fire field.

2. Other than the auto attack, staff ele doesn’t have a straight up low cast time damage skill. Everything else is either a condition, it has to be channeled, or it’s like fire 2.

Other than that, I usually mess around with other skills, I run full assassins armor with zerker trinkets and my usual other 2 utilities are signet of fire and lighting flash or some type of stun breaker

In an all out “we’ve all just declared war on each other” we can see….

*Humans: Have faced crisis after crisis and have proven that they can pull through when it counts. While not technologically superior in any way, they have proven that they can hold their own when it counts. Their disadvantage is that humans in Kryta have the Norn in the Shiverpeaks to deal with and the humans in Ebonhawke have the Charr to deal with unless they all decide to group up in Divinity’s Reach or something.

*Asura: Arguably the most technologically superior of the races, I see them creating
Some type of mass destruction super weapon as opposed to marching soldiers or razing cities. It’d be a little bit tougher to invade their capital seeing as it’s a floating cube. Which I suppose would limit you to air raids or realllllllllly far reaching siege weaponry.

*Norn: These guys are tough, historically, the norn have been a society focused on individual heroics as opposed acting as an actual army. They have the advantage fighting at home with being used to the cold but they are surrounded by the humans from Kryta and the Charr on the east. The norn can be incredibly powerful but it’s a toss up between how well they fight against the Charr legions.

*Charr: These guys seem to be the favorite and with good reason. Every cub is trained to be ready for war and their the most industrialized society with most of their resources being used to build great war machines. The Charr would probably take the first offensives but fighting a war against 3 other races isn’t some weekend DIY project, I wonder if their aggressiveness would hold.

The victor? It’s tough, if we’re simulating the whole war here, I see this playing out…

*Charr attack humans at Ebonhawke and prepare to attack the Norn – humans flee to Kryta
*Norn prepare their defenses against the Charr and attack them as the Charr are partially focused on getting rid of the humans.
*Humans avoid attacking the Norn and try to let them duke it out with the Charr.

• Charr could either win due to their technology or the Norn beat them with their advantage fighting in the cold. We can assume Charr victory here although it would need more analyzing to see the realistic outcome.
  *Humans v. Charr – Humans have “hometown” advantage and the battle would be long and drawn out but I give the Charr the victory here just because they have the perfect weapons for siege tactics on Divinity’s reach although by this point their numbers will have dwindled by a noticeable amount
  *Charr v. Asura: The Asura have had the most time to prepare and are on par with the Charr technologically if not superior. I give the victory to the Asura, their technology along with time to prepare against the battle-worn Charr (imo) would prove too much for the remainder of the legions.

All of this is assuming
A) the Sylvari are practically nonexistent
B) The Charr are the most aggressive conquering race and they march on the humans (Ascalon) -> norn -> humans (Kryta) -> Asura one after the other in that order.

A question aimed towards Jackums although anyone can answer….

You said that shatter specs and PU specs are generally pretty bad in PVE. I can see how PU specs can be inefficient because combat would take so long and the boost to survivability isn’t needed in most content; however, what makes a shatter spec so bad? As far as PVE goes, I’m pretty much talking about map completion/world bosses/a few dungeons here and there.

Thanks for the posts everyone, I appreciate the insight that a lot of you have given me. I’m not completely decided on my personal spec; however, what I’ve gathered is that PU mesmers gain a lot of survivability through stealth while still dealing moderate-high damage through clones/phantasm/traits while shatter specs provide more on-demand burst that require a peel and play well in organized teams.

I’ll continue to play them both out is pvp and see if I can get more comfortable with a particular one. One thing I have realized with the PU Mesmer is that more fights just tend to be flat out stalemates compared to a shatter spec where it’s basically burst or die. I’m not sure which one I like more but I’ll keep trying them out.

I’m sure this topic has come up before but here goes!…

Normally I’ve been restricting myself to just PVE with my Mesmer due to the fact that I don’t understand entirely how they work in PVP. That said, I know the Prismatic Understanding (PU) Mesmer is feeling a lot of love; however, ever since I hit 80 on my Mesmer, I’ve been running a 4/4/0/0/6 shatter spec just for PVE content.

The question: Is a PU “the build to rule them all” as far as Mesmer go? If not, what are some advantages and disadvantages of running a PU build vs running a standard Shatter spec in PVP?

