Guild Wars 2

1. The one time event overall was a disaster.
On Friday when things got started there were so many people there were multiple major issues.
a. Latency
b. Graphics draw. Players and/or mobs were not being rendered.
c. Dynamic events bugged. This prevented the scavenger hunt/quest chain from being completed because by the next day parts were no longer accessable.
d. Auto attacking is no fun. Because of the latency that essentially all you could do.
e. maybe 1 in 10 mobs actually dropped any sort of loot.

2. I skipped the event on saturday because of the previous days issues.
a. As mentioed previously the scavenger hunt/quest chain was bugged from the previous day. If you had not been able to complete it, it was impossible to continue or start the chain.
b. The new zone is nice. The layout makes it interesting to try to navigate the mobs are difficult. It really feels like an outdoor dungeon zone. (HINT make outdoor group only zones)

3. The final event was plagued by issues as well.
a. Latency
b. Graphics draw. Players and/or mobs were not being rendered. This would often result in instant death because you were being attacked and could not see the mobs/attacks.
c. Auto attacking is no fun. Because of the latency that essentially all you could do.
d. maybe 1 in 10 mobs actually dropped any sort of loot.
e. The chest reward were a nice supprise. 20 slot bag, nice. Accessory, nice. Couple of exotics and rares, nice.

4. IF your going to do “one time events” I would stongly suggest:
a. Running the event in “event” zones (eg, like an overflow zone).
b. Once a player has complete the event their account is flagged and then go to the “normal” zone.
c. Run the event multiple times during the day and for multiple days.

5. The new dungeon fractal of the Mysts (FotM) is quite well done.
a. Each path feels quite unique and is interesting and fun to play.
b. I get the “infinite dungeon” idea. But I am not sure I Am sold on the execution here. It seems to be fragmenting the player base more than its bringing it together.

6. Ascended gear appears to be a 180 from what you, the developers, stated what players should expect when we play Guild Wars 2.

In case you forgot what you stated players should expect, let me remind you:
http://www.arena.net/blog/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto

So if you love MMORPGs, you should check out Guild Wars 2. But if you hate traditional MMORPGs, then you should really check out Guild Wars 2. Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun.

But it looks like thats EXACTLY what you are doing. Turning GW2 into a traditional MMO gear grind included.

7. Excellent communication skills required.
There are many unanswered questions which leads to rampant speculation.

8. I swore I would NEVER make a post on the official forums again but here I am doing it anyway. This game has so much potential. It would be a shame to see it go to waste. I guess I will just have to eat the infractions for being critical of how things were.

I will eat the infraction for this “meaningless and non-contributory post”
But you are right.

If you saying anything bad about how things are being handled then you get your post deleted.

for me, I refuse to post on the official forums because of this.
YOU CAN make your voice heard though by posting in reddit.

THIS is why I bought GW2:
“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

-Mike Obrien, President of Arenanet

So much for skill based PVP.

Gear grind?
There is one now.
Enjoy!

As I am sure you are finding out the language and words that we use to communicate are important.

Much like doctors have a language that they use. They use the medical terms and terminology to communicate because its a very specific and precice means of communication. It reduced the chance for there to be a misunderstanding that could result in harm comming to a patient.

So when you call someone a co-leader you are implying by name that they are at the same level you are and should have all of the bennifits that come with that rank. So yes, dedicated member would be a MUCH better title for that rank.

I don’t have 100 friends, I don’t want 100 friends.
But yes, the friends that I do have, have access to my house and I to theirs.
We keep each others fridge stocked with beer.

They have already stated that it IS in fact a stat stick.

New SPvP map? Yes !
New Dungeon? Yes !
Dungeon gets more difficult with each subsequent run? YES!
Dungeon has chance to drop better loot each run? YES!
New level 80 zone to explore? YES!
Massive world event that everyone can participate in? HECK YES !
New gear grind? ….er…um…

Way to ruin a perfectly good patch.

For me,
I started doing substantially better once I ditched the staff.

On greatsword:
If your doing shatter you want to get clones out fast.
GS (Domination 20, trait X Gratsword training) + Illusions 5 nets you a 4.5 sec CD on GS2 to pop out a clone.
Dueling 20, Trait X, deceptive dodge lets you pop out clones when you dodge.

Signet of illusions lets you reset your shatter (mind wrack) skill.

