Guild Wars 2

Kaleban.9834:

Just a couple things.

If you’re looking to carry bad PUGs or other groups, playing a glass cannon is not really the best call. You need to be able to establish and maintain aggro, so a ranged Assassin/Zerk Ele is not going to cut it.

What I would suggest is looking into Condition setups. There are several sets available that allow very high Condi (using Burn in Fire) output, while also ramping up Toughness, Vitality and/or Healing Power. Since Condition builds aren’t reliant on crits, you can spec into other aspects, maintain high DPS and still be resilient enough to not go down like a wet noodle.

I’ve gone through the various metas, even had full Celestial when it still had magic find on it lol. From what I’ve seen, and apart from “structures” in various game modes, a Burning Condi Ele is likely the BEST mix of DPS and survivability hands down.

In fact, looking at some of the new four attribute sets, it seems to me that for absolute best DPS from both direct damage and Condi, Viper’s may end up being the new meta. It does sacrifice Ferocity, but basically has the best of both worlds from Power and Condition setups, allowing full utilization of both types, while still making use of all “on crit” abilities.

Trailblazer’s is also an interesting choice, and something I’ve been thinking of for Raids. It also allows for high Condi output, while really ramping up your survivability.

Lastly, you’ll likely want to switch to (and practice with) Dagger/Focus and Dagger/Warhorn. The first is excellent for “aggressive tanking” with all the solo survivability tools, while the Warhorn offhand makes for some good party support. In almost ANY game mode short of WvW backline, the Dagger primary is going to be the superior offensive weapon.

I’ve only run 3 of the dungeons myself, and I get where you’re going with this. I’ve done condi build before and understand that with HoT it’s more necessary than it used to be. But if I have a bad group I’m playing with – this won’t really cut it for dungeon runs. I mean it would in some instances when I have hours to do nothing but fight mobs – but for example at the end of TA you have a limited time to deplete en enemies health before minions get respawned and you’re back at the beginning of the fight. Slow burns just won’t work for that.

Survivability isn’t so much of an issue for me, not trying to say I play better than others or anything but recognizing enemies attacks and keeping my health up is how I’ve gotten used to playing. This is why I’m looking for the way to deal the most damage constantly (as in not relying on spikes) because I would rather not be running a build where I’m wasting time waiting for an enemy to burn down.

I do have to say that the Superior Runes of Rage are really working out for me though, this new build is more fun to play because I don’t have to stress about keeping distance as much as I was before. If an enemy closes the gap I can drop a lava font at my location, use arcane wave followed by arcane brilliance which does nice damage (heals me as well) and grants 32 seconds of fury. I find myself actually using Earth attunement much more now because after that I just use Burning Retreat, followed by Eruption and Unsteady ground or Magnetic aura (or both) before moving onto air/water attunement. End up with 48 seconds of Fury keeping my Crit chance at 100% the whole time… plus like a mentioned before I get more ferocity from these runes than other sets.

There was actually an event earlier today where after it was over I still had over a minute of fury left.

Okay, so I’ve dropped the idea of swapping back to air for my main attunement altogether because over the past 2 days I’ve noticed a very clear drop in dps… combined with a renewed dislike for the fact the first skill constantly drags non aggressive mobs into the fight when I’m soloing. After reviewing the different runes and sigils I’ve come up with a new idea concerning ferocity.

I’m thinking about going with the traits Fire 1-1-1, Air 3-1-1, and Arcane 1-2-2… and using Superior Runes of Rage. My passive critical chance will drop because I’m also removing signet of fire (so losing 355 precision altogether) so I can run with Arcane Brilliance, Glyph of Storms, Arcane Wave, Arcane Blast, And Greater Elementals.

Did the math and the precision I loose barely drops my crit chance 17%, which will be more than covered by gaining the Fury boon when I do blast finishers on fire fields. The runes of the Rage also boosts my ferocity more than Scholar did (which actually only gave me as much ferocity as the Eagle runes I was using before)… and the Arcane trait Elemental Surge boosts my ferocity for 15s after using arcane skills as well.

I’m loosing some of the pure damage boost from the runes I used and dropping the water trait, but I will still get +5% damage while under the effects of fury (which also gets extended by traits and runes) so going to see if that will be enough to deal more damage or not.

Really appreciate all the feedback so far, let me know what you think of my new strategy as well please

Honestly, I’m looking for a build that will allow me to carry a group. My parents are both in their late 50’s – and my wife has undergone 5 different surgeries on her eyes already. By focusing on a build centered around crit-every hit philosophy I’m hoping that it’ll be easier for me to maintain aggro and allow them to experience dungeon paths. With the build I started this thread with (for example), I would already have the Svanir Shaman (from the Maw) chasing ME down half the times I participate, even though I stand across that small ramp facing away from the lag-tastic summony thing. I know that aggro doesn’t really exist much in this game but I certainly have no problem maintaining hate in groups – I’m just trying to find the best way to deal damage while I’m doing so, cause keeping hate only gets harder the longer you have to do it.

Your strategy of putting more stats into ferocity even sacrificing precision for it sounds like it might be best after all. I’ll revisit the runes and sigils you mentioned.

