Guild Wars 2

I sent in an in-game bug report for this last night but I have done some testing this morning. The 180 toughness from this trait isn’t reflecting on the character sheet. I use Sigil of Momentum that stacks 5 toughness per kill and I decided to see what would happen if getting 1 stack would get the toughness to display properly. I tested in Silverwastes.

My toughness should have been 3897 with the trait, but with no Momentum stacks character sheet was showing me 3717. With 1 stack from the sigil, my toughness read as 3907… so it gave me 10. I tried with another stack. Toughness still showed as 3907, which would be correct now because each stack should only give 5. I tried for 3 more stacks and they seemed to be working normally, giving me 5 each.

I tried another test with just the sigil alone as the 1st stack gave me 10. I reset my stacks, which reset my character back to 3717 on the sheet. I then unequipped the Stalwart Defender trait. 1st sigil stack gave me 5 so it is working properly.

I’m hoping it’s just a display bug but I just wanted to bring this up to the dev’s attention. I only noticed this bug last night. The day before my toughness was displaying properly.

Here’s a pic I put together of my characters

It’d be neat if instead of having the current second active that makes the spirit weapon do its special ability then disappear, like the spirit bow’s healing arrows, it instead equips the weapon on your character and you get a limited number of uses out of it, like an elementalist’s conjured weapon. That’d give us at least another ranged option

Spawne.3128:

I wanted to get some opinions because ive been debating about what I want to use for my primary melee weapon on my zerker specced guard. Ive used both greatsword and hammer and while i LOVE the hammer and all it represents, I feel that the skills and rate of attack are just far to weak to be an effective melee weapon.

I was wondering what everyones opinion was on the hammer skills vs the greatsword skills. I find that the hammer being so slow is not well accommodated with its skillset. Skills 4 and 5 on the standard keybinds (banish and ring of warding) are completely useless i feel on this particular weapon. Banish tends to launch your foe into another group causing you to aggro in situations where you do not want to, and ring of warding….well it really serves no purpose on a melee weapon, because you need to be up close, ive really found no situation where it has been useful.

You would think that the hammer would have more AOE or heavy damage or crit based skills given what it represents like some sort of ground quake or cone type AOE explosive smash or something, but it doesnt have any of that.

I’m assuming you are talking about PvE right? Ring of warding’s function works well for enclosing mobs and keeping them close to you and away from other party members, or keeping mobs away from you if you need to recover.

Banish requires positioning and awareness of your surroundings but can be nice to interrupt attacks. And it’s also fun punting enemies around inside a Ring of Warding bubble with Banish

Hammer doesn’t lack in AoE. It’s auto-attack is a front cleaving attack chain that ends in an AoE symbol which does nice damage and dishes out protection. If you trait for it, that symbol can also stack vulnerabilities on the mob too so they get hurt more while you get hurt less through protection. Mighty Blow is completely AoE, is a blast finisher, and crits for very good damage.

Alukah.2063:

DragonHarlock.8274:

Rainweaver.7302:

DragonHarlock.8274:

Nope. They’re not 1-shot kills. They do heavy damage, but definitely not 1-shot. I know this because I keep that champion icebrood mutt busy when Claw of Jormag is up and someone silly drags him into the group. Of course if you’re using a fragile character it will feel like a 1-shot. But if you actually have a tanky character you can take about 2-3 of those pounces no problem. Now having that champion plus the other 3 normal doggies with it pounce at you all at once… that hurts :P So far I have not encountered any 1-shot kill mechanics in this game that are not clearly telegraphed with a prolonged, Saturday morning cartoon villain-esque pose :P

They’re not literal 1-shot kills, but they still deal a massive amount of damage (80% HP of my 3200 toughness, 25k HP engineer) for an attack you cannot react. Whenever I fight these wolves I have to play a guessing game of when their next attack will be the leap or not. If I don’t dodge prematurely and guess it wrong, I will lose most of my HP.

I have no problems with attacks that you can’t react to, as long as they have moderate damage and effects. The gorilla boss from Arah P1 has a instant cast ground slam that will hit for something like 7k damage and launch people away. That to me is balanced as it’s not a massive amount of damage. Icebrood Wolves and Megalodons deal their main source of damage with attacks that offer zero reaction, and that’s not a good design in my opinion.

I completely agree that those icebrood wolves should have a bit of a longer tell for that damaging attack combo of theirs. I just have qualms with people saying 1-shot mechanics are everywhere even though they’re really not XD. Lots of people are under this illusion that defense doesn’t matter and everything will kill you in 1 hit anyway, so they go all out damage. Then they get downed in 1 or 2 hits and their illusion is reinforced.

