Guild Wars 2

The short, I love the gameplay of Reaper’s Rumble. One part DOTA, two parts GW2.

I think we need this added into the regular PVP rotation. The idea of helping NPCs spawn, capping points and pushing inevitably into the enemy’s base.

Also, would be nice if we had a true Random Arena (ala GW1) for the casual PVP side.

Requiring 80s only for low dungeons is pretty silly, but I think requiring it for dungeons that scale up a character (i.e. Ascent of the Mad King) is perfectly acceptable.

A character that’s been sidekicked up to 80 still doesn’t have the traits or level 80 gear. It’s pretty easy to see the different too. Go into Heart of the Mist with a level 1 character, check your DPS/utility. Now go into WvWvW with that same character. You may be sidekicked up to 80, but your DPS is much lower. Not to mention that you’re missing a lot of your traits…

Reset Dungeon button for Parties

A manual control for the above would be nice.

Introduction
This is going to be one of those love it or hate it suggestions.

I propose Farming… for food ingredients. Already some of you probably are moaning and conjuring images of Farmville or even Harvest Moon in your minds, but hear me out!

The current state of the cooking profression is already very grindy and, add to it, random. While there are seemingly a million and one different recipes, most people instead level cooking in one of two ways:

1. Along set tracks using the easiest to acquire ingredients (and grind out those levels)
2. Randomly unlocking foods all across the board

This just seems like a missed opportunity since people can’t really specialise in certain types of foods, i.e. pastries, simply due to lack of supply!

My solution is fairly simple (in idea) and potentially adds a new level of fun to this game!

Mechanic
The entire farming process is broken into three new resources and two new types of action.

The three resources are:

• Clay
• Soil
• Seeds

The two new actions are:

• Planting
• Harvesting

Resources

• Seeds: While harvesting plants, there is chance it will drop the seeds of the plant. This chance can be adjusted to match the relative rarity of the plant.
• Soil: While harvesting or mining, there is chance to get soil.
• Clay: Rarer versions of “Soil” that can be used to make Clay Pots

Actions

• Planting: Add soil and seed. After a certain amount of time (sorta like Guild Upgrade research), you get a full grown plant of that seed.
• Harvesting: Produces exactly one seed and X amount of the plant.

Rinse and repeat the above actions and you get a fairly reliable way to augment certain food supplies. The clay pots while they are growing can be stored in your Bank.

Fairly simple idea… what do you guys think?

Tharjax.9068:

This confuses me, I strive to get a better shield and pistol with better stats, but I loose the stats anyways when I switch to my kit.

What was the thought process behind this? Is ArenaNet aware of this and have any thoughts on fixing this?

The mechanics is that when you switch to a kit, your weapon set is replaced. (Your character graphic reflects this) Therefore, you don’t get the bonuses from them.

I don’t agree with this mechanic, but it’s the way it works.

Agree with what you’re saying.

Neglected.1260:

Just wondering, how does toughness work? Ie, does anyone know how Toughness impacts the damage you take exactly?

I’m finding it hard to justify getting Toughness over Vitality simply because I can’t mathematically measure the difference. And yes. I’m from THAT game where everything was theorycrafted.. I promise I won’t theorycraft, I just want to understand the stat a bit more. c;

For all intends and purposes, the vast majority of your Armor comes from Toughness. As such, there is very little difference in armor types.

Sadisticwolf.5376:

Light, medium, and heavy armor…. nuff said.

The math for that is not so simple.

The short of it is… there is only a negligible difference in armor from Light > Medium > Heavy.

Overview
It’s bothered me for some time that Guild Wars 2 is such a dynamic and action packed game, yet the controls really don’t allow you to fully take advantage of the gameplay. Although GW2 does provide a “quick cast for ground target spells”, it is very difficult to properly target the spells without the aid of a proper reticule.

Now I’m sure that a lot of you have your own personal workarounds, but I couldn’t find any posted here. The following is my take on the workaround:

The first part is to enable “toggle capability” for mouselook…

1. You will need to get the Window tool XMouse: http://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/XMouseButtonControl.htm
2. Once installed and loaded, go into the configuration mode and add the Guild Wars 2 exe.
3. Choose one of the mouse keys (I picked mouse scroll up) and set it to “Sticky Right Button”

Now whenever you press that configured mouse key, your character will automatically enter mouse look mode.

On top of the above, I also recommend setting the Left Mouse button as “Simulate Keys”:
X

Then bind X to your first most spammable attack. This will cause your character to shoot on Left click (like an 3rd Person FPS).

The second part is to properly “play” your character…

1. Move your mouse cursor to the part of your screen where you want the reticule. (I usually pick the point about a centimeter above my character’s head)
2. Toggle on mouse look
3. Whenever you want to ground target a spell, press your key for the spell to show the targeting reticule. Press it again to cast the spell.

Playstyle…
I personally chose to bind my dodge buttons to my mouse as well (by using XMouse to change the default behaviour of right mouse button to actually send Alt-8 to the game, then binding Alt-8 to dodge). This way the entire game takes on a very 3rd person shooter feel… Something I think the game was going for in the first place.

Obviously, you don’t have to use XMouse. For those of you who have Logitech mice, you can use SetPoint, but XMouse is just a nice Freeware tool that happens to be highly customizable.

As a general tip, I’d also recommend tuning your Camera Rotation Speed to the lowest possible… as otherwise you’ll be spinning around pretty fast.

Basic Tactics (using the above build)
There are few things to consider for any melee class, but most will tell you that the most important is survival.

