Guild Wars 2

I’ve rolled some Asura toons mainly because I love the weapon animations they have. If anet is going to be changing weapon skill animations on a whim like this then I’m super discouraged to make new alts.

Thanks for the replies. I’ll contact support.

I’ve held off on talking with the black lion trader armorsmith for a long time. So long that I regret not talking to them in the first place when the outfits were changed. I got 3 town clothing on a few toons but then on my main I unlocked the witch hat which I just remembered getting way back in the first year of the game. So now I’m panicking that I may have deleted an old character that had another unique piece of clothing. Is there any way for the mods to check this or am I SOL?

Spartacus.3192:

Hmmm my first toon is a Human Male Guardian and he is medium height. I want to level my Warrior in Norn land but i hate the super gigantic male norns so was thinking of actually making him the shortest possible height which is still taller than the tallest human male. I feel that the tallest male norns looks so “clunky”.

The tallest option looks fine if you choose the top right option for body physique.

You can’t play with my dyslexia like that! :P

Almost every male norn NPC I’ve seen is set closer to the tallest option. The only short male norn npc I’ve seen is Knut. Ido is like 1 or 2 ticks away from tallest height.

Anyone else notice this? I just made a new toon and spent a few gold getting bags, weapons and armour. I also used the instant 20 scroll and a birthday booster. Then I noticed that my norn goes from serious to silly looking when wielding a staff. I checked to see if the unedited version of that face also went cross-eyed and it does.

Put all the other fixes for this game aside. This is the most important fix in the game! :P (Oh well, I’ll get used to it).

http://imgur.com/a/JKLi8#0

You can’t go wrong with the upper portion. Click on Ranger and look at where the default slider position is. That and above won’t make you feel too small compared to other norn npcs.

Zaxares.5419:

(Most male Norns PCs tend to be the maximum height, I’ve noticed.)

Knut Whitebear is a shorty.

Make sure there are no extras lingering in your other toon’s bags. Once you verified that you only have 1 or 2 left, you mise as well throw them away. I wondered the same thing and it looks like there’s no reason to keep them around.

@Kuanhao

You are a 6.68 out of 10. Here’s why:

• Your face has great horizontal symmetry
• The ratio of your nose length to ear length is nearly ideal.
• Your innerocular distance is too big for your eyes.
• Your nose is too narrow for your face width.
• The ratio of your face length to face width is nearly ideal.
• Your mouth is too wide for your nose.

http://i.imgur.com/Zka67a9.png
http://www.anaface.com/

Now be amazed by the perfect human face in this thread!

Lilith Ajit.6173:

DanielGames.5198:

Congrats everyone! I really enjoyed seeing all the pictures in this contest.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Joke Place: Steplala.3678 . Of course. Omg.

Prizes:
Joke place: Something. You’ll see.

I must know what this joke prize is! :O

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

69 soiled rags

I’ll fight Chris Farley Norn for those.

Apologies but I don’t have the motivation to read through 38 pages to see if my suggestions and feedback have already been posted.

Unlocking traits
Unlocking traits by doing specific events really messes with the direction a player could be questing. They’d be forced to migrate to the other side of the map just to unlock a popular trait. The personal story kind of does this already but that at least gives continuity of traveling to the next location for the story. These are just non-achievements with a trait reward.

How about adding multiple events per unlockable trait to prevent the migration. Spread these events out evenly across the world map.

Tracking down events that reward traits
It’s difficult to keep track of all the events that unlock traits.

This could be easily fixed by adding a trait icon over areas of the map to show that an event there unlocks a trait.

The pace of unlocking trait points
Leveling up is an exciting experience when done right. In lots of games you’d get to pick where to spend your stat points, maybe some skill points, expertise, etc. In gw2’s launch you had that where each trait point would be unlocked every level past level 10. I don’t mind the rework on trait points, where less is more. But I really dislike the pace in which you get trait points and unlock them. Is it because you didn’t want to make the game too complicated for new players? Because at 30 when you now unlock traits, players are also bombarded with a new feature in the game, dungeons. That’s a lot of information to take in at once.

I think trait points should be unlocked at an earlier level and you should get these points more frequently. Give the last trait point at 80 but spread them out evenly. I don’t really understand why you have to wait a lot of levels then unlock 2 at once.