And actually there might be something buggy with the icebrood wolf’s big damage attack combo. If you look at your combat log, the attacks actually do 2 hits at once sometimes, per visible hit. It doesn’t happen all the time and that’s why sometimes I can take two visible wolf hits and still survive and sometimes the second hit just downs me, both situations starting from full health and not being hit by anything else other than those attacks. But when it doesn’t go wonky I always survive from my full health of 18k on my guardian with about 3-5k hp to spare if I get hit by both. I don’t think that’s too bad a deal. Of course after the first hit I roll away and let a squishy eat the second pounce… which further reinforces their “defense doesn’t matter” illusion… oops >.>

>Guardian

I’d like to see how much your point of view would change if you played a low surv. class.

Heavy armored classes should be excluded from these topics by default.

So what are you trying to get at? Absolutely no class should have survivability? Or that every class should have the exact same survivability regardless of profession and armour class? Where do you see this in other games? What would even be the point of having different armour classes? What would be the point of having different classes at all? If I’m an elementalist, knowing I’m at the lowest end of both health and armour tiers, with full knowledge that my gear isn’t at all tanky, I will definitely be keeping my distance from anything with a golden border around its portrait. And you know what, I have all 8 classes at 80. I’ve been hit by this thing with all of them. I know which ones of them will crumple over in one hit and avoid it like the plague when I’m on those characters.

digiowl.9620:

Any time a single hit eats 50% or more of someone health, they may be for all practical purposes “one hit”. This because if they happen at any time outside of perfect health, they have a high chance of taking the character out.

And this scenario increases sharply when fighting more than one mob.

It’s still not “one hit.” The definition of “one hit” is, regardless of the situation, your HP bar, your armour rating, your boons, and any other game mechanic really, that one hit will down you. There’s not a thing in the world you can do to prevent being downed if you are hit. Even if you play smart and almost perfectly, and just so happen to get hit with a single stray attack, you go down. But that is not what this is. Not even close.

In regard to fighting more than one mob, you have to size up the enemy encounter before engaging it. If you see a champion icebrood and its pack of normals coming your way, you don’t just go in there and engage them all alone. That’s suicide. Break them up. Have a couple of people support you. If you plan on taking on the champion and keeping its attention, make sure that the other mobs are dead or at least not hitting you.

We should all be constantly trying to be aware of our surroundings and our health. If you’re squishy and you notice a hungry corrupted wolf running in your general direction, even if you’re in the middle of a dense pack of people, move out of the way. Don’t be a passive victim :P

Its damaging attack is a combo. Each hit alone doesn’t have the power to kill you instantly… unless you’re a glass cannon, a squishy class, or both… so you can get out of harm’s way when you notice your health go down. You just have to make sure you have enough health always to at least eat one hit from the combo. If you don’t, get out and recover. There’s other cannon fodder out there to keep it busy >.>

And really group event champions, especially ones tied with world dragon events, should hit pretty hard. I mean the dragons themselves are absolutely no threat. Only the timers and the mobs ever pose any real danger to the success of the event and to one’s personal HP bar respectively. And right now the danger posed by some of those mobs is trivial since people can just res you and up you go to fight again.

ODB.6891:

DragonHarlock.8274:

Svarty.8019:

DragonHarlock.8274:

Norjena.5172:

Hammer:
Does nobody want´s to remove the light combofield from symbol of protection?
This weapon is losing much in teamplay. Retalation often is not so strong. And guardians can easy get it.
On the other side, Hammer 5 is a light combofield anyway…

If i want to heal an allie, i want a waterfield, if i want dmg, i want a fieryfield, if i want to protect an allie i want aether…
But light? Not rly, and not on an AA Chain!

You have to look past damage and blast finishers.

The fact that we have to make an effort to “look past” them illustrates some of the problems GW2 faces when it comes to combos.

Combos need a polish pass, and I don’t mean a Polish Passport.

The reason I say “look past” is because many, many people are just concerned about upping damage to as high as possible and can’t seem to look past only that. They would only care for fire fields for those might stacks and not care about light fields because when they go smashy smashy with them with a hammer, they only get retaliation… I mean who needs condition cleansing projectiles anyway especially in the condition heavy meta we find ourselves in WvW or even the Nightmare Tower? To me that’s not an issue with the combo fields. That’s a player issue.