While GW2 doesn’t have a standard “Holy Trinity” type of “tanking”, it does have a very robust “mob control” system, which can be used for “tanking”. For some, this involves weaving in and out of combat ensuring that you take the least amount of hits possible (i.e. thieves). For others, this means creating an area of control where you have various defensive and offensive advantages over the enemy (i.e. guardians). For yet more, this means controlling the mob themselves through various disables and debuffs (i.e. warriors).

An Engineer can perform any of the above, but most Assault Engineers will find the last strategy of debuffs and disables the easiest to implement. To this effect, you will rely on your various Knockback, Pull, Stun, and Block abilities. Normally, these skills are intended to keep your engineer out of the reach of melee combat. With an assault engineer, these abilities will be used to disable your opponents.

To this effect, you should remember that all Knockback, Knockdown, and Pull abilities will stagger your opponent. The greater the knockback or pull effect, the longer your opponent will be staggered. During this time, they cannot attack, move or use skills.

Blocks

• Magnetic Shield: Reflects all projectiles.
• Static Shield: Blocks all attacks
• Gear Shield: Blocks all attacks

Stuns

• Static Shield > Throw Shield: Dazes for 1 second
• Static Shield: All melee blocks stun for 2 seconds
• Supply Drop: AOE stun for 2 seconds

Knockback

• Magnetic Shield > Magnetic Inversion
• Throw Mine > Detonate
• Personal Battering Ram

Pull

• Magnet

Combining these abilities, the timeline of my attacks are usually:

1. While running in, Static Shot as soon as the mobs are in range (this should aggro all the mobs and cause them to bunch up).
2. Follow up with a quick double-tap on Static Shield (to trigger its cone attack)
3. Next hit Poison Dart as you start to enter melee range. (Being so close to your enemy, most of your darts should hit)
4. As soon as you are in Melee Range, switch to your Tool Kit and start Smacking
5. Use your various disable skills as needed

Your healing turret is extremely effective at this range. Not only does it provide an instant heal and area regeneration, it also provides a quick AOE attack by detonating it. On top of this, you can also hit your Tool Belt healing spray. I generally reserve this for when any range attackers are about to launch into a rapid volley (to trigger the combo field effect).

Disable your opponents as needed with the above skills. Block any Red Circle of Death attacks.

Advanced Tactics and Maths
If you are still reading, you are may be wondering about the heavy focus on Toughness.

The reason is in the below two formulas. First, damage calculation:

Final Damage = Attack – Armor

Attack is the sum of all the various buffs and skill damage modifiers. For all intents and purposes, this number is a static sum as critical damage is normalised over any extended time interval.

Second for Armor:
Armor = Defense + Toughness

Through extensive data mining, you will find that Defense on medium armor is only 6.8% lower than heavy armor. Any sufficiently high level player will also tell you that your Toughness can easily become more than 3 times that of your Defense stat.

Armed with the above knowledge, you should conclude that the actual difference in Armor between Heavy Armor and Medium Armor users is significantly less than 6.8%. In fact, you can easily get as high Armor as a Heavy Armor user.

With such a high Armor, your one critical weakness is against damage-over-time skills that cause Bleeding, Burning, or Poison. These attacks completely bypass Armor. Against these types of attacks, your best defense is a large HP pool and regeneration. This is the primary reason for the investment in Alchemy. First, it provides you a crucial buff to your HP pool. Second, the Backpack Regenerator trait synergises extremely well with the +Healing Power from Invention.

Overall, your Assault Engineer should be one of the beefiest melee characters on the field.

Guide: Assault Engineer (Melee-based)

Overview

For all of you who enjoy strange and far out builds, I submit for your consideration: The Assault Engineer.

As all engineer players know and most of the rest of you know, engineers were announced as a purely ranged based class. Just looking at their weapon sets and skills and its hard not to see this class as a class optimised for ranged play. I am here to dispell those notions.

Not only CAN the Engineer be a melee class, it can be extremely effective in melee. This does not mean this is an easy build to play. In fact, this is probably the most challenging build I have created and played since the BWEs and launch.

With that in mind, how do we build an Assault Engineer?

Tool Kit and the Basic Build

Every Assault Engineer starts and ends with his Tool Kit.

This is an often neglected skill with seemingly very little advantage over the other weapon kits. It neither generates a great deal of debuffs nor a great deal of utility. However, this kit does offer all the basic ingredients of a melee class:

• Smack/Thwack/Whack: Spammable AOE melee ability on your 1st skill slot
• Box of Nails: Cripple skill that keeps enemies from running away
• Pry Bar: Very high damage single target attack that also debuffs with Confuse (pairs very well with your block).
• Gear Shield: Blocking skill that is on par in duration and cooldown to every other shield blocking skill.
• Magnet: An excellent pulling skill. Also effective for catching stray targets.

With your Tool Kit in hand, what about your basic build?

Traits:

• 30 trait points – Invention (Select the Major traits: Stabilised Armor, Reinforced Shield, Elite Supplies)
• 20 trait points – Alchemy (Select the Major traits: Protection Injection, Backpack Regenerator)
• 20 trait points – Tools (Select the Major traits: Speedy Gadget, Power Wrench)

Base Weapon Set: Pistol + Shield

Healing Skill: Healing Turret

Utility Skills:

• Rocket Boot
• Personal Battering Ram / Throw Mine

Elite Skill:

• Supply Drop

Items: Focus on getting items with a high Toughness and Power. Healing Power is also extremely effective due to your Backpack Regenerators’ per-second constant regeneration.