Congrats everyone! I really enjoyed seeing all the pictures in this contest.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Joke Place: Steplala.3678 . Of course. Omg.

Prizes:
Joke place: Something. You’ll see.

I must know what this joke prize is! :O

Steplala.3678:

Was suprised that i was the first one to come to this. Anyways
My “beverly hills ninja” pretty much as close as i could get to this guy http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/2/29968/982616-beverly_hills_ninja_ps02.jpg
hope you like it, thanks for the giveaway and good luck to everyone

I love this.

Added a third screenshot to my post. I figured night shots would be more suiting but if you want me to retake the shots with more lighting I can do so.

Not entirely my creation but I really like the look. Honestly the best way to look like a clan ninja without having to spend gems.

Model: Female Human Thief (my main)

Dyes: Midnight Ice (MI), Iron (I), Black Cherry (BC), Silt (S)

Armour:
Duelist Mark – S MI
AC medium shoulders – MI BC I
AC medium chest – MI BC I
HotW medium gloves – MI MI
HotW medium pants – MI BC MI
HotW medium boots – MI MI

Weapons:
Honor of Humanity
Usoku’s Needle

Edit:

Howell Qagan and Luksl, VERY NICE! I really like those looks!

edit2:

Added a third screenshot to better display the hard to see markings on the chest piece. Also it’s apparently day time 20 minutes later in the Charr city.

I think that if these changes were made then you’d have to give the classes less dodges, like reducing vigor uptime, since decreasing the duration and cooldown pretty much gives them extra dodges.

I think it will affect thieves that spam it. I don’t think it will have much affect on anyone else.

Looking good so far. Few things I would add is that Dancing Dagger reflects projectiles and that improvisation is a good choice to increase your damage by 10% when using an elementalist’s conjured weapon.

Aeron.7291:

@Danielgames okay I see what you’ve done with the build, I think this will serve me well. You’ve been such a great help haha ^^ .. wish I could do something for you but the only thing I can say is Thanks for everything mate !

It’s fine. I sneakily stole 4000 gems from your wallet while you were distracted. If you have a problem with that you can bring it up with my supervisor.

Have fun!

I really want steal working correctly again. It’s just a buzz killer to see your character port to the mob then port back, putting steal on cooldown.

I also think a lot of traits should just be replaced because they’re rarely used and are just boring. Hard to Catch should definitely be reworked like just giving the thief a few seconds of evasion frames instead of teleporting them, usually in worse spots. I rarely see players using traits that increase initiative generation.

I would argue that venoms aren’t 100% useless when not traited because some are quite bursty. What sucks about them is the long cooldown. But I’ve found the immobolize venom very useful with a glass cannon s/p build, swapping between basilisk and the other venom’s cooldown to keep players stuck in a full pistol whip, sometimes with a haste proc.

Condition builds can also make use of the vulnerability+torment venom to keep their high bleed stacks from being cleansed.

I do think utility venoms should be reworked, but I don’t think they’re terrible. They’re just really niche. Perhaps lower the cooldown but have venomshare raise the cooldown back to 45 seconds. Another suggestion is to make them unblockable.

JonahLee.9264:

Hello! My name is Jonah. I’m a Necromancer and I am completely lost. I’m a fast learner, but so far this game has baffled me in terms of what to do as a beginner. So basically, I would like to know the following if possible.

1. How are Necromancers PvP wise?
2. Are there any player PvE (for now) friendly guilds?
3. How is this game on spending money? Will I need to spend tons to be successful? If so, explain how. If not, explain what I CAN do.
4. What class if not Necromancer is best solo-wise?
5. Does the Death Shroud skill increase in duration as I level? Whether it be by skill or gear, please elaborate.
6. What vital information do you believe a newbie like me should know? I appreciate and thank anyone in advance.

Welcome to gw2 While I don’t main necro I can help you out until the pro necros show up.

