Guild Wars 2

Overall I have mixed feeling about Ascended gear. I’m yet to be convinced that they really needed a bridge between exotics and legendaries. I felt those people who wanted legendaries would work for them, and others would be happy to see new exotics with shiny different skins. That’s what I think these items should be. Sure, add infusions on too in place of runes, make them a trade-off if you want and balance them accordingly. After all, people can always transmute them, and will do so anyway. Adding extra stats just seems unnecessary. That said, I’ll wait and see how they actually turn out power-wise and whether they’re really necessary or just a side-grade.

I would encourage/hope ANet introduces methods to attain this gear via crafting, WvW and the TP before introducing the items for the other slots. Otherwise people are going to feel the need to pigeon hole themselves into running FotM (whether they want to or not), and that’s never good.

Personally I don’t like running dungeons. I don’t really enjoy them, I often don’t have time for them, and quite frankly I’m probably bad at them due to lack of experience. However, I’m more than happy to earn WvW tokens for the same gear, or go and earn the gold/mats somehow to craft it or buy it off the TP. I don’t mind legendaries requiring dungeons; after all they are for the hardcore and dedicated player willing to cover the spectrum of PvE. And they’re cosmetic so fair enough. But Ascended gear is unique and has altered stats.

Adding a daily to sPvP is great to encourage people to go and do that. I would suggest continuing with this philosophy with Ascended gear. Encourage people to diversify and they will be happy.

I would encourage/hope ANet introduces methods to attain this gear via crafting, WvW and the TP before introducing the items for the other slots. Otherwise people are going to feel the need to pigeon hole themselves into running FotM (whether they want to or not), and that’s never good.

Personally I don’t like running dungeons. I don’t really enjoy them, I often don’t have time for them, and quite frankly I’m probably bad at them due to lack of experience. However, I’m more than happy to earn WvW tokens for the same gear, or go and earn the gold/mats somehow to craft it or buy it off the TP. I don’t mind legendaries requiring dungeons; after all they are for the hardcore and dedicated player willing to cover the spectrum of PvE. And they’re cosmetic so fair enough. But Ascended gear is unique and has altered stats.

Adding a daily to sPvP is great to encourage people to go and do that. I would suggest continuing with this philosophy with Ascended gear. Encourage people to diversify and they will be happy.

“Wow those ranger spirit boons really made all the difference in that battle.”

Loli Ruri.8307:

I saw the removal. Not the first time I have noticed censorship too.

The subreddit most likely deleted the post as it has a policy of not allowing posts that are basically technical support posts aimed at ArenaNet, that only they can solve. While we all sympathise with Dulfy and would love to see her back in Tyria ASAP, the rules of the subreddit are there for a reason. At launch during that heavy banning wave there was lots of posts like this and the mods decided to institute a blanket removal policy so the sub didn’t get spammed with them. The official forums are a more useful place to discuss this sort of thing anyway.

I agree. It’s also that there is a huge disparity in the detail provided in the trait tooltips. For example, here are the Ranger’s Adept level skirmishing traits:

1. Pets do 30% more damage on critical hits. (Their hits, or mine, or both?)
2. Chance to cause bleeding on critical hits. (How much chance? How much bleeding?)
3. Creates a spike trap when reviving an ally. (Fine)
4. You gain 5s of vigor when struck by a critical hit. This can only trigger once every 15s. (REALLY good. They should all be like this!)
5. Critical hits grant might to your pet. (Their hits, or mine, or both? How much might?)
6. Pets move 30% faster. (Fine)

This is pretty indicative of most trait choices. You have lots of different options, but only really know precisely what half (or less) of them actually do. In order to figure out a build properly, you either have to test extensively in The Mists, or read from someone who has. Most people don’t want to do that, and should’ve have to.

The 4. trait above shows how well ANet can write their tooltips. Please, do this across the board so that there is consistency and players are well informed.

Depends on what you want to do. GS gives good raw damage. Sword/Dagger is super mobile. Axe/Warhorn (I use this) is versatile and lets you chase down things and glaive axes everywhere (beware these axes, they glaive to neutral mobs too). Axe (or Sword) /Torch is good for condition builds. SB is mobile and good for conditions but with a LB you probably don’t want it. Offhand Axe… can’t see why people would pick it over WH/Torch.

Axe/Horn. Always. The combo is extremely mobile, can chase down almost anything, and has AoE glaiving. If you stack crit and stick bleed on crit sigils on the axe you can stack it up fast too. I tend to use either LB or GS with this depending on how I’m specced or what I’m doing. LB for WvW always (get the range upgrade for this, it outranges everything and can make a difference).

Pets: At least one bear for PvE, and then anything else really, though generally either a cat/bird for DPS is nice. Bird for WvW (has AoE swiftness on attack) with a ranged pet, and Lynx/Bird with ranged for sPvP. Moas and jungle stalkers are pretty good for support. Underwater you can go bear, but armorfish and shark is a fun combo and works well. Armorfish has a stun (has to run away and back in though, so bad for sPvP).

Stats vary depending on what I’m doing, but generally I like survivable builds because the toughness and vitality trees have good versatile major traits and good minor traits. Need to keep on top of your gear damage wise though so you can kill easily (not too hard).

I tend to have the biggest issues with these with the pets that attack quickly like cats and birds. However all pets are guilty of this, it just doesn’t override the auto-attack or whatever intrinsic skill is being used by the pet. Mashing happens about 90% of the time for me currently.

This has been a problem ever since the BWEs (although back then pets had bigger issues), and I’ve commented on it many times. This would be particularly annoying in dungeons, but generally I find it frustrating as you often don’t have a lot of space to move between mobs and pets not tethering properly is a big deal when you’re trying to avoid pulling 5 mobs at once. I would love to see some tighter tethering for those sudden stops.