So you can GS4, GS2, dodge, Shatter[mindwrack].
Signet of illusions.
GS2 (or dodge) + Mirror immages, shatter [mindwrack]

And if you take the +20% mindwrack damage from the domination tree (that you already spent 20 points in) your going to do a hell of a lot of AOE damage in a very short amount of time.

I prefere running with sword/focus or scepter/focus as my secondary.
Focus 4 is a run speed boost. IT also lets you yank enemies to it for escapes or off walls etc.
Sword and scepter both have blocks/defense which are useful for surviving.

Staff…
yeah…
Chaos storm is great in all…every 35 seconds.
Chaos armor is meh, 33% damage mitigation is alright, BUT I much prefere takinkittenage via blocks/dodges/sword#2

Try it when using Scepter/Torch.

Depends a lot on how you play.

Sword / Sword nets you a LOT in the way of survival.
Sword 2 provides 2 seconds of not taking damage.
Sword 4 is a block (for 0 damage)
Both have a fast recycle time. (epsecially if traited)
and you have 2 dodges.

For AOE your better off with a great sword.
-Staff nets you 1 big AOE with 35 sec cd
-GS 2 bounced between attackers (+1 if traited)
-GS 3 is a small AOE.
-GS 4 is your phantasm. It will hit several targets + cripple.
-GS 5 is a cone dps/knockback.

With the GS trait (Domination 20, Trait X: Greatsowrd training) and the faster illusion (5 points in illusions) summoning you can get GS2 down to 4.5 sec CD and GS 4 down to 12 seconds I beleive.

If you run with the signit of illusions your illusions will live through a hit or 2 for shatters. It also makes your phantasms more durable too (they ARE considered illusions)
If you use the Mirror immages skill you can poop out 2 more illusions on demand in case you need a second shatter effect. Especially useful if you want do a confusion shatter on top of a damage shatter fast. you can get quite a few stacks up quick especially with the illusion 15 that makes all shatters inflict confusion.

As you can see a lot of those abilities do not become available until you dig much deeper into the various talent trees.

The other advice I can offer is carry pretty much 1 of every weapon with you. Then you can swap out as the situation dictates. Makes a HUGE difference.

(oh, in case your wondering I run 20/30/0/0/20 and swap in whatever traits match whatever weapons I am using depending on if I am dungoneering, gathering, pvp’ing etc)

I am fine with the listing fees and them being non-refundable.

The fee means that you have a vested interest in making sure what you post sells.
It also discourages people from playing shell games with the market.

Mesmer:
There is nothing “macro” about the mesmer.
There are several great builds in the mesmer section of the forums. Generally you plop out clones and then shatter them for effect. Or you can plop out phantasms to do a bit of the fighting for you. There are a few other builds that are entertaining.

Elementalist:
Attunment switching is where all of your power is at. I see way to many running aorund with their staff and never switchint out of fire. Then they commplain about how easily they die. There are quite a few good builds in the ele section in the forums.

Necromancer:
Again, there are several solid builds in the necro section of the forums.

As a general rule you may want to update gear. It does matter.
You can get things by crafting, buy them off the TP, or use karma.

(note that Tier 1 (1-75 ) and Tier 6 ( 300 -400 ) are slightly different.
1. Refinfing your metal and wood should net you the first 25 skill ups on the level.
2. Crafting all the parts you need will get you additional crafting levels. Craft 4 sets of parts for 6 different weapons.
3. Craft 2 different sets of inscriptions.
4. Discover the first set of weapons with inscription A. Discover the second set of weapons with inscription B.
5. You should now be able to craft the next inscription set. Craft 2 different sets of inscriptions.
6. Discover the first set of weapons with indignia C. Discover the final set of weapons with inscription D.

You can also craft the RARE set once it become available to you. 1 set of rare weapons (6) will get you 25 skill points (+ a few extra)

The rares sell pretty well. Requires some upfront cash, but you should be able to brake even with them.

No one here feels “entitled” to their legendary weapon.
Thanks for sharing your political views though.
You (I know this is a streatch here) /may/ want to actually read what people posted first next time.

What people want is to eliminate/reduce the RNG behind EARNING their legendary weapon.

And guess what? Eliminating/reducing the RNG behind getting a legendary will still result in….legendaries being legendary.

So what you are saying is that getting a legendary is easy?

for the 99.999% of the players that do NOT have their legendary would probably disagree.

Making getting 1 out of 9,999,999 things you need to craft a legendary /slightly/ easier to obtain will not make it any less difficult overall.