Okay so I played around with my traits some more… going Arcane 1-3-2, Air 3-2-2, Water 1-3-3…

Now without eating the truffle steaks – my critical chance is 95%… also swapped the glyphs on my utilities for arcane wave and blast and even replaced signet of fire with arcane shielding for the stun break + block. What Elite skill should I run with to maximize damage? I was using Glyph of Greater Elementals but without inscription it seems like another option might suit better. Any thoughts?

I am wondering how much the base damage will change though as getting rid of half my might building traits would seem to lower my power a lot. Going to run it this way for a week or so and see how it plays out.

Alekt.5803:

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

Fresh Air allows me to swap to air attunement after a crit, correct? Trying to understand how exactly (on staff) that would be of any benefit…

Well, all elements have a high hitting spell: Eruption, Ice Spike, Lightning Surge, Lava Font.

In between every cast of air bolts you can swap to Earth or Water or Fire during the travel time. Once the bolt hits for a crit, Air is cooldown is already refreshed: simply cast number 2 on Earth or Water and immediately swap to cancel aftercast. With that, you come back to a decent auto attack attunement while also dealing the 0.7 power ratio bolt. You will also gain from the 1200 bleeding damage of eruption.

Suggesting that I use air as my main damage dealing source instead of fire would be an interesting choice – do you think I would be better using Air, Arcane, Water as traits then since using Air all the time would make it pointless to invest in traits that give me might for using fire skills or cause burning on crits.

I’m really not understanding the points regarding zerker meta, there’s a reason that everyone uses it – I get that. I’m not trying to say they’re wrong, nor trying to say what I’m doing works better. But this is working better for me now, so I’m looking for ways to improve what I’m working towards, not what everyone else does.

roelvanesch.2817:

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

Secondly, I tried zerker stats – and when fighting jormag’s claw the highest my base fireball damage ever did was 8k per attack. By simply swapping my gear set for assassins I always crit, dealing a minimum of 10.3k per base fireball to that same meta during the same phase.

The only advantage of assassins to zerker is a higher chance to crit. Thus, on your highest damage attack (which IS a crit) zerker WILL always do more damage. If you are getting higher damage on a single crit with assassins, rather than with zerker, some other factor is in play (food/traits?). Otherwise, these numbers don’t make sense.

Let me explain where you misread my information…

The base attack with zerkers was 8k – just most frequent and thus closer to average than highest damage I could do. Getting spikes of 11-12k every 7 or 8 attacks does not outweigh the fact that a minimum of 10.3k for each of those same attacks with assassins gear does more damage.

Now, to further explain my build… every crit has a chance to deal burning damage, grant me might – etc. My build is highly dependent on crits because these factors push my geared Ele way over the damage threshold you seem to believe best… you can continue to believe what you will but changing my gear isn’t an option in my search to find better damage output.

Alekt.5803:

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

Alekt.5803:

Change assassin.

To…?

And why? It would do less damage if I changed lol, objective is to deal more damage since I have no defense. Need to kill stuff faster not slower.

Your idea about being “very dependant” to crit is flawed from the start. You don’t even have fresh air to begin with. With berserker, you have more power, which means that your critical strikes will benefit from that extra power (Crit is a simple multiplier.)

I could bet that your build deals less damage than the majority of max glassy builds with that set-up.

Fresh Air allows me to swap to air attunement after a crit, correct? Trying to understand how exactly (on staff) that would be of any benefit…

Secondly, I tried zerker stats – and when fighting jormag’s claw the highest my base fireball damage ever did was 8k per attack. By simply swapping my gear set for assassins I always crit, dealing a minimum of 10.3k per base fireball to that same meta during the same phase.

If you’re not going to research things and have any viable input please feel free to leave. I’m looking to get feedback supporting my build not scrapping it and starting from scratch on a much weaker version.

Alekt.5803:

Change assassin.

To…?

And why? It would do less damage if I changed lol, objective is to deal more damage since I have no defense. Need to kill stuff faster not slower.

I use both of those… are you using a build editor perhaps instead of the game to check those traits? Just wondering why there’s a discrepancy…

The following post is basically just me asking for advice on my characters build, trying to see if anyone can help me notice where I may not be maximizing damage output. For the record, I don’t have HoT – and obviously such a glass cannon build isn’t viable in PvP so we’re really only looking to improve damage output if at all possible. Thanks in advance for any feedback/suggestions you may be able to help me find.

I run full ascended, assassin’s gear (main precision, subs are power and ferocity) with the exception of trinkets as they’re only available in rampager’s stats (main precision, subs power and condition damage). So if you’re beginning by wondering why I don’t use zerkers meta let me clarify – when I eat Plate of Truffle Steak (+100 power +70 Precision) ankitten ot in a zone under level 80… I practically have 100% chance to critically hit my target. Not everything is vulnerable to crits which I understand, however my build is very dependent on being able to crit every hit so that’s what guided my choice in the matter. Only thing I don’t have ascended yet is back piece, and underwater gear.

For traits I run Fire 1-1-2, Air 3-1-1, Water 1-3-3… utilize superior runes of the eagle (mainly to boost precision but the 6% damage increase to targets under 50% health works well with Bolt to the Heart)… Superior Sigils of Accuracy and Strength (cause 60% chance to gain might on every hit, coupled with the might for using any fire skill or glyph keeps me between 16-20 stacks of might just soloing).

