Guild Wars 2

I would like to know also as i have just started pvp recently and i would really like the ranking procedure to start so i can play against peers of equal skill. I do not really care where i rank just as long as those i play against are not always very coordinated pre-made teams that defeat my team of randoms so bad and so early half of them just stand around doing nothing

I personally have no problem with how the thief works and would not change them, i have played a thief and been against them and my solution to the perceived problem really would be more availability to ‘revealed’ perhaps some short duration condition type effects tied to some class abilities, or tucked away in trait lines of various classes that go currently unused to give a little more defense against these tactics. As long as the amount of revealed is not overdone, since the thieves gotta play too

EDIT: to clarify, when i say i would not change thieves i only mean in respect to the amount of stealth, there is a lot of other stuff i would change unrelated to this topic

1500 hours here, 5x level 80’s and have done all dungeons a great many times
i have found 2 exotics to date… settlers ring in southsun (a month ago) and the shoulders from the recent jumping puzzle

with the various builds available to each class it is hard to say a specific class that is ‘best’ at soloing. Having played all classes i can honestly say it is easy with all classes
I found high survivability builds the best for soloing all round and all classes can make pretty good ones which totally trivialise all soloable content.

getting same, often when i try to change zones, or sometimes it just after a while becomes unresponsive and eventually disconnects me

my new build is 30/0/0/10/30 and sword/axe and hammer very nice damage, and seems a lot more fun than my old GS and axe/mace (which i think is still viable btw, but many other builds feel ‘as good’ now

i always take banner of discipline in groups and run between fights with it for swiftness also, but i wont take more than 1 banner unless i build around around that concept (and i dont currently) i personally find for great justice to be worth more than a 2nd banner, and then 3rd utility is a stun breaker because as a glass cannon build that can be quite vital

hrm this patch has not gone live yet for me, so cannot comment on it.

like mojowalker i play many characters and i never consider any to be my main… yet being a long time pen and paper roleplayer i do have an ‘attachment’ to each one of them and spend a lot of time giving them all a unique look and build that is fun. I have 3x level 80’s, I built my warrior at the moment with dungeon speed runs in mind, my ranger for WvW roaming, my mesmer for WvW zerg/siege assistance (and a bit of everything)
My others are all in process of leveling up (between 30 and 70 atm on other classes)
I regularly play all 3 of my 80’s and the others are played sporadically as i just feel like it or when i want to level a new one to 80 (currently on my necro atm)

Also i am trying to learn all classes in sPvP and still do not really have a main there either (although my ranger and mesmer i have used the most there)

When i left it was not due to any fault on GW2 part, i simply tried some other games a bit (with friends/brother) and got hooked on one for a while and when i got bored of that i came back to GW2 (the other game i mostly played was Vanguard if interested)

MakersMark.8420:

The only way they could start making toughness/vitality pertinent is adding events where it’s required or your team wipes. IE, if you don’t have xx amount of HPs/Toughness you will die to persistent effects. No way to avoid em.

There really should be more of this imo, and i do not think it needs to invalidate glass cannons even, but if you bring glass cannons… you need to bring some support to help carry them so that they can do the damage.

I also think there should be more need of control roles in group, like some effects that cannot be dodged and you ‘must’ inturrupt with CC abilities to survive.

Thus giving more reason for control, support and damage dealers in groups

I am not against ‘raids’ per say, but GW2 already has its own form of raids and that is the large scale world events such as dragons and the like.
If there is more ‘raids’ added in future i would like for some to be much much more difficult and require real coordination and likely some pre-planning, the kind of things guilds/commanders organise and others join in to make up numbers
Rewards would need to be similar to now although if there is significantly more challenge i would like for their to be a lot better rewards (like 1 laurel in the daily chest or something)

A ‘gear treadmill’ type of raid is a big no no from me though, although agony resistance is a good example of a form of gear treadmill that stays confined to its setting that has no impact on the game outside of that setting… And that is the only kind of raid style progression in gear i could be comfortable with in GW2

I think any new races/classes that come in will be a full expansion with a full storyline in similar fashion to how they did GW1 continents/expansions.
With new starting story from 1-30 or so for characters created on the continent, and 30-80 where players from current continent could just cut in from (to skip racial starting areas since they didnt start there) like how GW1 did it.