And one other thing.
Rolling the dice to get a precursor (as it currently is) has NOHTING to do with skill.

And don’t worry. When it comes to making things hard, ANET will deliver. (see also GW1) They added in some of the most insanely difficult content I think I have every played in a game.

On your thief.

You can use a short bow.
bow 3 jumps you back and lets you evade an attack.
bow 5 jumps you to the targeted location (used correctly, lets you evade an attack OR blind so the next attack misses)
AND you have 2 dodges.
AND you have a skill you can get early that lets you dodge as well. (forget the name).

Between all those skills NOTHING should ever touch you.

you can also use 2 pistols for meduim ranged attacks.
Still have 2 dodges.
Still have another skill that lets you dodge.

Worst case if you use a dagger offhand
dagger 4 criples. It also does decent damage and bounced to additional attackers. You can kite with this.

You can also use a sword in your main hand.
Sword 2 temeport you in, 2 again tepelorts you out.

Theives have a TON of mobility that let you stay out of harms way.

I know I brought up legendaries.

But lets take a look at something like crafting a set of exotic gear.

There are 5 accessory slots and 6 armor slots and 2-4+ weapons depending on dual wield vs 2handers.

It takes 5 ectoplasms PER exotic. so 5(5+6+2) = 65 ectoplams minimul to craft out a set of exotic gear.
YES I am aware you can get by just fine with a solid set of rare gear and run dungeons and turn in those tokens to get exotics too.
YES I am also aware that you can use karma to purchase exotic gear as well.
Grinding dungeons (and/or karma) to gear out a second (or 3rd ) 80 is just…

Over 2 months of play I have managed to obtain 37 ectoplasms. This is just from exotcs and rare drops that have landed my way that I have then turned around and salvaged for materials.
THIS is part of the problem. The absolutly garbage drop rate on rare and exotics.

Now. I have ONLY talked about 1 of the materials required to craft exotics.

You ALSO need things like Vials of Powerful Blood (T6 uncommon material). Each piece of armor required 15 T6 UNCOMMON, not even RARE or EXOTIC but UNCOMMON, materials. Where exactly are players suposed to find these drops? Not to mention the 90 they would need to craft a set of exotic armor.
THIS is part of the problem. The absolute garbage drop rate on UNCOMMON T6 crafting materials.

I am not supporting botting. But they DID at least provide a reasonable supply of UNCOMMON crafting materials and put them into the market.

I am glad that the market is “Adjusting” to their “normal” cost, HOWEVER the expectation of cost of materials has already been set. There are 2 months worth of cost history that has already been established. Like it or not, agree with it or not, its happened.
(edit) IF you didnt like what they bots were doing to the economy they YOU should have acted quicker to prevent their influence.

What IS happening is players are seeing the value of their gold diminished.
What IS happening is players are seeing substantially less buying power with their gold/silver/copper.

massive bot bans.
market is no longer getting flooded with supply.
there IS an official post.

Naoko.
GW2 is based around player skill. The gear “grind” has a difinitive end to it as opposed to a never ending one.
Sounds like this is not the game for you.
There are plenty of other MMO’s out there that have gear grinds to them (WoW, Rift, LotRO, etc) Sounds like one of those would have more appeal for you.

PS. I am not exactly sure you understand what socialism is. But thank you for sharing your political views.

I am inclined to agree with others in that the massive spike in price really highlights the massive shortage or drops/availablility for players.

I mean think about what you need to make a legendary.
Gift of Fortune:
77 Mystic Clovers (about 250 Ectoplasms )
250 Glob of Ectoplasm
Thats almost 500 (Five HUNDRED) exctoplasms.

Gift of Magic:
250 Vial of Powerful Blood
250 Powerful Venom Sacs
250 Elaborate Totems
250 Pile of Crystalline Dust

Gift of Might:
250 Vicious Fangs
250 Armored Scales
250 Vicious Claws
250 Ancient Bones

Not to mention most of the other gifts REQUIRE 250 of the T6 materials as well.

It does’t requre one or two, or twenty or fourty, but FIVE HUNDRED.
HUNDRED (ectoplasms)
And whats the drop rate on powerful blood? maybe (yes MAYBE)1 an hour.
The list of materials is INSANE.

Now, I havent even brought up the absolutly mind boggling material requirements of the other mystic forge recipes.

I Am glad your getting rid of bots.
But lets go back and re-examine what it is that you expect of players and crafting materials for some of these items.