1) While you are cloth, you’re one of the hardest classes to take down because of death shroud, which acts like a second health pool and (for some reason) takes less damage while in that state. There are effective pvp builds that are centered around lots of conditions, power (using wells wells and death shroud), or letting your pets do the damage for ya. I would suggest you go on youtube and search for keywords like ‘gw2 necromancer roaming’ to see how other players are using the class. Here’s the first video I got with that search: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzyVTFM7uSc

3) The way gw2 works is that you can purchase gems by using real life money or by converting in game gold into gems. You can then use the gems to buy stuff from the shop, like boosters, cool pvp stomp finishers, new haircuts, skins for gear, etc. It’s mostly for making the game a tad less tedious, like gathering tools that don’t wear out and additional character slots for example. Other stuff from the shop are cosmetic only. The only real pay to win aspect is that you could purchase a lot of gems with real money and convert it into gold, but I wouldn’t suggest in doing that as you can easily farm gold when you’re higher level. It really comes down to if you want to spend time farming in game or if you want to farm money in real life for your upgrades. That being said, I would prioritize gem purchases like so: character slots, then bank slots, then bag slots. Get at least 8 character slots so you can play around with every class without having to delete any.

4) Necromancer has it pretty easy.

5) I believe there are traits that extend death shroud duration. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Death_Shroud

Death shroud is a skill you should use briefly for the situation required. Staying in death shroud for a long time just spamming life blast is generally a waste, unless you’re traited for it. Examples to pop death shroud briefly is when you’re about to take big damage and can’t dodge, when you want to close a gap, or when you want to fear.

6) You can organise and clean your bags by using the icon on the top right of your bag window. Crafting mats can be cleaned out of your bags and directly transferred into your bank.

The intended way for you to quest in open world pve is to just explore. Go to all the points of interest and vistas. If you see an event then join it. After the event finishes (success or fail), stick around to see if another event chains from it. Example, you could have an event to prevent harpies from stealing supplies. If you fail the event, a new event will give you the task in getting those supplies back. If a heart icon is almost full after doing some events, go ahead and do stuff to fill it. Completing every heart like I did during launch could wear you down quickly.

Say hi in map chat. Players are generally really friendly and due to the mega servers you’ll rarely be alone in any zone. Map chat is also a good way to get questions answered.

You can temporarily make your character max level with most traits, gear, skills and weapons unlocked by clicking on the crossed swords on the top left of the screen. It’s a good way to see what skills do before spending skill points on them. In spvp, everyone is on equal terms progression and gear wise so it’s all about team coordination, skill and execution. When you leave spvp, your character will revert to it’s old self.

If you’re getting bored, try something new like wvw (the tower icon) where servers battle each other for server benefits, spvp where you can have small team matches, or try a new class. I like to do jumping puzzles.

I’m sure there are more points that players will bring up with you to answer this question. Best of luck!

edit: typo

Aeron.7291:

@DanielGames hey Daniel i’m kinda stuck with the sigils and Armor you explained it wel but it seems not right wath i’ve done, if you wouldn’t mind could you add what armor i should use in the build plus sigils and re-send the build maybe, i took your advise on the armor and sigils but the thing is that i think i screwed it a bit up you know here and there so yeah, I don’t have all the knowledge of the Thief yet, it would be much appreciated if you would do that

Thanks !

If you’re still leveling then adding gear to the guide won’t help you since that site is mainly used for lvl 80 builds. It doesn’t show anything below lvl 80 rare gear. However, if you’re still using d/d p/p at 80 you could give this build a shot.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAoY6al8Mp6plOx7J0PNBPBtdCmdA8OJN5IddDA-TBSDgA9K/Q3fYW9njHAQyJBAU/Ag5PpjAoEkQAj3CA-e

I gave you some toughness as a safety window but with black powder you shouldn’t have much issue. Feel free to use more zerker armour instead if you’re feeling comfortable. I switched some traits up since they might serve you better when you’re 80. When leveling you would get more benefit using a 2 2 2 then 4 4 4 style trait build.

This is by no means an optimised lvl 80 dungeon, wvw roaming, or spvp build. For those you can check these forums, youtube, reddit, etc.

Some useful build links:
http://dulfy.net/2014/07/10/gw2-thief-pve-class-guide/
http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki
http://www.reddit.com/r/gw2esports/comments/23w0wl/tpvp_build_list_up_to_date_builds_as_of_the_april/ (will be outdated next balance patch)

One of us. One of us.

I would prioritize toughness then healing power then vitality for defense. Thieves have a lot of options for removing conditions which is why I don’t really care much about vitality.