I wield staff, cause having absolutely no defense requires keeping my distance from targets – and because staff really feels like the only weapon with fall back healing capabilities to me. I use the Healing Glyph, Glyph of Storms, Lesser Elementals and Greater Elementals for the Elite. I also have the Signet of Fire on my skillbar but that’s because I don’t know how close to 100% crit chance I’ll be able to get with ascended back piece is, considering changing it for arcane blast or wave… cause I like being able to do more damage.

So, any suggestions? I do swap into Water and Air but rarely find myself jumping into Earth with this build. Water tends to be my main fall back since the second staff skill does so much damage…

sigils that stack like the bloodlust have more than that as a drawback…

if you plan to do zone completion as any type of focus stay away from stacks, they don’t just vanish when you are downed but also when you submerge. Any character looking to do both ground and underwater content will consistently be building stacks. If you think you may change a lot then skip stacking sigils altogether.

But an easy fix nonetheless…

“Guild Wars 2: Heart of ThornsDiscussion of the upcoming expansion Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns”

Literally copied and pasted from the main forum page, it’s only been a week since it’s release but how much longer is it going to say it’s an upcoming release? Until the game stops crashing every 10-20 minutes on folks? lol

I know a lot of people here probably spend more time playing the game than reading news articles, but I couldn’t find anything posted on the blog or to the forums concerning the heartbleed virus that some websites experienced problems with and GW2…

I’m not even sure if this site is vulnerable to such a problem, but it would be great to hear feedback about whether or not our accounts are safe – and if it was an issue and patched (or going to be), when it is safe to change our passwords to resecure our accounts.

Thanks for your time.

Playing D/D sure seems complicated… having the right healing skill is such a long debate it makes me glad I went Staff instead.

For the record, I use Healing Seed on staff – allows me to create a regen field at target area which is just another way I can support tanks during important fights while other skills are on CD.

The heart/karma vendor named Qoetl located at the swampwatch outpost in Sparkfly fen…

He sells Sun God Totems as accessories for the earring slots. And he sells Rings of the Sun God as accessories… for the earring slots.

Seeing as the stats are identical, and the cost mirrored as well – I believe the rings are meant to be equippable to the ring slot. I did actually confirm the issue wasn’t with the preview stat comparison window from the shop itself by buying one and trying to equip it to the ring slot, it just wouldn’t work.

So the preview comparing it to what earrings you have on is fine, the slot it equips to just isn’t.

Thanks for your time, hopefully when I’m on my next level 50 character I’ll be able to get these rings =)

Burrfish.6408:

Things to note

• Scepter’s Air auto-attack is actually incomplete, the #2 skill must be used in conjunction with auto-attack to achieve maximum DPS
• Conjured Weapons perform much better than Scepter or Staff, but they’re a tad worse than Dagger.

I’m confused about this bit… if the whole test was simply determining which auto attacks kill faster the first point seems to fit if you swap any weapon for the word ‘scepter’. Comparing auto attacks is an incomplete test so of course air on scepter will not achieve maximum DPS.

And Why are the conjured weapons placed as they are? Conjured weapons perform 5 skills whereas scepter/dagger/staff perform 20 skills. If you want to compare how conjures are DPS wise you should compare all their DPS ability to all of the DPS ability of any other weapon. Summizing that conjures perform better or worse than any of the other weapons when you don’t have any of the flexibility those others offer seems like your plan to to beat the game using only the #1 skill.

You know why there are posts with combo chains that can maximize your DPS? Because maximizing your DPS can only be achieved when NOT relying on the auto-attack for DPS. It’s nice to know the base damage that auto-attacks can do but spending any time drawing conclusions based on Auto-attacks isn’t going to win you any battles, learn your other skills.

I keep seeing the suggestion of PvE zones being overflow by default. While it would help the population issues there are some drawbacks to this approach as well. Harvesting nodes are server specific and if loading into a zone pushed you to overflow wouldn’t someone be able to just continue re-entering Orr and Frostgorge until they got fresh Orich nodes to farm?

DE and Meta events don’t go off on every server at the same time, and usually when I have guildees talking about Dragon Champions spawning I enjoy going there to play with my friends. If Overflow instances can get full how would i be able to continue playing with my friends? Currently it’s set up so they can swap to your overflow or you can wait till there’s space on your server – I’ve never been in separate overflows so I wouldn’t know if there is a way to switch between them…

And if there is a way to swap between them so easily that would only make Orich farming more abusive yet again. It’s a great concept but there’s loads more issues that will occur if all PvE zones become overflow rather than just merging a few servers together.

marianitten.1247:

there are no Dead servers. People are dispersed. Lion’s arch right now always is in overflow. It’s logical that that fewer people is playing in the middle zones…

Anyway… where do you hear that they are going to merge servers? That is absurd.

I certainly didn’t hear any such news from an official source at this point, I just can’t think of an MMO which has never once merged their servers.

There’s a lot of complaints concerning the gear in higher level ascalon zones. For release they went ahead and put the Charr tier 3 cultural skins on the karma gear and when they did finish what was originally intended for those items – people who invested karma in them kinda just got shafted (even though Karma is now cake to earn).