If an expansion gave 2 new races and 0 new classes… but an entire new continent to explore i would be happy, really do not feel a need for any new classes, and tbh i do not really care for new races either but an expansion with that many new areas would be good for new races i think, and if i was choosing the 2 racers.. Tengu and Largos

More skills (although i would like to think they will creep into GW2 over time)

and CLOAKS!

i would like to see a BUNNY!

as a general all-round i would list the following in terms of how easy/difficult they are to get to grips with the basics. Note this is to ‘play effectively’ not to master all aspects some classes are harder to play the basics than others yet others have a higher skill ceiling imo.

Easiest
1:Warrior
2:Guardian
3:Ranger
4:Thief
5:Necromancer
6:Mesmer
7:Engineer
8:Elementalist
Hardest

I ranked Elementalist as harder to play the basics as there is 4 attunements to get used to, and likewise Engineer has a similar thing with the F keys being different depending on what skills you have loaded and you have to get used to those also. Of course once you learn all these basics the list would change dramatically

Adding my +1 for Cantha

Whilst there are other places i would rather see prior to Cantha (Crystal Desert and other areas of this content for example) It would be fantastic to see what the GW2 art team can do using this games engine with the Cantha continent.

This is the kind of tool that can be abused and could have no positive impact on a community at all.

The abuse of this tool would be by players to determine if they want an individual in their group or not. On the surface this may not seem like a big deal however you need to think of the intelligence driving these decisions

The vast majority of the ‘cookie cutter’ build players are not creative. That is why they copied a build from a forum in the first place. It ‘may’ be a good build but in GW2 there is no such thing as a best build. This cookie cutter build was somebodies creation that fit their playstyle and they found very effective, and decided to share with the community. There are MANY creative people out there who have found very good builds or continue to evolve the ones on the forums to fit their needs better and never had time or inclination to share their findings. The average ‘cookie cutter’ player is not likely to have experimented and learned their class enough to even be qualified to understand what is good or not in a build of their own class, let alone someone elses.

So… whilst there may be plenty of individuals who would use the inspect feature in an honourable fashion or even use it to ask questions about someones build or gear choices to get a better understanding of what it is they are capable of… there would be even more incidents of people being either excluded from groups or forced into sub par builds to join one and thus their fun is diminished either way.

I am perfectly capable of making my own builds and tailoring them to what i want, i do not need some scrub holding me back by requesting i conform to his ill-conceived notion of what is best.

So in closing… whilst it would be nice not to have someone running a MF gear set i am willing to take it on faith that they have gear and build designed to work together and know how to play what they have, because the alternative being asked for here is just far worse overall.

I would add a boss or two in many dungeons that have a constant aura around them that ticks away at your health which is mitigated only by toughness, so your team would NEED healing/regen type supports at least to survive and the more glass cannons in the team, the more support would be required.

Example a full berzerker geared character would take enough damage that heal skill alone and a few dodges would not be enough alone to outpace the damage from the aura (but a maxed toughness guy would break about even or close) but good support with regen, or engineer/guardian/elementalist type healing builds would make up for zerker shortfall in toughness to allow them to survive.

Then you will want a few encounters here and there which CANNOT be melee’d and some others that cannot be ranged, or immune to certain damage types. Enough variety that one specific team will not be the best at everything

the tweaked build is a lot better than the original, seems quite optimised, if you do follow Groks suggestion and replace endure pain with ‘for great justice’ (i agree replacing with fgj or banner would be good idea) then i would also swap the offhand axe for sword or mace since the offhand axe is mainly for that extra fury imo, if you get FGJ you wont need that.

i leveled mostly with sword/pistol and staff and had no problems at all, i found 30-39 to be the most challenging range.

Key to making the leveling process easier is to focus on toughness stat on gear as it makes your survivability that much better.

My philosophy on building my characters is to build around support/survivability but to not completely neglect damage.

I tend to go for the ‘knights’ crafted exotic sets on all my characters and re-skin them with what i like the looks of.

My mesmer is sword/focus and scepter/pistol with a mantra healing build, mostly ‘twisting’ between two mantras to keep group healing going between putting up phantasms and sword attacks.

My warrior is axe/mace and rifle most of the time, healing banners build that mostly remains in melee can can kinda be quite lazy with permanent regeneration and super high toughness

My ranger is greatsword and longbow with 2x ranged traps and 2x spirits that follow me around its pretty fun

Meters would be counter productive, there is no way they could accurately measure contribution, and if one was attempted to measure one thing (say dps?) then we would just see loads of glass cannons in dungeons built to optimise what the meter measured rather than trying to win the dungeons.

player skill is far far more important than any gear they have, usually the players worried most about other players gear are the ones that have the least player skill.

