Guild Wars 2

Ah, when you specified dungeons I assumed you meant with a group. I have basically no experience soloing, so I’d defer to a more seasoned player. When solo, I could see how Arcane might be more valuable for vigor, boon uptime, Final Shielding, and optionally Bountiful Power for additional damage. Runes of Strength would prove more beneficial too (and I believe DEKeyz also mentioned this).

Of course the skill, knowledgeability, and composition of your group are huge factors in deciding how smooth non-solo dungeons runs are and how survivable you are on a full zerk ele. Persisting Flames with s/x (or really any weaponset, I highly recommend staff) easily grants party-wide perma-fury and good might, but a single PS warrior can help maintain 25 might with little effort. Guards providing well-timed aegis plus reflects and thieves (or others) with easy access to blinds can make a huge difference. With a group you trust to be effective, Runes of the Scholar and Water over Arcane, coupled with Ice Bow/Lightning Hammer and Glyph of Storms, definitely produce better DPS.

I believe I recall DEKeyz of DnT recommending zerk and mixing in a bit of assassin’s to achieve your desired crit chance. While down scaled in the past, you could easily close in on 100% crit chance even in full zerk with Signet of Fire, Banner of Discipline, and other buff sources. With the recent changes to down scaling, you get less bang for your buck with precision, so I’m not sure how this affects min/maxing.

I’ve personally stuck with full zerk, as it’s straightforward and useful outside of PvE (namely for WvW and GvGs). Power also has the current advantage of being the only stat that matters when attacking non-crittable entities, such as structures and certain bosses. How much you value this is up to you.

If going for full ascended, you may consider starting by crafting a zerker armorset and then mixing in trinkets of other stat combos if desired, since these are much cheaper and easier to obtain.

If running s/x with conjures, I’d also recommend swapping out Arcane for Water in order to maximize your DPS with both Aquamancer’s Training (+10% while >90% HP, which matches the 6th slot bonus on Scholar Runes) and Piercing Shards for +20% while attuned to water, which synergizes well with your primary source of sustained damage, Lightning Hammer.

Good luck.

Piercing Shards is most effective when used in conjunction with Glyph of Storms (Lightning Storm), Meteor Shower, and Ice Bow 5 (if applicable) 4 and 3 all together. With proper rotations, Fire Attunement should be coming off CD as you finish using these skills, so you can quickly resume spamming Lava Font and autoattack. Piercing Shards is included in the PvE meta staff build for this valuable damage modifier.

Staff is not an effective weapon for might stacking, so this should not be an issue.

Premature community backlash.

nekretaal.6485:

First of all, EVOS is doing the lord’s work and is the best/only major NA guild that attempts Triple Trouble and accepts nonmember pugs.

I’m glad you’ve found success through EVOS, but I thought I’d mention that TTS does accept non-member pugs to their Teq and TT runs and are not the exclusive or elitist group that some players believe them to be. In fact, I’d dare say their OCE runs are completed with a large portion of non-members. Yes, they use TeamSpeak to organize and taxi onto maps but, so long as you can merely listen in, it works very well.

I have noticed the health increase to phase 1 of TT, and there’s certainly a much smaller margin for error with achieving timely burn phases. It’s doable, but I’m not sure it aligns with ANet’s actual intention for the event. With the change, the timer is far more restrictive than previously (unlike Teq). Phase 2 is fine.

DarkWasp.7291:

Guys, you’re still missing the point.

Tequatl and all other structure world bosses are BUGGED. The ENTIRE boss is meant to receive crit damage.

I don’t think most of the dissenting opinion I’ve seen in these recent threads has even contested that possibility or necessarily disagreed that it would be an acceptable change. However, that is not the contention of OP. In fact, he hasn’t made much of a claim at all more than that they failed, so it must be in need of a nerf. He has refused to acknowledge criticisms and restates his same, tired talking points and humble-bragging about morality.

Even if the inability to crit targettable locations is unintended, that is also beside the point, because what you have instead are players refusing to contend with the reality of Teq’s current state, which is nonetheless absolutely beatable without exploits and with consistency. Players are refusing to conform their playstyles and strategies to match this reality.

Your bizarre insistence that only zergs of guards exploiting symbol stacking can succeed at Teq is honestly baffling. I’m convinced that this must be some troll thread, and I’m apparently not in on the joke.