Avoiding any kind of troubles which upset the consumer isn’t necessarily on the list of priorities for development teams. If we discuss these things in a place they monitor my hope is it just clicks with someone that they should fix it before it happens… thus resulting in less ill will between the two groups.? Complaining about the few things that upset us seems to be what people think the forums is for… I think the devs deserve more respect for the game they have given us and even if none of our suggestions for possible problems down the line are taken into account, the least we can do is let them know what we anticipate to be problems that they can look into.

There’s been a lot of threads requesting the merge of servers to that PvE isn’t so… dead. This thread itself, is to discuss some of the complications that could arise and hopefully provide positive solutions to those IF servers were to ever merge.

For example, I’m in a situation where I’m a Member of Guild A on Server X. I’m also a member of Guild B, on Server Y. I joined A before release because I wanted an active experience from the get go, B is just all my friends who jumped onto the server they are on because it wasn’t full and they could all be together that way. I figured with guesting coming I shouldn’t have a problem being in A for the most part and jumping into B when my friends wanna do stuff.

As I’m the only member of Guild B, on Server X… I’ve taken it upon myself to spend a bit of influence to get the guild vault. I’ve stopped at this point so far for one reason… Guild upgrades are server specific – so what would happen if Servers X and Y merged?

I’m fairly certain that I will continue to unlock the full 250 slots for guild storage on my server, our personal banks max at 240 and it costs more to get gems than influence. I’m going ahead with this because Server X is consistently full population speaking, and Y isn’t so bad either so a merger between those two seems highly unlikely. But is it a ‘continue at your own risk’ scenario?

I would certainly like to get a heads up before a merger does take place, if I need to pull my stuff out of the vault to keep it from getting lost in cyberspace I have no problems doing so. Devs are great at communication so I’m certain they would be kind enough to do that.

But what about the investment in the upgrades? I said that getting influence was cheaper than getting gems to unlock bank tabs – I certainly am not saying it’s free. If I alone spent time earning influence to unlock the 250 slots I would be earning it for near on a year before that occurred. I’m not asking for a refund on the influence earned though – in the guild panel it clearly keeps record (though for how long I am uncertain) of who uses items to grant influence to their guild. Would there be any chance that tomes of influence would be given to those who lost upgrades due to a merger so that it wasn’t all for naught? Please note I’m not asking for coin back, as going to a guild promoter to support your guild shouldn’t be refundable imo – just the influence to be used on other upgrades since I did go out and pay for it.

What other possible problems do you all see concerning a merger? Hopefully we can help the devs with their considerations on the process, since merges are fairly staple in any MMO game anyways I figure the least we can offer are possible solutions to problems that can happen rather than complain about things after the fact…

Oglaf.1074:

Now you’re just being a troll, Mr unpronounceable-account-name.

People who mislead others in the Players Helping Players subforum deserve to be trolled…

You have a Warrior friend and a scholar class, get your friend to go crit signet build while your scholar goes toughness to the max. Let your scholar go in and attack mobs (at various levels) and the warrior with the rifle use the Kill Shot skill (which can in PvP builds do damage of 15k)

If the mob keeps aggroing your scholar instead of the one doing damage I have absolutely no problem apologizing (and even backing your suggestions in the future). If you who was so willing to test this in the first place are too scared to prove your theory now, then why should I not be questioning you all this time?

And before you ask why I don’t just do this, you can look to my previous posts and ask yourself if you think I actually have friends in the first place. All I know is I do damage out the oiseau and have a hard time ever finding anyone who can hold aggro from mobs off of me (even when I have 0 buff to toughness).

Clark Skinner.4902:

Geez, there’s no reason to put Oglaf on trial. He was just putting his experience out there. Nothing to take offense with.

The suggestion to take test of aggro at level 1 base is enough to take offense with. No serious gamer would ever do something like that – the aggro system is put in place to determine which player character a mob will try to kill based on several factors. At level 1 none of those factors have a chance to take place because everything dies in 1-3 hits.

Testing these things is a serious deal and those who come up with such ludicrous tests shouldn’t be trusted. All he seems to care about is the initial target that’s chosen by a mob which just goes to show his warrior/guardians friends probably take that first step into aggro everytime.

If he wants to prove toughness as a factor make a tanky scholar and a glassy heavy, see which one gets attacked throughout the fight not initially… his tests are all one sided BS as is.

Would be fun to do organized DE runs… make it feel more like it did at release.

Back then I wasn’t soloing Meta events because the server decides it’s time to make a serious WvW push. WvW was a past time, and I understand there being guilds who actively participate in WvW. But as a player completely uninterested in said portion of the game I’m ready to start reporting their cries for help as spam – anytime I visit a city those NPC’s crying for participation in the Mists are annoying enough.

Which is why I don’t feel pushing DE on others is right either. If they wanna participate they’ll be out there running around doing the DE – if they don’t, they won’t. Instead of organized runs you should look into establishing a pure PvE guild that focuses on these things daily… that’s the more logical (and considerate) path to take.

What I would love to see is Anet develop reasons for DE in older areas to be entertaining again – so that those who do enjoy PvE choose to revisit older areas. All this focus on new content for holidays is imo kinda lame… such a big game world and so much time ahead of us why push it all this fast? Let people enjoy what’s there and if they can’t then make it better. Hopefully someday they do that.

Hmmm… I like the system the way it is.

Not only do I get to play with a great group of people when they’re online – but I can have a guild bank all to myself. Do some math – the cost of gems to increase your bank tab to a max of 240…

Or the minor cost of buying influence to wait just over a week and get yourself 250 slots from having your own guild vault/trove/deep.

