Guild Wars 2

When I went over the content it was months ago when information on what was content locked wasn’t available.

A.K.A. – Is there any reason for me to come back?

I spent so long attempting to find a class that suited me and I never could. There was always something about every class that I just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy while playing (primarily kits for engineer) so I just stopped playing. When I looked at the features of the expansion it didn’t look like enough for me to justify the pricetag.

Is there any reason to come back without buying the expansion? Like the new weapon/class combinations perhaps?

After watching the videos you posted I still don’t understand how people tolerate the constant manual targeting of the grenade and mortar kits. Having to constantly retarget an aoe like that is the sole reason I don’t use them.

I tried out the build and while I do like it, I find it incredibly annoying to keep up with all the elixers while simultaneously using the flamethrower skills

Foefaller.1082:

Won’t win you many friends if you take it for a dungeon, but for any open world PvE roaming/world boss circuit, it’s solid and doesn’t require you to do too much to make it work.

Ah I’ll probably be looking to do dungeon, i dunno. I’ve only done map completion and a few pvp things for dailies. I haven’t tried dungeons yet but I would like to so I guess I’ll be looking for something that wouldn’t get me booted from groups.

The whole combo blast area stuff seems hella confusing. I just want to use a rifle :S

Casia.4281:

now, where it really gets great is if you swap kits/skills, or play with allies.
Fire and Smoke. bomb kit has both. flamethrower has 2 fire options.

Swapping kits is way too much micro for me. I quit Starcraft 2 for a reason lol. Once a game requires that much micro managing it becomes so much less fun for me.

Aidan Eighthrain.8612:

Skilled Marksman is better than it looks, Plus Juggernaut is really worth the shot, if I may say. Give it a try in PvP, you’ll see.

I used a flamethrower for a while with juggernaut but its really mind numbingly boring compared to the rifle leaping around and stuff. Not really into PvP at all, I still don’t really know entirely what I’m doing in this game and PvP is too stressful.

Casia.4281:

CaptainBBQ.9045:

Casia.4281:

running a p/p burn build atm.

what was your rifle build? my sd rifle build should have been still effective. I just wanted to play with conditions for a while.

It revolved around two traits that aren’t around anymore. Those ones in the inventions tree that converted 7% toughness to power and 10% healing to power. Then I wore power/toughness/healing armor for a ton of power. The rest of my traits were all the rifle ones. The only kit I used was the grenade one solely for the toolbelt thing (I hated the actual kit).

Now that those two toughness and healing traits are gone I’m at a loss of what to do. I was contemplating switching to rifle warrior but their forum people said it was a garbage build.

Interesting. well, consider.

I ran sd rifle as well. this was my build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlcTpkr1UxxLseNCdBN6w0loA6FUhv+pAA-TJBMgA1lBGWYwZHAglBAA
Ran standard zerker/assassins gear. (mostly, have a couple odd pieces. 4 stat ring, celestial ring.)

sigil of air/force
pack runes.

this is pve. Variant a bit in spvp.

2288 power, 60% crit, and 220% crit damage from 1045 ferocity. +300 cond damage.

Also not a fan of kits, but it should be noted prybar is big dps and should be swapped to. smack/whack/thwack is higher dps then hipshot too. even before the 10% rifle mod loss/nerf. shield and magnet core/key in spvp of course.

what you should notice though is 10 in explosives gave me 100 power before, and 300 ferocity, 300cond damage, and 300 prec.

A current build.
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgEB1ALoBVg~
20% crit from traits in melee.

My in game stats with zerker gear and the celestial ring.
2480 power, 2028 prec 48%, 211% crit damage.

I gained 200 power as you can see. a 9% dps gain.

Mortar is quite strong. lots of combo fields. for your leap shot, orbital strike.

The biggest thing that turns me off using the mortar kit is the constant manual targeting. Its annoyingly clunky to have to designate a location for every single auto attack. I don’t really know what you mean by combo fields? What are those?

Casia.4281:

running a p/p burn build atm.

what was your rifle build? my sd rifle build should have been still effective. I just wanted to play with conditions for a while.

It revolved around two traits that aren’t around anymore. Those ones in the inventions tree that converted 7% toughness to power and 10% healing to power. Then I wore power/toughness/healing armor for a ton of power. The rest of my traits were all the rifle ones. The only kit I used was the grenade one solely for the toolbelt thing (I hated the actual kit).

Now that those two toughness and healing traits are gone I’m at a loss of what to do. I was contemplating switching to rifle warrior but their forum people said it was a garbage build.

I don’t know what any of those are lol

I liked using a rifle build before the patch because I really dislike the kits (especially the ones with manual targetting). The rifle build I was running got absolutely dismantled this patch and I haven’t been able to find a way to make it work. If playing engineer means getting pigeon holed into the grenade kit then I might just play another class.

Has anybody been able to figure out how to make a rifle build work now?

choovanski.5462:

engineer rifle is awesome however, and our mortar, Egun and flamethrower are all rifles of sorts too. ive been jamming HGH and swapping between mortar and rifle, feel like i always got a gun for the job.