The “ordinary” player will NEVER see a legendary.

There is a word for it.

Competition.

Warrior, Guardian, Thief, Ranger, Mesmer, Necromancer, Engineer and Elemetalist are alll great solo and have great builds available to them (check each class forum).

Considering how many you need for an exotic, and the current cost to buy them off the TP….

Yeah, Would like to have a pool of people to do this with.

Thank you.

HAHA, yeah. I got one of those once too.

Everyone was excited. It was a Bag of GOLD.
And inside? 4 copper.

Thank you for your post.
but you lost me at “I used a spreadsheet”.

And here is why.
I want to play and enjoy the game, not turn it into a career.

I was having the same issue.

Try doing this:
Go to options→ Sound options → and then set the “Sound quality” to “fastest”(all the way left) and set “Mixing buffer size” to “largest” (all the way to the right).

After making this adjustment I have not had the death siren sound again. Hopefully it will work for you as well.

I think that people are grossly overestimating the number of people that have 10g, 100g, or even 1000g.

Player A “What are you doing?”
Player B “Forging a legendary weapon!”
Player A “That mus be some epic adventure to get everything you need to make it”
Player B “If you count the walk to the trade post to buy the most important part an adventrue, then yes.”

1. The story wasn’t that aweful.
ps. It is not over yet either.

2. Thats on YOU to find a good guild/group of people to play with that are active and help each other out. There are plenty of great guilds out there that are hulpful, active and friendly.

3. You are correct. There are some parts/encounters in the game that are overly difficult. You can make a forum post with specific information on the encounter, why it is overly difficult/frustrating and make a suggestion on how to improve the play experience. Ranting does not help.

4. The scaling in the game is probably one of the best parts of the game. It allows you to participate in any part of the game at (with a few exceptions) any time in the game. I am not claiming that is is perfect, but it does work and work quite well.

It sounds like your trying to force play a specific weapon. Use the weapons that you have available to you. (eg, short bow pistol/pistol). Heck even if your dagger/dagger you can use dagger 4 to kite multiple enemies. Take the time to read/learn about what you class and abilities do and then use them to your advantage.

5. Underwater combat…yeah….

6. WvW is not very confusing.
The map shows you what points you control. The map shows you what points your enemy controls. The map will also show you a general area where fighting is occuring.

Protect your caravans. Kill enemy caravans.
Protect your map assets. Kill enemy assets.
Use your map chat to find out where people are at so you can coordinate with them.

7. If you do not enjoy playing MMO’s.
Then don’t play MMO’s.

I will repost here:

There are 3 different racial armors.
There are 7 different crafted armors.
There are 8 different dungeons armors.
There is 1 karma armor set.

You have 19 different armors to choose from.
(thats 19 light, 19 medium, 19 heavy. this does not include the 12 racial armors that you do not have access to.)

And there may be more armors out there as well. ( Like exotic world drop armor sets.)
And for the most part every armor set has a very unique look/feel/vibe to it too.

Each racial armor has 3 different sets.
There are 7 different crafted armor sets.
There are 8 different dungeon armor sets.
There is 1 karma armor set.

That is 19 different sets of amror you have available to you.
Most of the armor sets mix and match quite nicely too.

RNG is not “hard”
RNG is RNG.

If you have a 1/1000 chance of getting a precursor.
You have a 1/1000 chance of getting a precursor.
If you do 10,000 (or 100,000) attempts,
NOTHING says that you will get a precursor as a result of your efforts.
And the next time you try, you still only have a 1/1000 chance of getting a precursor.

THAT is what people are angry about. Its gambling. Gambling is not hard. Gambling is not legendary.

People act like getting:

Gift specific to their chosen legendary, requiring its own set of materials including:
Two level 400 crafting professions
And ALL the materials that are required for this:
Gift 1:
250 Crafting material A
250 Crafting material B
250 Crafting material C
250 Crafting material D
Gift 2:
250 Crafting material E
250 Crafting material F
100 Lodestones
1 dungeon reward (500 Dungeon Tokens)

Gift of Mastery:
Bloodstone Shard 200 Skill points
250 Obsidian Shard 525,000 Karma
Gift of Exploration 100% World Completion
Gift of Battle 500 Badge of Honor Badge of Honor

Gift of Fortune
77 Mystic Clovers (Hey look! RNG HERE !)
250 Glob of Ectoplasm

Gift of Magic:
250 Vial of Powerful Blood
250 Powerful Venom Sacs
250 Elaborate Totems
250 Pile of Crystalline Dust

Gift of Might:
250 Vicious Fangs
250 Armored Scales
250 Vicious Claws
250 Ancient Bones

Is easy.