There’s a helluva lot of benefits to being in multiple guilds… and personally I come from games where restrictions (outside leadership of said guilds) didn’t exist. I’m not a hardcore player – you don’t want me in your guild and I don’t belong there.

Casual players enjoy being able to flit between casual guilds because as you say not a lot of people represent all the time. Perhaps instead of being hardcore between certain hours of the day you should look to merge with another guild that’s hardcore at the opposite spectrum of the day. If your guild is constantly active do to dual leadership keeping events running (and such) then perhaps people wouldn’t feel the need to flock between guilds looking for places to be active.

In the end, hardcore guild leaders need to stop only doing things at certain hours – because that drives away players who are active longer than that. The first step to a more active guild is either being more active yourself or finding someone to share the responsabilities… I tried going hardcore once and the fact that all those guilds do happens in a spawn of 4-5 hours straight and nothing the rest of the day bored me away from it.

I’m not going to commit to any one guild because they simply will never be there for me the rest of the time.

AnemoneMeer.7182:

You cannot generally assume you will never get hit. It’s simply impossible to never, ever, ever get hit when fighting ranged enemies.

Blind, stun, daze, reflect, absorb, dodge, knockdown, launch…

If you don’t see where I’m going with that, what I mean is there’s skills you can use to prevent yourself from taking damage. Control the situation 85% or more of the time throughout the fight and when the enemy is dead your health auto regens no need to use a healing skill.

I’m not saying taking damage can be avoided at all costs, taking so much damage in a fight that healers are necessary to keep you alive is weak.

I run an Elementalist, I run Glass Cannon at level 80… I solo Orr mobs even ranged ones. I can’t afford to take damage due to my health pool and the more I bother healing myself the more my DPS suffers, so even if I end the fight with HP in the hundreds instead of the thousands – ranged enemies aren’t any more difficult to survive against than melee. In fact thanks to the fact that melee mobs seem to be coded (in Orr at least) to attack you from behind and run faster than you, ranged mobs seem easier to defeat in comparison.

I didn’t come to your thread to bash healing… just found the title interesting and decided to check it out. Saw the post about the trinity being a desired element and threw in my 2 cents about how it’s worthless to me. Healers aren’t bad for the game… the thought that they’re required to accomplish anything does their archetype no good.

Nayru.3947:

There is nothing and never has been anything wrong with the “holy trinity.” The holy trinity has more variety than the auto attack, auto attack and auto attack GW2 combat.

The only reason dedicated healers aren’t in GW2 is because they lacked the skill to implement them into the flawed solo combat system.

So yeah people can go water ele, or some other useless sub-par “healing” build, but I’d kick them from my group in a heartbeat.

Spam dodge + 6 and you stay alive. Takes so much skill.

I have only one flaw with the Trinity… anyone can do it.

It takes skill to NOT take damage when fighting an enemy – that’s why no matter the MMO I’m in my motto is “Healers are for people who get hit”

Whether it’s automated die roll or active dodging those who rely on others to keep them alive through a fight deserve to loose them… The trinity was assembled for people who are too weak to win solo.

And as far as the ‘Spam dodge and 6’ arguement… I use healing seed for my 6 skill – it grants regen in a field. I find myself throwing it out to benefit those around me not because I got hit.

masterclass.4960:

im level 14 .

Personal recommendation… go through Queensdale into Kessex Hills. Don’t exit via the Swamp that’s too far away and the path through Kessex might not be very forgiving, instead go through the exit that’s in the Southwestern most corner of Queensdale, there’s a town over there.

At level 14 you will be a bit low for this, but as there’ll be plenty of people doing the event (in my experience always 8+ participants) there’s a string of 4 Events that take place just south of Fort Salma involving centaurs. You’ll have to make sure you attack the mobs long enough since at your level when you attack it does less damage and maybe quite a few ‘glancing’ shots. You’ll still be able to get credit if you hit the mobs though and if some enemy really decides not to like you there’s plenty of people always willing to give you a quick rez (since they get XP for that too).

Main thing to keep in mind with this approach is until you reach the level of the event it’s prolly best to keep a ranged weapon equipped. If you get in Melee range (or hang around certain champions) you can prolly get one-shot killed there.

Doing that chain a few times over can very quickly level you up. I (for instance) have a level 41 character that I’ve only spent 37 hours playing (though I don’t skimp out on doing the personal story missions either, those certainly have the highest rewards if you do them at or slightly below level recommendation).

They might have just banned a load of bot accounts, I’m not running around zones to notice any impact else I could say (one way or the other) for certain…

Class Name: Martial Artist… not real picky on actual name
Class Type: Medium
Weapons of choice: Staff, Nunchaku, Unarmed and a Chakram for ranged…

General gist/ miscellaneous:
Would simply be a Martial Artist… one of the Utility skill branches would obviously need to be Grappling so there was some CC available.

Instead of a weapon swap, could also possibly do this class such that it mirrored the Elementalist. All the ‘attunements’ would be variations of skills (karate, mui tai, kickboxing…) and instead of weapons like the staff or nunchaku let the fourth attunement be Chakra based skills for ranged attacks.

