Guild Wars 2

I have T4 Nuhoch mastery for stealth detection. While wandering around I came across a Treasure Mushroom and killed it (and funny enough ppl gave me weird emotes cuz they couldn’t see what I was attacking). It dropped the invisible mushroom spore that is required for the ascended weapon collections for elite specializations. At the very least, the same mushroom is required for the dragonhunter bow, druid staff, and herald shield (these are all the spec’s I’ve currently unlocked on my toons. I have not unlocked more yet, but I suppose I will later to check if it is the same across them all).

When I looted this mushroom, it only applied to one, which in this case was the dragonhunter bow. I wanted it mainly for the herald shield as I am focusing on revenant currently. I submitted a bug report and a ticket to support, who told me I should post on the forums to see if anyone else has this issue and that they couldn’t fix it.

Is this working as it is intended? I think it is silly if every weapon requires the same item and it is randomly applied to one at a time. In my opinion, it should apply to all of them, but at the very least let me choose which collection it is unlocked in… I don’t know if the mushrooms are particularly rare or not—I’ve only seen one. It will be obnoxious if they are and I now have to hunt for several hoping it unlocks in the right collection.

At anyrate, the GM suggested this so people having the same issue can speak out. May as well list any other issues with these collections that you are having so we get it compiled in one area. Please keep it limited to issues specifically with the collection requirements for the ascended version of elite spec weapons.

Eggshells.1748:

Gaaroth.2567:

Eggshells.1748:

@Kodiak.3281

Do I HAVE to do the HoT story part first to unlock masteries? Because Atm I’m just doing world completion in Central Tyria on my Rev(Lv 80 with tomes) Or does it not matter which I do first?

No.
Is the other way, you need some masteries to progress HoT story but they are completely indipendent.

Oh ok, I was wondering about it since he mentioned he unlocked the mastery thing with his Elementalist first before doing his Central Tyria completion.

There is a very short story segment in the silverwastes that leads you into the jungle—I don’t know if this can be skipped for you to enter without a teleport capsule, but it only takes like 5 minutes. After that, none of the story is required to do other HoT content, but HoT masteries are required to finish the story.

What can really help in HoT is keeping up boosters. I actually spent a good few hours yesterday grinding mobs with them getting about 1.1k xp + a 3-5k bonus on many of them. Doing this I gained quite a few ranks. I did have a guildy with me, which helped keep the speed fast. We ran around killing mobs while hunting different aspects of map completion — skill points / mastery / etc.

I’ve been only in HoT on my rev so I’ll go ahead and throw in some advice for people looking to unlock herald solely through a first time play through of HoT on rev:

-Do the adventure/challenges and make sure to get lifetime gold. The first time achieving gold on it nets you over 200k mastery points. You can repeat daily for an easy about 60k xp for gold.
-As mentioned above, keep the boosters on. Mobs are everywhere and when you killstreak chain them the bonuses are ridiculous.
-Many skillpoints are gated behind masteries, expect to backtrack a lot. I leveled mine according to the story (this does reward mastery but you can definitely grind xp faster just skipping this), but if you ignore that, unlock bouncing mushrooms and then rush gliding — most of the map content are locked behind gliding mechanics and mushies.
-Lastly, TRY at all times to have a buddy or two in party with you. It makes clearing mobs way faster, and many of the skill points are tough for a solo player. It doesn’t matter if you pug or use a guildy/friend. Just have people. I was slowly clearing alone / with randoms nearby, but adding a guildy and focusing them down really made it a lot faster. Moar brains.

I’ve been very tempted to just finish herald in Tyria, but I want my glint shield and I just finished most of the mistwalker (all but the helmet ) so I felt grinding HoT outright is most efficient (I had to get a lot of masteries that haven’t net me many skillpoints in the process—nuloch does very little for you!). I’ve been mostly using Shiro/Jalis w/ traveler runes and zerker gear.

All in all, know what you want to obtain. I’ll have my glint shield by this weekend I’m sure woop.

I made a similar comment to a friend the other day. I’ll still be taking Ancient Seeds — you lose way too much value by not doing so…
I still get entangle off here n there where the opponent cant do anything and its usually a won fight, but 80% of the time its pretty much just as you say — condi cleanse / fury. Stopped em for a whole half a second.