Here’s what I’m currently using for gear. A bit more armour without sacrificing too much on offensive stats. Signet of Malice and CS XIII are good enough for healing I think. However I’m sure it could be optimised better. I’m still waiting for suggestions on it in my own thread. For dungeons I would switch to full zerker, as well as change my traits, weapons and skills. A lot of players never dodge in pug dungeons and do just fine if everyone is doing great damage and are stacking :P
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl8MpwplOx7J0PNhQBt9pDQ+9uIDJJd9CA-T1SBwAFVitT9nk7PcV5RkHEQGlgo03s4QAgwEnmjQAgToQAAEA24GPZICgdLA-w

Ways to cleanse condition damage:
- Hide in the Shadows (poison, bleed, burning)
- Shadowstep (3)
- Signet of Agility (1 aoe)
- Sword #2 (1)
- Any ability that stealths you if you trait for SA IV
- Acrobatics VIII (poison, bleed, burning)
- Sigil of Generosity
- Sigil of Purity
- Runes of Lyssa
- Poultry Soups

I suggest that you look up a bunch of WvW roaming videos of the classes you think you’ll like. They may show tactics and combos you didn’t know the class was able to accomplish. That way you can sort of see the potential of each class and see which would best suit your playstyle (and a class has way more than one playstyle in this game). Plus a lot of them are fun to watch. Here’s one for guardian I looked up while making this reply:
http://youtu.be/n_qfmDNPhDw

I just searched for ‘gw2 wvw guardian’. You can also find these kind of videos by checking out the class forums. Lots of players post their roaming videos there.

edit:

Also, you can enter the spvp lobby by clicking on the cross swords icon on the top left. You will become instant 80 (only in there) and have access to all weapons, most skills and most gear. It’s a good place to try out every skill a class has.

Ah neat. Thanks for the info!

hihey.1075:

DanielGames.5198:

Really cool. Now we just have to wait for the offhand only video

I actually DID kill a guy using only Off-Hand Dagger (you check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYjyvreIrqI&list=UU4geCdHVnYcqw-n1rR_De_w ). But for that to happen again, I’ll need to fight a class which is 100% zerk with close to none damage mitigation. Maybe I could try it again against another Shatter Mesmer or a D/P Trickery thief (but the second one would be terribly hard).
Off Hand Pistol would be utterly impossible unless the guy I’m facing doesn’t know what he’s doing.

That was great. I didn’t think CnD could add up to so much damage. I also enjoyed the fight against the engi that popped supply crate.

I believe Episode 2 was available when I bought 1. So you pay 200 gems to play old content basically?

Around a week or 2 ago ago I bought the first part of season 2 for 200 gems. Shortly after I saw a reddit post linking to a tweet that there was a bug regarding how a season chapter cost gems. I missed a few patches so perhaps I’m just mistaken to how the game works now, but I’m curious if I lost 20g worth of gems.

Here’s the tweet:
https://twitter.com/guildwars2/status/494153487337676801

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

Maybe no weapon at all:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1z-d9vGO52E

Hah! I remember that video.

Really cool. Now we just have to wait for the offhand only video

Aeron.7291:

I will most definitely check out your post, but ihave one quick question you said i needed to focus on Power, precision, ferocity and condition damage with my armor. But the thing is i don’t really know what sigils i need to use on my armor for when i have completed this build, and also what kind of DD/PP stats do i need to use also power or something else ?

again thanks

Stats for damage:
1) Power
2) Precision*
3) Ferocity
x) Condition Damage**

* Precision might be more valuable than Power because I think it scales well for low levels. However, Power is king at 80.
_** Condition Damage should be your lowest priority of all stats.

Stats for taking direct hits:
1) Toughness
2) Healing Power
3) Vitality
x) Power/Precision/Ferocity (Invigorating Precision: CS XIII)
x) Precision (Practiced Tolerance: CS VI)
x) Precision (Opportunist: CS 3 + Assassin’s Reward: A XI)

Stats for taking condition damage:
1) Vitality
2) Healing Power
x) Power/Precision/Ferocity (Invigorating Precision: CS XIII)
x) Precision (Practiced Tolerance: CS VI)
x) Precision (Opportunist: CS 3 + Assassin’s Reward: A XI)

I’m not going to tell you how much damage stats you should focus on with your gear. Survivability is also important. However you usually want to go full glass cannon in tpvp as thief. WvW isn’t always glass cannon friendly. Dungeons favour full zerker builds. Leveling and non-dungeon pve is really your personal preference.