Most Ele’s complaints are all based about how they can’t change range when fighting because there’s no weapon swap, so having three melee arts and a ranged one just makes sense to me.

Oglaf.1074:

Test it.

Create a lvl 1 Warrior/Guardian and have a Mesmer/Necro/Elementalist both walk into the same aggro range; the mob will initially target the Heavy armor profession.

Then create get two Heavy armor professions and load one with Toughness and walk into aggro range of the same mob; the one with Toughness will be the initial target.

As I said though, A LOT of mobs have their own special aggro rules. This is how it works for me and my friends. Why it apparently doesn’t for you, I don’t know.

… Have you not considered that perhaps level 1 zones will have all the mobs coded to target higher hit point pools so as to not make people quit scholar professions from the get go?

Take your tests to level 80 – where fights actually depend on an aggro based system to succeed. If at level 80 Guardians initally take aggro over Elementalists then great, you’ve proven that Guardians take aggro before Scholars. Just because they’re Guardians doesn’t mean they will hold aggro – just because they have toughness doesn’t mean they will hold aggro. Basing your tests off level 1 mobs is the reason you have such ludicrous fantasies…

If you come back having tested these things at level 10, 20, 30, 80… I would be more likely to listen to your opinons. Now that I know all you test is at level 1, your potential credibility is gone…

masterclass.4960:

hi ive been playing and trying to level up by helping people and it will not give me xp when I help and when I kill mobs it dosn’t give me xp please help

Best way to get XP is to fight the same mobs that others are fighting… the only catch is that if you hit an enemy once and move on you may not be contributing enough to get credit.

What I mean is lets say there’s a Bandit you’re trying to kill. He has X amount of HP and you hit him once or twice for A amount of damage. The game is set up so that if you don’t deal a certain percentage of damage, you didn’t do enough to warrant a reward.

so if A is = or > % of X, then you get XP and possibly some drops… make sure you do enough damage before tackling the next mob.

runeblade.7514:

I’ll agree when GW2 is a Massive soloplayer online role playing game.

I’ve played this game for over 500 hours so far… I’d say that perhaps 30-50 hours total was intentionally grouping with people for gaming.

300 hours of that, was me running around on my various characters playing the game and interacting with various people in game while I was at it.

The remaining time I spent on my characters either in Personal Story instances by myself… or running around the world doing my normal gaming thing and seeing no one else at all. I would venture to say that I’ve likely solo’d a minimum of 200 Dynamic events, some going on consecutively whilst others simply back to back… with at least one Meta event solo’d in there as well.

I’m on Jade Quarry, by no means a small population server… so though I don’t like the sound of what I’m about to say -

GW2 is the most Massive soloplayer online role-playing game I’ve ever participated in

Yeah this is a suggestion, please release a public statement about how much progress you have made concerning the skins. Recently people who bought karma gear had their skins patched into different models… and thus they wasted their transmutation stones on items they no longer enjoy.

I don’t need an exact date as to when skins will be finalized, but until such time as they are I’m hesitant to do anything else related to skins (and thus personally have no more endgame content to enjoy) when it can be changed on me any moment. Just please let us know how things are progressing on this front and keep us assured the end of such events are near.

Also when these types of changes are complete (if not already, which would be a quick simple response here) it would be great to hear such news! Really enjoying the game just a bit sad when we as consumers can so easily get screwed over by changes that are predetermined to take place upon completion.

Slenderman.8506:

Can you guys seriously make the time when the daily achievements reset something more reasonable. I was 2 objectives away from completely finishing them all until it reset at 4:00 pm game time… Please change it to something more reasonable because i’m sure most of use wouldn’t expect it to reset so soon.

It resets at 6pm where I live. I sleep from 2pm until 9pm daily because I work from 10pm until 7am. If they made the reset at noon my time…

I would still have the time to either do the daily before it – or after it. Why do you only play from 3:40pm until 4:10pm server time? Personal problems don’t require Developers to change the game, get over yourself.

Oglaf.1074:

Are you sure those guys have lots of Toughness? Plenty of glasscannons Warriors and even Guardians around. I run an Elementalist with all damage gear and 0 Toughness and unless I’m up against something that is designed to attack me (freaking Riflemen, I hate you!) I never ever pull aggro of proper Warriors/Guardians.

I’ve also tested this a lot. I have a Warrior buddy with the same build as me, except he runs with Emerald accessories and I use Ruby: he draws all the aggro because that extra Toughness from his accessories makes him a tastier target than me. Should we switch, I would draw all the aggro instead.

Oglaf.1074:

After Toughness, profession seems to play a part. Guardians/Warriors have an easier time getting aggro compared to Engineers/Rangers/Thieves, who in turn have easier time getting aggro compared to Mesmers/Elementalists/Necromancers.

I get less aggro when I have no toughness, and because I’m an Ele – according to your original post.

Base toughness for all classes at level 80 is 916, so when I say I have 916 toughness everyone else has either that or higher. Whether they invest in it or not – according to you they should by profession draw more aggro as well.

So either a) toughness plays no part… or b) the priority you listed of professions plays no part. There’s also c) both are incorrect… but I can honestly say I don’t go out and test these things.

All I do know, is I drag aggro off everyone. It’s not because I have toughness, possibly because I am squishy but I can’t confirm that… and highly likely because I deal S*** tons of damage.