Really full exotics does not necessarily mean you are actually going to be any good at a dungeon, especially if your a warrior with 5 signets and a greatsword for example.

When i look for players i tend to invite anyone that is above the minimum level (ie 55+ for twilight arbor explorable and so on) because dungeons are really not that hard, gear does not matter.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I want a return of the Underworld.

Yes please!!

Even if i am using one of my level 80 characters i tend to avoid the groups calling for level 80 only, as one other poster mentioned, those players are often quite bad themselves and even if they are good, their elitist attitude would likely spoil my fun.

Whenever i have run dungeons with my low level ranger or thief (45 ish on both atm) i am often reviving the level 80 guys who cant seem to dodge because they think their gear will shield or something.
Edit: just to note i dont actually mind reviving level 80 peoples in group just because they are not the best players, aslong as they are fun and we get the dungeon done its all good

Orr is only slightly less trivial than other soloable areas, If you build for a bit of survivability (at least in gear if not in traits) it should not be any problem at all.

Glass Cannon is not a good way to go in Orr i would think (however i have not tried it) due to how enemies mostly ignore pets, utilise CC abilities a lot and move freakin fast.

I found TA to be the hardest dungeon ‘on first go’ however once you get used to it, its possibly one of the easiest.

But given all are pretty easy after a while i would go with TA for that ‘first time’ difficulty and the blossoms etc.

Personally i find pure DPS builds to be more of a liability, me and my guildies run together often in groups which are all support or mixed builds with survivability and synergy… we blow through most of the dungeons with ease. We occassionally grab a PUG for 5th spot and he is some leet DPS thief or 5 signet warrior with a greatsword… thats cool its their choice and we still complete dungeons fine but we spend a lot of time reviving them, that we may as well have gone with 4. (sometimes we do and its still just as easy ;P)

A ‘Controller’ Type build on guardian would be a better use of a group spot. This is essentially a similar ‘role’ to a tank in other games in some ways which is what your obviously after…
Your role is not quite the same as a tank in other games though, the ability to soak up damage and take all the hits is simply never going to be present really in GW2 by anyone, no matter how survivable you make yourself.

However a controller build guardian (or some other classes too can do similar) will immobilise/cripple the melee guys to stop them chasing others in the group thus keeping them away from squishier people… you will knockdown or reflect ranged guys to again, keep them off the squishier. Knockbacks for similar result…. Walls/Rings that block npc movements.

Your role is that of preventing damage being done rather than absorbing it, but essentially i view that as similar type of role to a tank in other games.

William Fairfield.1428:

This is our intent.

Story Mode – Moderate difficulty for a randomly formed pick up group. Memorable moments of achievement and accomplishment when you and a group of strangers overcome a difficult encounter/boss.

Explorable Mode – Moderate difficulty for extremely organized and well versed players. Randomly formed pick up groups should find this content very difficult. Memorable moments of accomplishment and achievement when you defeat an exceptionally difficult boss/encounter.

I think the story modes seem to be about right, but Explorable should be far harder, although some boss events in some dungeons feel appropriately difficult, some are able to be beaten too easily through bugs but would otherwise be ok… and some are just plain too weak. HoTW has some bosses that just take FOREVER to kill yet dont really do anything that makes them challenging, just tons and tons of hp.

Trash on the whole feels about right though imo, maybe some mobs a little harder here and there but most are just fine, its really boss events that will need some Tuning…

Also it would be nice to see ‘elite’ dungeons like there was in GW1, for an extra tier of difficulty sometime in the future (would love a new Underworld)

Mesmers 2 and 3 buttons whilst downed both summon clone/phantasm, so what would be the point of those? :p

You do not even have to change weapon to change build. My warrior swaps around weapons a lot but keeps a high survivability build and toughness (Knights) gear set.