I don’t think Sigils and Runes are important until 80. Sigil of Force is always good. Energy is useful if you want an extra dodge when switching to p/p. Fire and Air are always fun when you have a decent crit chance. You can never go wrong with Runes of Divinity when learning a class. Scholar, Ogre and Strength are also good. I’m currently using Vampirism when questing.

I honestly don’t think you should worry too much about this though. I think you would better understand the class if you just experimented with different builds as you leveled and even when you’re at 80. The meta builds aren’t important unless you’re in a speedrun dungeon group or tpvp. If you only use those builds with your class then that will be all you will know.

edit:

It should be noted that these order of stat importance weren’t theorycrafted by me and are mostly my personal preference for the situation.

For tpvp, a good backstab build is this one. Heartseeking from or into black powder will be your way of gaining stealth (or sbow #2 into black powder).
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoaVlsMpyplOx7J8PNBNBt9DGeE8OMfpMaFAA-TZBFwACeCA02fYxhAoaZAAnAAA

For WvW you could try a d/d build. Here’s one that isn’t full glass. Full credit goes to Mugi. It focuses on high burst damage from backstabs and lots of survivability.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQRAoY8alUmSOHdy9E/5Ey2DfqCJKuHOVS1UaFoJA-jkDBYfRGdMgkFg0HwEBQUBAJqCiJPKrVNFRjVXDT7aI1qYQmzR1ieIzSB8wWA-w

I found that this thread was a good source for tpvp builds. Just be sure that there will probably be a newer one whenever class balancing patches occur.
http://www.reddit.com/r/gw2esports/comments/23w0wl/tpvp_build_list_up_to_date_builds_as_of_the_april/

You can also use this site for builds.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

Aeron.7291:

@DanielGames thanks for the reply, I really appreciate that you gave me a tiny lesson about thief ! I really understand now what i need to do thanks to you, i’m gonna try the build for a while see if I can get used to it, really, you helped me out alot !

thanks ! ^^

np. Keep in mind that the skills I was suggesting were merely for d/d and p/p purposes. The ones I didn’t mention aren’t useless for other builds. Utility venoms are basically the only somewhat useless skills unless you trait for them since they have a long cooldown, but can still be useful since they provide some good burst damage or cc.

I made a post a few weeks ago that had a bunch of tips for thief. You can check my post out here if you want to learn more:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Recommended-build-for-new-player/first#post4243235

Pavel.8531:

Yes, you can optimise your gear. What I had the easiest general PvE of my life was S/P//SB 5/6/0/0/3. I took your 1st build and just touched some things, here you go(btw if you don’t need movement speed, just switch the travelers for Scholar):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsaVl8MpwpVOxxJ0PNBNBt9w7QE8LM6GgEA-TVDBABV8AAMSJmg7PglyDJOQAAcCAwR9HNUCmi+GGOEAJYibjjQQAHQhAAIAsxNeyQEA7WA-w

Sorry perhaps I wasn’t clear. This is mostly a gear optimization question. Your build is full zerker, which I already have a set of and am_ not happy with for solo questing and big world bosses.

Glad you’re enjoying thief. You’ll find that the skills are mostly CC driven instead of being direct DPS increases. So choice of skills is really up to personal preference to your style of play (while leveling anyways).

You’ll also probably have a few thief players tell you to switch out one of your weapons with short bow. This is because thieves don’t use weapon skill cooldowns and instead use a shared resource. While you know that, it basically means you’ll usually stick with one weapon set for the majority of the fight while the other is used for utility and/or mobility, which short bow excels at. I’m not telling you to stop using d/d p/p, I’m just saying that thieves aren’t a class that use 2,3,4,5, swap, 2,3,4,5 style rotations.

If you’re leveling then you’re not going to have the best selection of gear people might suggest. D/D and P/P are usually power builds with some condition damage filler, so any stats in gear will be helpful and shouldn’t be an issue when leveling.