Galrond.5972:

Staff:
All projectiles now move faster. (You can evade them by walking sideways at the moment.)

Lava tomb now inflicts burning to enemies, which stand in it.
Meteor shower cast time reduced by 50%
Flame burst cooldown reduced to 8 seconds.

Ice spike impact time reduced by 50%
Water blast now inflicts chilled instead of healing allies.

Eruption explosion time reduced by 50%

Lightning surge cast time reduced by 50%
Gust gets replaced by something usefull… Never hits if the enemy isn’t charging straight in your face.

As I’ve been using the Staff for 3 months+ now… I think that some of this is rediculous.

Meteor Shower has flexibility now, if you half cast it they still fall just less – that functionality works perfectly fine.
Burning as a Condition is weak, rather than let me spam more of a weak condition I would rather the base damage output be raised to the level of bleed and/or poison… there’s already plenty of ways to inflict it there’s just no bite from it.
Ice Spike drops fine, in the time it forms overhead you can use a CC skill and they’re boned – it’s our highest power related damage skill atm and speeding it up is unnecessary.
Ice inflicts chilled not water – so Water blasts should remain as healing and if you want the skill changed remove the water part completely.
Eruption works fine, I wouldn’t complain about a slight decrease in the explosion time but halving it is way too much.
I have no issues with Lightning Surge, though would rather see a stun/daze effect as the CC over blindness because I can’t cast this and expect it to interrupt an attack being powered up by others.
I dunno that there’s been a time for me when Gust missed – and it’s quite useful so would be upset if they scrapped it.

Oglaf.1074:

It is pretty easy; mobs go for the character with highest Toughness. So adding Toughness on a squishy character in hopes of surviving better actually has the opposite effect, ironically. That is the one rule of aggro that will generally always work.

After Toughness, profession seems to play a part. Guardians/Warriors have an easier time getting aggro compared to Engineers/Rangers/Thieves, who in turn have easier time getting aggro compared to Mesmers/Elementalists/Necromancers.

You also have mobs which have their own special aggro rules. The best example here are the Bandit Riflemen in CM exploration; they are total opposite in that they will go for the squishiest target in range and will almost never retaliate when hit in melee if there are ranged targets available.

Lastly you have equipment based aggro; melee weapons will draw more aggro than ranged in general, and a shield will give you even more on top of that.

This confuses me greatly…

I’m an Elementalist (supposedly one of the last targeted professions)
I use a Staff (supposedly one of the least aggro drawing weapons)
And while I do add toughness on some builds I go completely glass cannon (ie 916 toughness and vitality at level 80) for a month and see no difference in aggro rate.

I tend to pull aggro away from any profession I’m fighting with (whether they’re also all ranged or there’s Warriors trying to hundred blade an enemy and guardians with shields whacking them with a mace). I see this happen in multiple zones across multiple enemy types AND in various dungeons.

I’m not trying to say that your list is completely wrong it just makes absolutely no sense given my situation… and if I had anything to offer as reason why your list is just odd it’s prolly because one of my builds gives my character over 3k in attack with a 62% crit chance.

To the OP – ignoring the fact that damage is a source of aggro seems to be the norm among players for some reason – I suggest not following that thought process myself…

I found myself soloing the champions that were attacking the people striking against the Claw. I felt like I was contributing – and gained a sense of accomplishment because soloing 3 champions before the claw dies (at least a month ago – maybe not so much now that more people seem to only fight adds) isn’t exactly a quick deal.

LaronX.8079:

I would like to see a skill called “The Glow” on the Ele.

What it does ? Pretty simple you enter a state of high cocnration and gaina skillbar with 5 skills ( one for each element and one for arcane) by switching you atument you switch the power of the skills. E.g. in fire all spells are offensiv, in water they are more defensiv, in are they are utility based and in earth they focus on condtions.

You also gain glowing eyes during the elit skill. Maybe some fancy effects based on te attument.

Sylvari already have glowing eyes… in fact a good portion of the time I’m in game I glow as is. If my state doesn’t change because I chose my race already I’d be pretty upset.

SpelignErrir.4263:

Navzar.2938:

So then an elementalist should be a sylvari, because a plant is closer to nature?

Well, if you choose a sylvari, better stay away from fire attunement.

If you give a man a match he’ll be warm for a minute, if you light a man on fire he’ll be warm the rest of his life…

Both unique and cool ideas, would love to see them implemented. +1

Khristophoros.7194:

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

It’s like everything else in this game, one of the things you have to choose to take or sacrifice.

We’re not all fast, durable, high power and condition damage builds that can heal.

This in it’s current state should help create some separation between Condition builds based on evasion, and glass cannons for the same reason. If the overall movement speed was buffed then tanks would move at the same speed which is a bit rediculous.

I’m not saying I approve of the return of the Trinity or anything, but more separation between builds will only make more people already having a hard time soloing to work together to accomplish things. Instead of making the game based on a grind hopefully they’ll start releasing content that requires players to work together…

Because lets face it, the only reason people pick and choose who goes into dungeons with them is because they want to spend as little time doing it as possible not because they’re hard to finish.

You’re talking about opportunity costs, and I understand that.

But it’s not really an opportunity cost in this game, mostly due to the system that allows you to change your skills around very easily.