If it is a hardware issue, what are some things I should be looking at specifically? If it is a driver issue, I suppose the only solution would be to try and find more stable drivers.

Thanks for the posts back my power supply, if I’m reading it correctly, is a 400 watt source. I don’t know if it is the power supply source just because this problem only occurs at certain points in a game. In GW2, it’s in Dry Top. When I play AC4 the problem only happens when I first launch the game but it runs without any sort of errors on medium-high graphics.

I’m tempted to think that it is a hardware problem, While looking at the connector pins for my monitor to the graphics card, one of the pins is slightly bent. It straightens out once I plug it into the tower; however, I have no idea if that is the source of the issue or not.

Just like the title says, this problem has been ongoing for a few months now, ever since I installed an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti. It happens more in certain areas, most noticeably in Dry Top. Normally it goes like this

- Game freezes, everything but the sound stops. Lasts roughly 5 seconds
- Screen goes into power saving mode anywhere from 5 to 20 seconds long
- Image pops back onto the screen and after 2-3 seconds the freezing stops and I’m back in the game

Very rarely it’ll happen multiple times in a row where the monitor just flickers between the last image and power saving mode and even more rarely, the game crashes and the only way to fix it is a hard restart. I should note that this doesn’t happen virtually at all on any of my other games, the only exception being Assassin’s Creed IV and I don’t have any FPS issues unless I’m in a giant wvw zerg or fighting a world boss. I’m tempted to say that it’s a driver issue but I’ve already tried uninstalling and reinstalling the latest drivers. My next best guess would be to either install some older, more stable drivers or to fiddle around with settings in the NVIDIA control panel and see if something in there is causing this issue.

I’m sure I’m not the first to talk about this and I won’t be the last. I’ve already seen a few videos on the topic (MagicalMike and WoodenPotatoes) but I’m curious to see what other members of the community think.

I like that ANet is trying to make the game easier to grasp for newer players. It’s a nice idea to have in mind and, in theory, makes the game seem more welcoming to the average new player. I think that ANet took it a little too far…. like ran and jumped off of a cliff down a chasm and into a river too far. I won’t rant about it too much but a few of the changes (namely waiting longer to get skills, the down state, and bundles) don’t make much sense to me. I admit that I can’t come in with the perspective of a new player because I’ve played GW and GW2 for years but I feel like the mechanics that I mentioned are….. almost insulting to some players. Are there really a significant amount of players out there are are overwhelmed by getting all their weapon skills in 1 sitting? Are people really confused about using the down state and how it works? Are bundles too complicated to use that they have to be taken out of the starter zones? I don’t think so.

Obviously these are just my personal opinions on it and anyone is more than welcome to disagree. My point though is the question are there really a significant number of players lacking the amount of knowledge and skill required to grasp the basic and core functions of the game that we have to implement this? I’d argue no, I see plenty of competent players running around and enjoying the game. What are some of your thoughts on the new patch and the new tutorials and early level changes specifically?

What about shatter builds in general open world PVE? I think most of my focus will be on getting 100% world completion, finishing my personal story, and starting on the living story stuff. Would a staff/(seconday weapon) Shatter Build be effective for clearing trash, the occassional dynamic event, and skill challenges?

So in your opinion it’d be more beneficial to just go straight for berserkers if I want a more shatter-focused play style?

Recently I’ve been trying to understand the different traits of the Mesmer so that I can improve my gameplay and trait/gear optimization. I cycle through the different game modes and I’m working on PVE right now since the Living Story is pretty popular. I’ve come across a few posts that talk about power-based mesmers who use staves as one of their weapons. I can see how it works in a pvp situation seeing as it’s a good defensive and support weapon but I can’t see how it works in a PVE setting because the majority of its damage comes from conditions. So I guess my overall question is can a staff fit into a power-based shatter styled build? Would I have to dip into rampagers to hybridize or is my only option to go straight into condition damage? Thanks in advance

Since (i daresay) most thieves carry a shortbows secondary, I run conditions with p/d or d/d as my main weapons. Both are good with the p/d being excellent against single targets or bosses with the bleeds and stealth while d/d can shine while fighting against mobs with a boss or melee mobs that are tough to kite around. Since the shortbow does condition damage, instead of splitting my damage by running straight crits or a bsckstab build, I run conditions with a main weapon setup that helps it out so that both sets do good damage