D/D’s damage mostly comes from Cloak and Dagger into Backstab and Heartseeker when the mob is low health. Cloak and Dagger into Backstab is sustained high damage when timed right while Heartseeker is burst high damage and will drain your initiative the longer it takes for the mob to die. Try to manage your intiative by not running completely out with attack skill spam.

P/P’s damage mostly comes from Unload and the occassional Sneak Attack. Black Powder is completely broken in pve and can be used when attacking multiple mobs in melee range. They will rarely hit you if you keep blinds up.

While P/P lacks a way to gain stealth, you can use D/D’s Cloak and Dagger then switch while in stealth. Likewise, you can use P/P’s Black Powder then D/D’s Heartseeker to gain stealth and close a gap.

For healing, I would suggest signet of malice or hide in the shadows. Signet generally has the best healing sustain if you keep the passive up but the stealth heal is great for condition fights. Withdraw has the best healing power scaling and healing/sec if you pop it on cd. Not a bad heal to use if you want to switch to p/p after.

Useful Utilities:
Shadowstep – The best stun breaker in the thief’s kitten nal. You can do a lot of interesting plays with this teleport. I suggest you get comfortable with it, as it’s a stun breaker that requires aiming.
Caltrops – while mostly a condition build skill, it still very useful for kiting multiple mobs
Smoke Screen – pretty much makes you and your party untouchable for 7 seconds
Shadow Refuge – great for ressing or escaping a bad situation
Smoke Bomb – a poor man’s stun breaker when things go sour
Roll for Initiative – a good stun breaker that can be used to transition to p/p
Ambush – a good way to keep aggro off of you. The melee thief will use scorpion wire and the ranged thief will use black powder.
Signet of Shadows – passive movement speed
Signet of Agility – passive crit chance and aoe condition cleansing. Also refills endurance and is a good skill combo’d after using Haste.

Dagger Storm is a great ult to use with signet of malice and will usually heal you to full. Thieves Guild is also powerful but has a longer cooldown.

With all that being said, here’s a sample build I came up with. Try to keep your initiative above 6 for 10% more damage output (First Strikes trait). I didn’t fill out the gear or sigils since I assume you’re still leveling and gear stats come randomly unless you want to pay for it. You mostly want to get power, precision, and ferocity for maxing out damage, but condition damage isn’t a wasted stat thanks to your autos.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAoY6al8Mp6plOx7J0PNRLhs9pOf888aNfEA

I’m a complete newb when it comes to optimizing gear. I’m trying to find a good mix of gear stats so I don’t drop so easily to certain mob or boss abilities. I’m using Signet of Malice as well as Invigorating Precision which offer some good sustain but in my full zerker build I’m just short of 2k armour and at around 13k health.

I figured that since I’m getting health from the amount of precision I have (Practiced Tolerance), I should focus on either toughness and/or healing power that still have precision and power. I chose toughness since I don’t think Invigorating Precision scales with healing power.

I think in a perfect world I’d like some gear that was Power(major stat), Toughness, and Precision. However I was only able to find Knights gear where Toughness is the major stat. So right now I’m setting with around 2.3k armour and 13k health which I’m content with but I can’t help but wonder if I could optimise my gear better so I’m not losing out in so much offensive stats.

Any suggestions?

full zerker build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl8MpwplOx7J0PNhQBt9pDQ+9uIDJJd9CA-T1SBwAFVilc/hrKPi8gAup+TGlgo03s4QAgwEnmjQAgToQAAEA24GPZICgdLA-w

zerker/knight build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl8MpwplOx7J0PNhQBt9pDQ+9uIDJJd9CA-T1SBwAFVitT9nk7PcV5RkHEQGlgo03s4QAgwEnmjQAgToQAAEA24GPZICgdLA-w

The weapons, traits and skills are interchangable when I feel like switching things up. I’m probably going to keep Signet of Malice, Invigoration Precision, and Practiced Tolerance though.

“Celery!” – female asura getting swiftness.

I don’t. d/x is pretty fast and I don’t want to mash 1 all day. If I want to stop auto attacking I’ll holster my weapons. I only really found this feature useful when playing a s/x ranger since the auto pretty much limits your mobility (and it has made me fall off cliffs a lot).