Fire fields aren’t the only combo fields of value. I’d take anything over a light field. Water, ice, ethereal, and yeah….fire fits us since that is our only actual damaging condition. Light fields are pretty terrible compared to those. When I am using a blast finisher….I wouldn’t waste it on a light field. I hold my finisher until I see one of the above mentioned combo fields. If I want condi cleansing, I have plenty of other options already in my utilities and traits. I’m just saying, that light fields need to be much better than they currently are…especially since we have zero projectile finishers on any of our weapons and have to equip a GS/mace/hammer to have a whirl/leap finisher. I really think retaliation needs to be removed as a combo field/finisher effect. It has been “balanced” out of viability. It just doesn’t compare to alternatives and I highly doubt that will ever change.

This discussion, however, ignores the lack of combo fields/finishers on sword, scepter, focus, and torch.

Yeah the blast finisher retaliation is very lackluster and I would love it if it was replaced by something of better value. But the free condi removal through any friendly projectiles is nice though. With it you don’t have to rely on traits and utilities that focus on them primarily and can take other traits that might better suit your play style. This is why I would not want light fields replaced for the protection symbol with something like water fields, fire, ethereal, etc., but yes I would like a change for the light field blast finisher.

Rainweaver.7302:

DragonHarlock.8274:

Nope. They’re not 1-shot kills. They do heavy damage, but definitely not 1-shot. I know this because I keep that champion icebrood mutt busy when Claw of Jormag is up and someone silly drags him into the group. Of course if you’re using a fragile character it will feel like a 1-shot. But if you actually have a tanky character you can take about 2-3 of those pounces no problem. Now having that champion plus the other 3 normal doggies with it pounce at you all at once… that hurts :P So far I have not encountered any 1-shot kill mechanics in this game that are not clearly telegraphed with a prolonged, Saturday morning cartoon villain-esque pose :P

They’re not literal 1-shot kills, but they still deal a massive amount of damage (80% HP of my 3200 toughness, 25k HP engineer) for an attack you cannot react. Whenever I fight these wolves I have to play a guessing game of when their next attack will be the leap or not. If I don’t dodge prematurely and guess it wrong, I will lose most of my HP.

I have no problems with attacks that you can’t react to, as long as they have moderate damage and effects. The gorilla boss from Arah P1 has a instant cast ground slam that will hit for something like 7k damage and launch people away. That to me is balanced as it’s not a massive amount of damage. Icebrood Wolves and Megalodons deal their main source of damage with attacks that offer zero reaction, and that’s not a good design in my opinion.

I completely agree that those icebrood wolves should have a bit of a longer tell for that damaging attack combo of theirs. I just have qualms with people saying 1-shot mechanics are everywhere even though they’re really not XD. Lots of people are under this illusion that defense doesn’t matter and everything will kill you in 1 hit anyway, so they go all out damage. Then they get downed in 1 or 2 hits and their illusion is reinforced.

And actually there might be something buggy with the icebrood wolf’s big damage attack combo. If you look at your combat log, the attacks actually do 2 hits at once sometimes, per visible hit. It doesn’t happen all the time and that’s why sometimes I can take two visible wolf hits and still survive and sometimes the second hit just downs me, both situations starting from full health and not being hit by anything else other than those attacks. But when it doesn’t go wonky I always survive from my full health of 18k on my guardian with about 3-5k hp to spare if I get hit by both. I don’t think that’s too bad a deal. Of course after the first hit I roll away and let a squishy eat the second pounce… which further reinforces their “defense doesn’t matter” illusion… oops >.>

Nope. E is totally…erm.. Enise… yep. >.>

Protoavis.9107:

DragonHarlock.8274:

Unlike a lot of MMOs though, when you decide to hop on in and play again with this MMO, you’ll be able to pick up where you left off from and even do new content they may have introduced. Sure you’ll miss a few things that you might like, but they will be replaced by things you might like even better down the road.

You mean the stuff that disappears every two weeks and never comes back?

Lets be honest, the only new content in the game over the last year is fractals, a change to teq (which isn’t popular) and 1 new TA dungeon path…if you leave for a year the game barely changes at all and there’s very little new to do because all the new things to do disappear.

Okay so let’s see. If everything we’ve experienced from Living World so far stayed… how many people would be doing the Flame and Frost signpost fixing? Jumping around in Zephyr Sanctum? Monotonously grinding away at the Queen’s Pavilion? What else am I missing… Cutscenes… although we do get permanent cutscenes through items. I don’t think I’m missing anything else when it comes to things that disappeared permanently. Granted there is something I miss, the arena events with Liadri et al but that’s only thing I miss. Seasonal events are not meant to linger and will reoccur annually. Super Adventure Box is reoccuring but as far I knew nowhere near as many people as the first time even bothered with it the second time around.