I do really like the engineer rifle skill set but the most recent trait overhaul absolute wrecked my rifle build. My damage output got blasted and a sizable chunk of the new traits do not benefit rifles at all. Part of what I liked about rifles was the fact that I wasn’t using a kit. All the kits feel frustrating and clunky (especially mortar, grenade, and bomb with their manual targeting). I experimented but I just couldn’t make my rifle work anymore, this whole update was a huge middle finger to us engies that don’t like kits.

Cheers, I’ll be sure to try this out. Thanks

How is the lightning hammer build you mentioned? Is it hard to gear for? Is it considered “trolly” and would get kicked from dungeon groups (I wanted to build rifle warrior but somebody said I would get kicked from groups because its trolly)? I googled the skillset of the lightning hammer and it seems pretty fun.

Neko.9021:

Dagger/X Elementalist is actually what you’re looking for.

These aren’t updated for the recent patch but they’re a good start:

PvE Berserker Dagger/Focus: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_D/F

PvP Celestial Dagger/Dagger: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_Dagger/Dagger

Dagger Ele is a Close-Ranged Elementalist that can specialize in team buffing and strong sustained DPS.

(Also, yes, for someone finally seeing Ele as a Shaman instead of a Mage, for once!)

Ah, I tried one up until level 7 and they felt a little more like an elemental shaman rather than enhancement. I’m more into slapping people around with spell imbued melee stuff rather than slinging spells.

I was looking for some playstyle that emulates an enhancement shaman in wow if anybody is familiar with that and it seems elementalist with conjured lava axes and lightning hammers are the closest to it.

Can anybody attest to the effectiveness of using these weapons?

thrag.9740:

Something to keep in mind, with the expansion pack heart of thorns, other classes may get rifle. In particular, a lot of thieves are hopping to get a rifle as an assassin style fighter.

Yeah I heard about that somewhere in map chat. It sounds pretty cool and the revenant seems like the “shaman-y” class that I was hoping GW2 would have but with my unemployed student life I can’t justify the pricetag of it so I’ll just be sticking with the base game.

Hmmm I might take a look at other alternatives. I know this is probably the wrong forum to be on for this question but what about melee elementalist? Like with conjured lava axes and lightning hammers?

thrag.9740:

Well if your looking to do dungeons then a rifle is not your go to weapon.

I wouldn’t mind doing some dungeons. I don’t really need to be top tier dps so if its not too much worse would I be able to get by?

Purple Miku.7032:

Most classes have a weapon that’s useless in a gamemode/multiple gamemodes/many situations.

In the case of warrior, rifle is basically garbage in all gamemodes and hammer is awful in PvE yet really good in PvP and WvW.

With some weapons they may not be viable on some classes but they’re better on other classes. In the case of the rifle, only 2 classes can use them and after this new patch they’re garbage on both. Its more than just garbage on one class its trash in the whole game which upsets me.

thrag.9740:

Well that all depends on what you mean by viable. If your looking to do open world pve, anything is viable. When I was just starting out I ran gs+rifle. while doing map completion. It works well enough.

What game modes do you want a rifle warrior to work in? Also something to keep in mind, its possible some classes will gain rifle through an elite specialization in the coming months (I really hope thief).

Well I don’t really enjoy PvP however I haven’t tried level 80 PvE yet. I’m still working on my map completion, almost finished with that.

Well kitten. So I straight up can’t make a viable rifle build at all in this game? Thats incredibly disappointing.

Hello everybody.

I played this game ages ago and quit for quite some time but last month I picked it back up. I was overwhelmed with my old character from launch so I decided to start over with an engineer.

I quickly fell in love with the rifle skills and built around it but suddenly I logged on and all the traits got completely rehauled? I tried to make my old rifle build work but I just could not. I have no desire to play any of the kits as they’re all so clunky and frustrating.

I am considering rerolling a rifle warrior in light of all these changes and I’m wondering if you guys could offer some guidance on this. How well do they fare in comparison to post-update rifle engineer?

What kind of gear are you using? I used to use Cleric’s gear for the 7% toughness to power and 10% healing to power but that seems to be gone now. Is it just Berserker gear for flamethrower builds now?

Has arena net done a skill and trait rework before in the past? If so, did they basically do a gut and rebuild or was it just simple number tweaks? It would be cool if it was a deep gut because I found a lot of the skills weren’t very exciting when looking through them in my level process.

Darn.

For me, theme is really important when I’m playing this sort of game. I really like the theme of blasting about with a rifle. I tend to leave my competitive side to card games. If rifle warriors are as trolly as choovanski makes them out to be then I’ll probably just keep playing my engineer the way I have been. I have no interest in micro managing kits but all the other classes don’t really appeal to me thematically. Intense micro is partially why I stopped playing Starcraft 2 haha.

From the sounds of it I’m playing the wrong class. I really like using a rifle but it seems this class gets really complex later on. The wiki says that warrior and engineer are the only two classes that can use rifles. How does a warrior’s rifle capabilities compare to an engineer’s? Are rifle warriors viable? How are they in terms of complexity?