I waited to see if I would run into issues before replying again. I updated my nvidia drivers and this time just used the universal install instead of using custom. My OS wasn’t crapping itself this time and gw2 wasn’t causing hard shut downs anymore. So ya I’m glad the solution wasn’t expensive and I’ll gladly look like a fool for it I’m really surprised that an outdated driver could cause that issue though.

Thanks guys.

edit:

(or maybe it was the recent game patch. I also did a game repair)

and of course a few hours after I post, the messiness of the OS starts to occur. Oh well I’ll deal >_>

My ninja clan thief: http://imgur.com/a/8YMkU#0

Outfit idea stolen from: http://imgur.com/a/Gotzr

sample pic attached.

The weird thing I find with Asus laptops is that you need to get the drivers from their website, like they hack them to work with the laptop. If I grab the drivers from nvidia’s site, my laptop gets all screwy. The asus video driver hasn’t been updated on their site for the G73JW model sadly

Of course if any fellow Asus users have found a way around this, I’m all ears

Thanks for doing the math. I’ll never use CnD again.

The best way to learn thief is to experiment with all the weapon sets and utility skills. Also, thieves behave a little differently than other classes. Their weapon abilities don’t have cooldowns but use up a resource. Their #3 skill also changes depending on both the main and off hand weapons equipped. The #1 skill changes when in stealth. When out of combat you can view your weapons stealth attack when hovering over the #1 icon.

Some generic tips:

1) Teleports without a cast time won’t interrupt your current animation. You can _use steal as a gap closer while casting #5 with offhand pistol or dagger for example. You can also begin pvp stomp animation, teleport away with Shadowstep, then use the skill again just as the stomp animation is about to finish.

2) Sword and short bow are your only cleaving weapons. #3 with d/d will hit multiple targets. You can also trait for bouncing pistol bullets (Trickery X).

3) In most PvE settings, Signet of Malice is the goto heal. The healing proc doesn’t have a cooldown so the more you can proc hits the faster you can heal back to full health. You might want to switch to Hide in the Shadows for condition cleansing boss fights. For PvP, Hide in the Shadows and Withdraw are usually taken.

4) Short Bow has a spammable blast finisher which makes it a really useful weapon to have at all times. Fields to look out for are fire (aoe might stacking), water (aoe healing), and lightning (aoe swiftness). You can also stealth an entire group without using Shadow Refuge by using the blast finisher on a smoke combo field. like pistol #5 or Smoke Screen.

5) For traveling purposes, Signet of Shadows is great for a passive boost. Shortbow #5 is a reliable teleport that can be used to make big skips, like up hills or to a bridge directly above. It doesn’t work in every location so you need to experiment. There’s a very useful trait under Acrobatics IV that gives you 20 seconds of swiftness whenever you kill an enemy. You can also trait for Trickery V and steal without a target to aoe buff swiftness.

6) Revealed is a debuff that prevents stealth for 3 seconds in PvE/WvW and 4 seconds in SPvP. If you attack someone from stealth, you’re revealed. If you let stealth run out, you don’t get the revealed debuff and you can restealth right away.

7) Caltrops and short bow #4 won’t remove stealth or reveal you.

8) Some things the tooltips don’t tell you. s/p #3 gives you evade frames but not enough to make the entire animation safe. Dagger Storm and the stolen pvp warrior item can be used to reflect projectiles. Shadow Refuge will remove stealth and reveal anyone that steps outside of the circle before the circle disappears.

9) Deadly Arts VII increases your damage by 10% when using a summoned elementalist weapon like Fiery Greatsword and Frost Bow. Afaik, it does not increase your damage when you have a stolen item.

10) You can disable an entire group of enemies by using pistol #5 every 4-5 seconds. Mobs with the Defiance buff (champs and bosses) won’t be affected by this.

Hope this wall of text helps!

edit: added 2 more tips.

So I was able to play for around 5 hours with the lowest settings and lowest fullscreen resolution. I also disabled the ‘restart on BSOD’ feature suggested above. It didn’t prevent the hard shutdown from happening sadly. It occurred in Lion’s Arch.

I’m not certain if the low graphics settings had anything to do with the time of the shutdown so I will keep trying it. Maybe I’ll just keep doing AC since Spider Queen triggers it.