Now for the things that stayed…

Karka are still in Southsun, not being killed. Scarlet’s minions are still invading random spots in the world, also not being stopped. Permanent change to Tequatl… only a couple of servers and a dedicated guild still do it. Sanctum Sprint, Crab Toss, and Southsun Survivor are still there… I don’t know how many people play those anymore. Flame and Frost Dungeon is coming back as a Fractal. New TA dungeon path is also permanent. All the content is still here. Just not the rewards. And I’m guessing that’s what it all boils down to. It’s not that there’s no content left over… there’s plenty. It’s that the rewards tied to those events that introduced the content are now gone.

Vayne.8563:

And there were plenty of complaints in SWToR about the stories and your choices not meaning anything in the end anyway.

Yep. Just knowing the fact that the whole SWToR game happens before the movies make all your actions there meaningless. If you’re Jedi, your order is pretty much destroyed, no matter what you do. If you’re Sith, well… you’re not Darth Vader :P Besides the stories here are pretty good. Plus I love a lot of the banter, especially any involving Asura. After killing the Mega Destroyer, I too would like to be rewarded with a pet duck.

People will leave due to their own reasons. Work, family, health, social life, troubles with the law, other games, etc. Unlike a lot of MMOs though, when you decide to hop on in and play again with this MMO, you’ll be able to pick up where you left off from and even do new content they may have introduced. Sure you’ll miss a few things that you might like, but they will be replaced by things you might like even better down the road.

Vayne.8563:

KingClash.3186:

I’ll just leave this here…

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Promoter

So people with small guilds can get influence. However, any reasonably sized guild has no trouble unlocking any of the updates you need to play the game. This just gives people who have less time a chance to get stuff too.

We had a guild of 50 people that unlocked everything pretty easily. Now we’re up to 150 people. We have a ton of influence and we’re maxed out on Guild merits.

I’m not really sure why people have a problem with this.

Actually I think KingClash was only putting that link in for Serv to check out so he can have his inventory space without resorting to paying cash… even though he really doesn’t even have to when using the gem store since there is a gold to gem conversion… but oh well.

Columbo.5924:

Then you are obviously not using 2 handed weapons, because they clip really hard right now and do freaking rotations when jumping. See this thread for some videos on this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/2handed-wepons-clipping-characters

I was wondering what was making my greatsword do weird cartwheels while it was on my warrior’s back after a jump…

There’s probably something buggy with how that cleave damage was coded, like not having a maximum hit cap on any single target. That or the devs are totally trolling us! I hear all developers in general love the taste of the sweet, sweet tears of their players :P

Svarty.8019:

DragonHarlock.8274:

Norjena.5172:

Hammer:
Does nobody want´s to remove the light combofield from symbol of protection?
This weapon is losing much in teamplay. Retalation often is not so strong. And guardians can easy get it.
On the other side, Hammer 5 is a light combofield anyway…

If i want to heal an allie, i want a waterfield, if i want dmg, i want a fieryfield, if i want to protect an allie i want aether…
But light? Not rly, and not on an AA Chain!

You have to look past damage and blast finishers.

The fact that we have to make an effort to “look past” them illustrates some of the problems GW2 faces when it comes to combos.

Combos need a polish pass, and I don’t mean a Polish Passport.

The reason I say “look past” is because many, many people are just concerned about upping damage to as high as possible and can’t seem to look past only that. They would only care for fire fields for those might stacks and not care about light fields because when they go smashy smashy with them with a hammer, they only get retaliation… I mean who needs condition cleansing projectiles anyway especially in the condition heavy meta we find ourselves in WvW or even the Nightmare Tower? To me that’s not an issue with the combo fields. That’s a player issue.

digiowl.9620:

Would do crap, as the problem is that bunching up magnify the benefit of support, because most support (in particular from guardian and warrior) is character centered AOE.

And at the launch of the game that kind of support was unintentionally uncapped, and the zerging was even worse then once discovered. This because then just a single shouter could cover the whole zerg, rather than requiring multiple to make sure you get everyone.

I miss my immortal AH Guardian :P

digiowl.9620:

So far I have not encountered any 1-shot kill mechanics in this game that are not clearly telegraphed with a prolonged, Saturday morning cartoon villain-esque pose :P

End result is that it comes down to individual comprehension/reaction time. What feels like a long time for some, feels like a split second for others. It also depends on how often one fight a single opponent over and over in 1v1. I’m slowly picking up on the dramoss (and the very similar hypnoss) but for the rest, no dice. I simply do not have the mental capacity to memorize every tell for every variation of every race.