I can run around with a 25% speed signet, then switch to another skill right before a fight. I can run around with a Warhorn and switch to another weapon in the same way. I am not sacrificing a thing unless I am too lazy to switch those things before I fight.

Lol you should give fighting with a 25% movement buff before saying it’s pointless. As a Glass Cannon if I ran at the same combat speed as everyone else I would have to rely on dodging forever. You get 2 dodges and then have to survive… (of course there’s CC as well but a full on glass cannon doesn’t invest in that either so it’s usually not reliable enough)

My build uses +0 vit and +0 toughness… when at 80 you run with 916 vit and toughness with a 2000 power and 2100 precision (over 3k in attack), you need that 25% more in combat as well. Unless you never plan to handle anything on your own =P

It’s like everything else in this game, one of the things you have to choose to take or sacrifice.

We’re not all fast, durable, high power and condition damage builds that can heal.

This in it’s current state should help create some separation between Condition builds based on evasion, and glass cannons for the same reason. If the overall movement speed was buffed then tanks would move at the same speed which is a bit rediculous.

I’m not saying I approve of the return of the Trinity or anything, but more separation between builds will only make more people already having a hard time soloing to work together to accomplish things. Instead of making the game based on a grind hopefully they’ll start releasing content that requires players to work together…

Because lets face it, the only reason people pick and choose who goes into dungeons with them is because they want to spend as little time doing it as possible not because they’re hard to finish.

spacelion.9865:

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

spacelion.9865:

Asura based on the lore. You could argue that since they are intellectually strong they should be engineers, but the elementalist is more of a brains and not brawns class.

Based on the Lore, Necromancer (and if we’re strictly discussing the Shatter nature of Mesmer them too) suits them better. Elementalists become one with the elements – Asura treat magic as a tool.

You are supporting my argument though. Asura fit a caster class. So elementalists, necromancers, mesmers, etc. An elementalist also uses the elements as a Tool, or a weapon, so by your logic an Asura could fit it.

Sylvari are tree people (ranger), charr are industrial (warrior), norn are tough, spiritual and rugged (warrior, guardian, ranger),etc.

Not really supporting the argument, you’re choosing your own meaning for my words. Our conjures have a limited number of uses, not because (as the guardians) we choose to sacrifice them for a major attack – but because we only pull forth what Elemental power from nature that we need to change the tide of battle. Our elementals aren’t thrown at enemies as sacrificial pawns intended for slaughter, we rely on their help to overcome our obstacles.

The mechanics of our class are inherently designed to ask nature for it’s help, not to simply wield it’s power for our own gain. Until you learn this you can’t call yourself a true master of the Elements…

j/k about that last part =P It’s fun to think this way though.

Melee with a side of magic, and some range. Kinda only leaves you open to Guardian.

If you can handle Magic with a side of melee there’s Elementalist…

If you like Melee with a bit of Ranged there’s Warrior (or Ranger too actually).

spacelion.9865:

Asura based on the lore. You could argue that since they are intellectually strong they should be engineers, but the elementalist is more of a brains and not brawns class.

Based on the Lore, Necromancer (and if we’re strictly discussing the Shatter nature of Mesmer them too) suits them better. Elementalists become one with the elements – Asura treat magic as a tool.

How about an Elite that’s ‘No-so-Captain-Planet’?

The summoned avatar would be active for 30s and have a 240s CD… prolly take a second to cast it. Said Avatar would throw down a combo field – then attack in that attunement until the field vanished and throw down the next random field…

If he threw down Lava Font (or Ring of Fire) he’d attack with Fireballs
If Geyser he’d attack with Vapor Blade
If Frozen Ground he’d attack with Ice Shards
If Static Field he’d attack with Arc Lightning

dajs.2169:

It’s not the developer’s fault that you’re too lazy to click on a damn button in the inventory.

Lol I certainly wouldn’t blame them for my laziness… I do blame them for mobs spawning before they’re dead (practically) and DE chains that take place consecutively across the map.

I’m always too engaged to remember to use consumables and it doesn’t help that they never drop from mobs (in my experience) – if I at least saw them in my looting it would remind me to check for that icon which sits on the UI bar I pay absolutely no heed to, since I have learned how my character reacts to conditions placed upon him.

I would play with the UI off if it didn’t prevent me from seeing just how much health I have left. If I spent less time ignoring that entire portion of the game because I could customize what I didn’t and didn’t see – then I’d certainly remember it more often.

Until then I guess I’ll just continue being too lazy to eat…

A lot of people are getting confused by the abbreviation of JP for Jump Puzzles… would be nice to add to the list.

The one you mention would be too much like Tornado with a Glyph of Storms flair to it. And we already have an Elite glyph that’s fairly good so I’d say lets hope if they give us a new Elite it brings something new to the table.

They’re all fairly useful, some people like the fact that if they go Norn and shapeshift into a snow leopard they can get stealth on the Ele…

I went with Sylvari myself, the healing seed is great for support builds. In early levels having grasping vines made things a lot easier and there were a few personal story instances where the elite that grants a few seconds of invulnerability and spawns 4 turrets saved me.

But I could definitely see an Ele rolling with the Hounds of Balthazar as well…

I would think that if there was an Elite that didn’t sit well with the Ele it would be the Golem Battlesuit… then again I play Glass Cannon so someone who is always within melee range might like it a lot more.