There are a lot more people in the zone than you probably realize.
Best thing you can do it call out a DE in map chat and LINK the nearest (non-contested) waypoint and tell what direct from the waypoint.

Eg. DE west of [waypoint]

People tend to show up if they know something is going on and where to go.

Think of it this way.
PVE is simply PVP vs bots.

so we can conclude that if you balance the game around PVP then the game is in fact balanced for PVE as well.

A well done combat system accomodates BOTH without the need to have seperate skills for each since they are really just 1 in the same.

I think what the OP is refering to is this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/So-what-are-you-flipping/first#post610491

If you transfer servers you start from 0 again.
Yeah, it stinks.

This is what I have been running around with as my general PVE/WvW/Dungeon build:

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcmz0mczMmnLxcmnLxmGx9MGzaVaMVk

Gear is pretty much all power/precesion/crit damage with a few power/precesion/toughness pieces.

This is a general build.
The single best things you can do is swap skills out based on what your fighting.
Take the alpha fights in CoE. Some instances he is much easier to fight in melee. In those cases you WANT the 1h sword skill (blade turning) in the dueling tree.
sword 2 provides 2seconds on invulnerability every 8 seconds. Sword 4 is a block.

There is no “One build to rule them all”.
Be effective, swap out skills and weapons as needed.

I am glad you did what you did though.
I had the same though. Take 4 of the same weapon from dungeons and forge those into a legendary precursor.

Hopefully they will change the mystic forge so that 4 dungeon weapons will forge a precursor. Or some KNOWN formula that will produce one.

I absolutly hate how they made precursors so RNG dependant.
Getting clovers is RNG plenty as it is.

Jade Quarry (US).
Uncontested pretty much 24/7.
Catch is the server is FULL more often than not as well.

Thank you for posting the guide!
Thanks for making the community a better place too.

I full agree with your suggestion.
I 42nd this idea!

Field of View (FoV) changed the angle that you can see.
Zoom simply moves closer or further to your character. The viewing angle remains the same.

The current viewing angle is like trying to play a a game on a widescreen monitor with a 4:3 aspect ratio.
The beta FoV fix changes it so that your getting a full 16:10/16/9 aspect ratio.
And I will say the FoV fix (while not perfect) us a BIG step in the right direction. The game feels more natural and substantially less clausterphobic. Its much easier on the eyes too.

Being able to zoom out futher is nice too.

edit: I know what I said make little sense, just go with it.

Not negative.
GW had some many great features that I miss them here.

Elite skills. In GW you had to chease down the elites and capture their skill from them.
Guild vs Guild battles.
Battle for the favor of the gods AND the dungeon it opened.
The skill system. Lots of great builds/group builds.

Jade Quarry (US) is usually clear 24/7

Thanks for making my point for me lackofcheese.

I didnt know what the exploit was. I never used it.
I am not saying you used the exploit, but you know what the exploit was.

My point is that with the exploit the cost of getting dusk or dawn or whatever was rasonable. 50g, 70g, 100g. fine.

300+g is not reasonable. and I am sure the price is going to go up….significantly too. The reality is very very very few even have 300g that they can try to spend on one in the first place. The “Gift of fortune” costs 100g already.

There is already PLENTY of RNG in getting the clovers.
They just need to make the pre-cursors account bound and make how they are obtained complety different.

Mesmer.
It makes the kiddies cry.
You know what I mean.

I am not on desolation either.

I am not having any issues finding people for dungeons.
Usually takes 5 …maybe 10 minutes to get people together.

And I Am talking about the hard to get groups for things too.
Any story mode.
And some of the harder dungeons like Arah and Crucible explorer modes.

I really do not see the point of a group finder in GW2.
The point of a group finder is for /other/ MMO’s where 99% of the players are DPS and the other 1% are the tanks and healers.

Just have to look at the breakdown of people that play classes.

70% DPS.
20% heal
10% tank.

I Am sure you have played other MMO’s where you could not do XYZ because you could not find a tank, healer, or both.

In GW2 each person is responsible for Tanking, Healing and DPS’ing.

You state that you have no reason to get another class to 80…I find that a cop out since each class plays rather differently from the next.