While it comes back to playing the ui rather than playing the game, i kinda prefer the Champions Online solution. A small set of icons, all showing up right next to the mobs targeting data (and also over his head, superimposed over any and all animations and FX) that tells you something big is coming.

Then again that game also have a universal block mechanic, that can be maintained for as long as you feel needed, rather than fire and forget mechanics that last for just a few seconds.

Meaning that there is no chance of reacting too soon, something i have done on occasions (hind brain confusion one animation for another or something). Just hunker down behind the block upon noticing a threat and wait it out. Much better than the interrupt concept that GW2, SWTOR, and likely others, are laden with.

Just sad that the game has gone lockbox heavy in recent years…

This is what I do since I too don’t have every single tell memorized in the slightest in this game. If it look like it’s winding up, get the heck out of the way or make sure you mitigate the oncoming hit somehow whether through dodging, blocking, blinding if the mob isn’t defiant, popping invulnerability, etc. And personally I like interrupt and active mitigation better than hiding behind a blocking mechanic and just waiting it out until the threat has passed. The latter is a little too passive for my taste. And I agree everyone has different reaction time. But that doesn’t mean you can’t improve on said reaction time. Besides working on quicker reaction time is always good, in games and in real life.

Norjena.5172:

Hammer:
Does nobody want´s to remove the light combofield from symbol of protection?
This weapon is losing much in teamplay. Retalation often is not so strong. And guardians can easy get it.
On the other side, Hammer 5 is a light combofield anyway…

If i want to heal an allie, i want a waterfield, if i want dmg, i want a fieryfield, if i want to protect an allie i want aether…
But light? Not rly, and not on an AA Chain!

For me personally I look at that light field not as a retaliation buff provider but as a free cleanse every time a friendly projectile passes your way. Cleansing combo field plus protection on auto-attack. Can’t see anything bad about it. Also hammer and mace attack times are exactly the same for the full chain, the timing is just portioned out differently for the 3 attack segments for each weapon. The 1 1/4 second cast time for hammer auto third strike is quite warranted because it’s a symbol that provides AoE protection with a light field symbol, which you can also trait to do other things like give out small heals or dish out vulnerability. You have to look past damage and blast finishers.

Silvragon.5809:

any advice for leveling?

If this is your first time to 80 then just explore and do maps. Take your time to enjoy the game. No need to rush things, even with the living story. If you rush to 80 and expect great things to change… then yeah you’ll be disappointed.

If this is not your first 80… the fastest way, though at a nice steep cost, would be to craft to 80. An easy yet boringly redundant way is to take part in the Queensdale Champion train. Your brain might go to mush though due to the monotony of it all, plus you won’t really learn your class mechanics well that way. WvW levelling is supposed to be pretty good and you’ll really learn your class through that way. Or any mix really of activities. You do anything in this game, other than spvp, and you get experience so just play how you want

Rainweaver.7302:

Xae Isareth.1364:

There isn’t one 1HKO which doesn’t give you a chance to think about it, except for the first boss in Arah P3, but that’s more down to how stupid the cleansing mechanics work.

Champion Icebrood Wolves with their instant-cast 1HKO leap attack.

Nope. They’re not 1-shot kills. They do heavy damage, but definitely not 1-shot. I know this because I keep that champion icebrood mutt busy when Claw of Jormag is up and someone silly drags him into the group. Of course if you’re using a fragile character it will feel like a 1-shot. But if you actually have a tanky character you can take about 2-3 of those pounces no problem. Now having that champion plus the other 3 normal doggies with it pounce at you all at once… that hurts :P So far I have not encountered any 1-shot kill mechanics in this game that are not clearly telegraphed with a prolonged, Saturday morning cartoon villain-esque pose :P

I’ve made a collage of my level 80s in their mixed armours

My thief in her mix and match. Tier 3 human chest, tier 2 mask, shoulders, boots, and gloves, Vigil pants.

Here are my stats. High crit chance tanky build with decent dps and high survivability. I bolster my dismal attack power with a Sigil of Bloodlust on my shield to give myself another 250 attack power at max stacks. High armour rating helps mobs stick to me most of the time.

Here are my elementalist, warrior, ranger, and guardian. Many transmutation stones were sacrificed in the name of fashion :P