Dual Axe for farming with that build works just fine. You keep a good portion of the dps and cannot really die in solo pve. In dungeons Dual Mace or Axe/Shield or Mace/Shield etc all work well with same build.

even level 80 players are scaled down to 35 so its not a big difference being 80 or 35 for ac explorable, other than trait builds and such being more ‘complete’ at 80 (and a few more stats from gear)

If you cannot do it at 35 you probably still cannot at 80 tbh.

my Warrior uses dual axes most of the time, i rarely have cause to swap to longbow, that is generally during sieges in WvW and a few events in Dungeons :o

Personally i find…

Pistol or Sword to be my favourite offhand for sPvP

Focus for WvW

Focus for Dungeons

Focus or Pistol for general PvE

Have not really found a use for the torch

going for the vitality line to 30 and getting banner regeneration and larger banner buff radius, equipping signet of healing and knights or clerics armour set will give you the survivability you want, the rest of your traits would be built around your weapon of choice however i go with axe which gives the option to equip various off hand items (another axe in offhand for soloing or warhorn for moving around fast… shield for dungeons perhaps)
I also take the toughness line upto +90 toughness when shield is equipped for when i am doing dungeons

Ah sounds like it was rebalanced then nice to hear things getting balanced so quickly

Would love 1h Flails

I use mantra of pain as my only mantra in a healing mantras build (30 vitality line) and its quite fun but i tried a full mantra build and charging 4 mantras is just way too much, it would have to really be charged and left in a full mantra build(similar to the all-signet warrior build that is just there for the + precision and not really used)

there is a few personal story missions that are quite over-tuned, that destroyer queen is one of them, that took me a bit to do with Mesmer (but it is possible, i did only die once on that) there is some early Norn ones that are even tougher imo.

I am getting same issue as the OP, unrelated to black screen issue.

I am on Virgin internet in UK and it may be them limiting bandwidth somehow

I personally find banner healing build to be a little better than shout healing, however i do NOT recommend gearing for +healing in either shout or banners as the +healing i find to really not make enough difference to sacrifice other stats.

I run a dual axe/longbow banners build with KNIGHTS gear(i sometimes use shouts instead in places where people steal my banners or such) And it is overpowered in PvE and WvW tbh. Its dps is only a little lower than glass cannon builds but the survivability is just so much more.

well it is viable, but you have already identified one of the issues (buttons 2 and 3 sharing cooldowns) and the other issue is your lack of ranged power imo. It depends what you are going to be ‘doing’ with this setup? if its sPvP or WvW you may find it a bit suboptimal, however PvE you should be fine with it.

being a casual player doesnt necessarily mean you have to accept being bad at the game… you can get elitists who are bad and casuals who are decent. It only takes 5 competent players to complete a dungeon, they are casual friendly, any casual can learn how to play the game in a basic fashion…

As an axe warrior myself i find the predictability of greatsword warriors extremely ‘easy’ to beat in general… There is far too many greatsword ‘noobs’ who follow fotm builds because they have no idea how to experiment themselves and they tend to suck

… Now that said greatsword is actually a good weapon, its overall DPS is arguably as high as axe with differences being that its damage is applied in spikes and wanes, where axe is fairly consistent. (for sPvP purposes the greatsword is more favourable if your planning to burst with frenzy, but on the other hand the axe has no real ‘burst’ to easily avoid by smart players)

Zietlogik is exaggerating Whilst warriors are not ‘tanks’ obviously i have a 80 warrior that is very survivable, in Solo PvE (if that is what he is referring to) you can actually outregen damage done to you from 2-3 mobs and be essentially invincible if you build right. And in dungeons you can melee just fine. (again you really do need to build and gear correctly to be able to melee in a dungeon, glass cannon builds just wont work :p)

that guy with the shotgun i usually just run in first on my own and kite them around the building, the ones that hit hard tend to need to stop and build a shot so you LOS them before they get the shot off, and im built for toughness so i can take more than a few anyways. once its down to just the shotgun guy left (rest of your team is peeling and focusing one at a time) he doesnt seem to hurt too much i find its the knockback thing he does that is what you need to avoid.

edit: if the shotgun guys knockback thing (i know he chains it over and over untill your out of range) is actually killing you… your toughness/vitality is not as high as you think it is. It is damaging for sure but it should not be killing you.. But it is quite easy to avoid anyway

Not finding a lot of 1-2 shot kills really and ive been doing explorable and storymode of many dungeons now. It is possible you are not gearing/building correctly for dungeons. Glass cannons just do not cut it in dungeons i find.

I pray they do not make the dungeons easier to cater to people came from WoW expecting another easy-mode game
Story mode requires people to be actually be able to play, build and gear and i like that. Explorable mode requires even more so.
I do not know about dungeons being for the 1-2% but my advice would be… if you think you are not part of that % rather than whine and moan and try bring dungeons down to your level.. try to raise YOURSELF to the level the dungeon was designed for. It honestly is not that difficult just to learn the mechanics, builds and gameplay.