Ancient seeds is probably fine as is — 10 seconds is relatively low compared to a lot of our CD traits and the effect is a lot better in my opinion — and it should be incredibly easy to apply regardless of weapon sets.

In regards to entangle though, I think making it a pulsing, unremovable debuff (like certain class effects you cant strip — like rampage) would be reasonable — Something like dividing the immobilization/bleeds between 5 separate rooting pulses, and making the roots significantly easier to kill. Something like 1-2 hits to kill the root, with new roots being applied each pulse. I’m not arguing for these exact numbers but I think the idea of an entangle change along these lines would make it much more reasonable.

Essentially, it is like what they did to strength of the pack on the ranger, except applying that functionality to the debuff on the opponent afflicted by entangle.

The queue time will likely increase in the higher tiers of league but I doubt the lower tiers will see much change. I imagine more people will move into doing league queue depending on if it is more rewarding in the long run — other than getting the legendary backpiece at the highest level.

TBH — I don’t care if I end up sitting in a queue for 30 minutes. At the start of the game paid tournies used to have queues up to an hour easily while you waited for enough teams to join. This game has loooong needed a solid PvP structure and decent rewards to make it enticing. I’m glad I’ll finally get to have that. Most of the PvPers I know who’ve been around since the start are also happy to have this.

The main loss of much of the original sPvP community is BECAUSE there was nothing. Just solo queue and team queue, no tournies, no rewards. This is finally a good step in the right direction, the esports scene seems to be improving with their latest announcement for a world tourny structure as well. It’s finally moving in a nice direction, now we just need to wait another 3 years for when they learn to balance each class to be viable with more than one build ;p

I haven’t been able to play rev yet — I was testing druid during the beta weekends as I currently main ranger (though depending how things go that may very quickly change). As far as condi builds go, I think rev actually is quite well established. I was planning to be a condi bunker type using mace / axe and hammer with mally and the dwarf one. Likely rabid or settlers for the amulet, maybe carrion idk. Would need to test a few. I don’t think I had a firm decision on runes yet either.
Link: http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNApXinfNWNSuJrJRHl/kskygS4S5QJorcrkFUFhNZzqqX6UKNwhGA-TpgZQA99HAlBAA

I also had theory’d into heraldry as well but as I haven’t had the opportunity to physically play any of this I don’t know how it is in practice. I would say a fairly large issue with the condi’s rev has is it’s almost exclusively torment, which is a great condition, but having so few makes it very easy to be cleared. Thought I’d go ahead and throw it out there as I wouldn’t mind hearing feedback from people who have actually been able to play the class itself.

Ticket: 571963:Guild Leadership Transfer

It has been roughly a week without hearing anything back besides it has been flagged. Would like an update soon—looking to try and get the guild going again (which is hard when the leader is gone).

I just played a few solo queues today. As have a few friends. It seems unanimous that in the majority of our games we had leavers and afkers. I hope you plan to reset it again because this is ridiculous.

On a slightly unrelated note, perhaps disabling solo queue all together would be the better choice. Team queue is taken seriously. Solo queue is played more like a small hot-join. Most of the people I have spoken to, friends and guildies, all refer to solo queue rank as not mattering. I don’t know how this can be fixed, but at the very least until you get a better rank system you should just stop ranking players. There are far too many quitters/afkers/total randoms on teams they shouldnt be on. MMR is not working properly. In what sense is it balanced to have a rank 5 and 6 on your team when you are versing all 30+ players. We were decimated btw.

I’ve played a lot of pvp in a lot of games, I am aware that developing a rank system for solo queue style play is hard as hell, but until you have something of a solution, just get rid of the leaderboard all together. It’s meaningless in the eyes of a large portion of the community.

Will we ever see the return of extended match tournies btw? I really liked the 3 map matches in paids/free tournies.

I wouldn’t recommend starting just by jumping into soloq. If you are picking a class you dont know how to play and you dont know/understand the maps then you are only going to damage your rating. Find a class and a build. Learn how to play it in hotjoins: 10v10 is a total zergfest so find a room for 5v5 if you want. After you feel you’ve got the hang of it and you’ve seen all the maps atleast once go ahead and do soloq, but to just jump into with without knowing what to do/how to play would hurt you and your team.