Its a little disappointing to hear that the most efficient way is constantly switching between the kits. I did my fair share of hardcore min-maxing in my WoW days and I’m looking for a relaxed laid back experience without a crazy amount of micro.

Would I be kicked from parties if I’m just using one or the other or do people generally not care? Aka how seriously would I be hindering myself by not rotating between them?

I’m revisiting guild wars 2 after not playing for almost 3 years. I was too confused trying to relearn my old level 80 guardian so I made a new engineer. So far I’m loving class even though I’m only level 27.

My question is about comparing the rifle skills and the flamethrower kit skills. I find both skill sets to be really fun but I’m having a hard time figuring out which set does more damage. Is one of them clearly better or are they about on par with each other?

I know this is just me being overly nit picky but I’m not a huge fan of the whole necromancer/harvesting the dead/soul theme if that makes any sense. I might take another look at Mesmer like you mentioned. I didn’t really understand what they were when I read the description. I’ll give it an attempt.

Serophous, the guardian. The elementalist I made today when I got overwhelmed with my guardian. The elementalist is only level 7 right now. As for pvp or pve I’m not entirely sure. If the pvp is anything like I remember (trying to get into melee range on 400 rangers and 400 elementalists) then I want to steer well away from that. I haven’t really tried pve I just knew that when I couldn’t tank mobs for other people it kinda lowered the appeal.

MrWubzy, thanks for the brief walkthrough. My bank doesn’t look all that bad now. Its still riddled with sigils/runes/marks but I think I can safely disregard those for now. As for starting a new character. I started an elementalist today (only level 7) and the play style I was going for doesn’t seem to be in that specific class. I made the elementalist with the intention of using melee weapons and being a sort of spell based fighter (like an enhancement shaman if you’ve played wow). My guild members told me that even using two daggers the skills are still ranged. If you’re familiar with the enhancement shaman thing do you know what class I should be looking at?

Toxsa, I meant I got dumpstered in PvP 3 years ago when I first hit 80, not recently. Sorry if I caused any confusion with my wording.

Garambola, thats super considerate of you. I’m on the east coast so its 1am for me right now but I’m out of a job so depending on how later is later I could stick around for a bit

I suppose reverse was a poor choice of word. I meant purchasing or crafting like you mentioned although I do remember never touching the professions at all when I used to play. Looking at my actual bank it has a ton of these transmutation stones/crystals, experience and skill point scrolls, crystal/onyx/destroyer/ fragments, a bunch of sigils and marks that I don’t understand, mystic coins, gold doubloon, a couple blueprints and my character inventory looks the same. The boxes are these black lion chests.

I’m scared to equip any of these sigils because I don’t really know what looks good. I am unsure of what my character is supposed to do. I originally though I was going to do the whole tanking thing but thats not the case as I found out.

Guahhh this whole process has got me flustered

Alright so I loaded up the game and checked out my story progress. It says I’m on chapter 8 (Victory or Death) and I’ve got to kill the mouth of zhaitan in kitah manse. So I guess I just do that then?

What about my trash gear? This character has basically 100% stacked defense stats. I haven’t the slightest idea on where I would go to reverse this. Am I still capable of doing this personal quest even in this terrible state or will I get crushed?

As for my inventory and bank, they’re jam packed full of all this random stuff. Map fragments, runes, sigils, boxes, crafting materials, etc. I don’t know what I should be keeping and what I should be tossing. Is there anything specific I should be looking to hold onto?

When GW2 first came out I leveled a guardian to level 80 as I loved the concept of tanking. Unfortunately I learned that tanking in the traditional sense does not exist in this game. I decided to go into some PvP and I had a horrible time. I quickly learned that being a melee guardian I felt absolutely useless in this environment. I couldn’t even get near the swarm of other ranged classes picking me off before I could even get near them.

This caused me to shelf the game for quite some time. Basically until now. I got some impulse to play it and I really just don’t know where to pick back up. I logged onto my old guardian and I don’t remember what anything in my inventory is, what any of my stuff does, or what I should be doing with my time in the world. I just remember my bad PvP experience and I’m sitting here with a guardian who basically has items with nothing but defensive stats stacked.

I decided “I should just start fresh and essentially relearn the game”. So I decided I wanted to try out the guild wars 2 equivalent of an Enhancement Shaman from WoW (as that was buckets of fun). I carefully looked through the classes and concluded that if I play an elementalist with melee weapons that should do the trick. I got in the game, joined a new guild so I had people to talk to and they said theres basically no such thing in guild wars 2 as even using two daggers still gives you ranged attacks.

I was semi-ok with settling with it but then I realized the 49% world completion on my old level 80 guardian that I inadvertently kitten isn’t account wide. I then got annoyed and felt like redoing all these zones would be a waste of time because I can just do them on my guardian and get progress towards my world completion.

I dunno, I’m really just kinda annoying, frustrated, and overwhelmed at the situation. What do you guys suggest for players who haven’t touched the game in almost 3 years trying to get back into it?