I was able to do a bunch of HotW and CoE runs as well as SPvP before it shutdown in Lion’s Arch.

Burn.5401:

Ok I Did It.2854:

Burn.5401:

I guess it was a wrong idea to write for support in these forums. Going to make a ticket instead.

Be sure to come back and let us know what the specs of your new PC are after support cannot help you with your hardware fault, if you really do not wish to believe its hardware related, why not go into your local PC shop and tell them exactly what you told us, and im willing to bet they will say do not use the computer its a hardware fault.

Good Luck either way.

Hey, support already helped me out and I’m playing without any problems right now with the exact same rig. Thanks for being so concerned though.

Well what was the solution? You’re not the only one having hard shutdown problems here

Ok I Did It.2854:

I wonder is the game creating a crash log before the shut down, to see if that offers any insight,

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Guild Wars 2

In there is a text document that records the crash logs, mine is called ArenaNet, see if the game is recording anything, if it does not record anything at the times of the crashes, it seriously looks like it could be hardware, be it HDD, RAM, CPU, I know you checked temps but average temps don’t mean it cant be failing,

If you haven’t, you could try turn down your settings and see if that resolves the issue, or at least slows it down, I know this game is heavy on the CPU, and some high end gaming desktops can struggle with parts of this game, let alone a laptop.

I checked out the logfile but the latest entry was last January over some game crash that occurred. I had my settings lowered to bare minimum at one point (back when I thought it was an overheating issue) and still got the crash. However I’ll try the same while in fullscreen at a lower resolution just to rule things out next time.

Know of any ways I can check the HDD and CPU for faulty hardware? I’m not the most computer savvy when it comes to inspecting the actual hardware. I’ll use memtest to check on the RAM though if that helps.

If it helps some, I’ve owned this laptop for 2-3 years and this is absolutely the first time the whole system has just hard shutdown on me. It only happens during gw2 since a week or two ago. Any time I played gw2 in the past never created this problem. I’m not doing anything differently in the content compared to what I did in the past.

However there are times where the OS will freeze and the only way out is to hold the shutdown button down or unhook the power supply (battery is still attached) for a hard shutdown that happens immediantly. This happens say once every 2-3 months on average and as far as I remember has always been wonky like that. Not saying it’s connected but perhaps it may trigger a thought from someone on another solution.

dodgycookies.4562:

turn off the restart on BSOD to see if its a hardware or software issue. If you get bluescreens then read the code to find the error.

Otherwise i would first look to the voltage regulators or power brick. They do decay with age and grouped rail controller issues could lead to volt/amp drops across the different rails under heavy cross load and cause a shutdown.

I will try that out along with the suggestion to play on lowest settings next time. Is there a way I can measure the voltage coming in? Right now I only know how to check the voltage coming to the GPU using GPU-Z. I don’t want to buy those expensive voltage readers that electricians have :P

In another similar thread, Oogabooga suggested to play in fullscreen mode. I tried that using the same high cooling conditions. I still got the hard shutdown. I then tried fullscreen without ever alt tabbing out of it. Still hard shutdown. Both times were in AC explorer mode. First time I don’t remember exactlty where but second time was near Spider Queen. I’m noticing that I’m getting the hard shutdown at Spider Queen a lot. But ya, fullscreen mode isn’t working for me. Temperatures and voltage looked fine when I monitored them. Laptop still felt cool.

Not going to debate if it’s a bug or not. However, from a WvW and SPvP standpoint, it serves as a good way to counter this powerful aoe stealth ability by using knockbacks. It also means a low health thief needs to commit to staying inside the circle for a few seconds while angry enemies swing around randomly. If you could run out of it at any point just to absorb 2 ticks it would be overpowered.

If players mess this up in PvE the only real disadvantage is that you gotta avoid the trash the hard way or you got to equip pistol and sbow to generate your own aoe stealth (or wait 1 min for the SR cd).

Just a reminder, it acted a little differently in launch:
http://youtu.be/fCSHrnOjtgA

Woops. Looks like I made a duplicate thread with the same issue:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Hard-Shutdowns-at-random-times/first#post4238978

I’m fairly certain that these shutdowns aren’t due to overheating (for my laptop atleast).