Far as starter class goes, if you have a main you use in PvE then start with that, it’s what you’ll be best at. As you, like I said above, learn about the maps and about other classes/builds by seeing them you’ll be able to branch into a different class if you want. And if you got nothin’ then just pick whatever.

I neglected to mention I was looking mostly from a PvP perspective, though the title hints at it. The reason why I think PB Shot needed its cast time cut is because, even though it has range, most people aren’t going to just run at you. Every class has a gap closing skill and once they use thakittens basically impossible to get PB shot off. I’ve gone to the cannon in Skyhammer and I can never use my knockback because it takes too long to cast in POINT BLANK range.

I also thought Rapid Fire should be changed but I didn’t have many ideas on what to do with it since its longbow’s main DPS.

I like the idea of buffed shouts a lot as have a few other rangers I’ve mentioned the idea to. As it stands, no one ever uses shouts except for protect me (the only one that affects the ranger!). I think both Guard and Search and Rescue need to be changed. There is no benefit to choosing either as they are. I have nothing on search and rescue, but I thought to keep the stealth effect guard could be changed to something like “on the hunt” and you can gain stealth for 5 seconds and maybe 3 stacks of might for roughly the same or slightly longer at something like a 30/40 second CD. Protect me can give you protection/regeneration, sic em swiftness and fury, and no ideas for the last shout.

Either way, either signets should automatically provide their effect and shouts traited or vice versa. If shouts were buffed I could see myself happily going BM for the pet swap quickness.

I won’t be explaining why Longbow and Power builds are not viable, I will simply be stating what I think should be changed in order to provide as balanced a fix as I can.

First for utilities, I think it would be helpful (and cool) if shouts were changed or had a trait added that would provide an effect to the ranger himself. This should open up more utility choices and can add some needed methods of survival, like if stand guard also stealthed the ranger for a few seconds (a cooldown would need to be added to the skill ofc). At the moment, shouts are never used, I don’t believe any one runs them even in pve, so they definitely need to be changed and allowing the ranger to share in the benefits would certainly increase their use.

Then for tackling the longbow itself. Adding stealth to hunter’s shot was a great step towards making it more effective. But it’s not enough alone. I think the cast time on point blank shot needs to be reduced or even removed. I have often tried using it in point blank range, only to have it fail because they are running around me (as melee always do). Even a dodge roll followed by it more often than not doesn’t help. For how long it takes to cast Barrage, the effect is insignificant. Change the cripple to a short immobilize (2 seconds I think would be about right maybe 3). It is roughly half the damage in the longbow’s skill set, which is lost if you cut it short just for the immobilize in melee, so I think it balances out well. I think rapid fire works fine, though having so much damage focused in one attack is irritating because if it is dodged or mitigated, especially if you pop a quickness, you are in very bad shape. Anyway, I think with the above, longbow would make leaps and bounds into becoming more viable.

If other utilities become viable enough to pull longbow power out of the niche zephyr/lightning reflexes/signet of stone, such as shouts, even more trait lines would open up, like trading precision and crit damage for the utilities that come with beast mastery.

One of the things that I recall Arenanet pushing for in the creation of guild wars 2 was to really allow players to do what they want to do. I, and many others who PvP, love doing just that, however there is also an occasional taste for PvE and WvW. However, there is an issue we have when we seek to enter WvW (and some PvE dungeons). Unless we take on the task of grinding dungeons for gear (which I very much dislike doing), we are at a severe disadvantage to those who haven’t spent their time sPvPing. An active PvE player will have top gear (ascended included) and that will carry over into WvW, however someone who only actively PvP’s, will have nothing when moving to WvW and will be an a very large disadvantage (not to mention they can also earn gold which sPvPers currently cannot, ability to craft account bound unidentified dyes excluded).

My suggestion is that a vendor is implemented that will sell all kinds of exotic level gear for level 80’s that are account bound (since glory is shared across accounts this seems most reasonable) or soul bound at the cost of glory and/or the PvP materials. I leave price speculations to Arenanet staff, but I think this would be a great addition that would make a lot of PvPers game lives much happier and give us something to actually spend our glory on (since most people have no need to buy chests due to surplus of the materials, and now we are stacked on glory too…) It also might just bring more players to the world of sPvP to try an alternate method of gearing up those 80 characters.