You haven’t really offered much in the way of critical analysis of why your run failed, however. Yes, you say your commander was stacked on the zerg and being buffed by turrets, but location is equally important post-update.

Teq’s health was doubled, a critical hit spot was added. That is the trade-off. Sufficient damage output is dependent on effective use of the new crit spot. I’m sorry, but neither you nor anyone else since the 23rd have offered compelling evidence that these failed runs have occurred despite effective use of the crit spot and, if anything, I and many others have personally experienced all evidence to the contrary in both pug maps and those run by groups like TTS.

The runs that struggle the most have significantly more players trying to kill Teq with business-as-usual tactics, standing off in the same-old ranged spots to the side of Teq’s right leg. This appears to be the case in most the complaint stories posted to here/reddit, and the few accompanied by actual screenshots verify this. Conversely, well-organized groups stacked within melee range of the crit spot (where, by the way, there is also increased risk to the zerg) have far better damage output and a better chance of success. This is true completely independent of the Symbolic Avenge bug (i.e. even after the trait was disabled).

Chilipadiboy.9340:

Conski Deshan.2057:

The game is 100% accessible, you can attempt 100% of the content in the game at the moment, success however is not something that is guaranteed (nor should it be, otherwise you no longer have a game).

By your logic, if I pay for the game and I “attempt” to log in but I am unsuccessful, I should still be happy because hey, it is not something that is guaranteed?

Even if you disagree with Conski about design philosophy, you cannot seriously believe that this follows the same reasoning to this absurd logical conclusion. You are grasping at straws.

Silent majority? Who are you kidding? Have you even read the forums or reddit over the last few days? You belong to the vocal majority who, at the first sign of struggle, have resorted to foot stomping and demanding rewards for attendance. This is not to claim that world bosses cannot be improved, but days after the change I still see the majority of players sitting in the same old half-idle range spots, refusing to make effective use of crit locations, while complaining in /m about how long bosses take.

Combined with the HoT pre-order debacle, I have never before been more disappointed by the GW2 playerbase than in the past few weeks.

My experience with a few successful Teq runs since the buff has been that people are sure eager to complain about the new healthpool, and yet 90% of the main zerg still sits off to the side trying to autoattack him to death as if it was business as usual. Even when the commanders are pleading with players to use the double damage and crit spots, many refuse or ignore the calls. I see this at other world bosses as well, though it’s obviously less of an issue.

Could Teq’s healthpool be toned down a little? Is there poor communication regarding the changes and no visual indication of the crit spot? Could this be improved? Of course. However, I get the sense that people as a whole just want to maintain the status quo ezmode and have been unwilling to change their behavior and put in slightly more effort.

It’s a Combat Only trait, as stated in the tooltip. :P

From this thread I have learned that there are easy games and there are hard games, but there is no in-between or such a thing as a diverse breadth of content.

EARL.8312:

well i cant remember if it was on demo or live stream someone said that the range indicator of blasting staff was using the exact range(because now it uses the default range even when traited) this might actually because larger range became the default?

The character they were using might also just have been new, since those created after whichever patch “fixed” the AoE indicators display them properly, whereas older characters still display the incorrect radius in PvE(/WvW). But yes, since the radius increase is now baseline, hopefully this means the indicators will finally be fixed for everyone.

These changes do, on their face, appear to spell a reduction to our DPS via traits. As with previous major updates, I’ll reserve judgment till we have a more complete picture of both the ele’s future state and those of other professions as well.

As for possibly losing the option to run Renewing Stamina in such a DPS build, I think we’ll find new and perhaps even more survivable options in Water/Earth. However, I can’t deny that compared to the changes I saw for other professions, and considering the impending nerf to Ice Bow/LH, elementalist really seems to have gotten the short end today. I’m trying to remain hopeful, and time will tell.

It’s not possible. Give up while you can.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

“When we started looking at bringing more of the clothing back into armor with mix and match styles there are some fundamental incompatible things between weight classes. (part of how we set up every armor to allow many dye channels and styles per piece).. There really is no way at this point over six years since we started development to make absolutely everything work together.”

That’s unfortunately compelling.

It seems to come down to the meaning of “fundamental incompatible things.” I’m unsure if this means something technical on the back end, or how the dye channel tie into this incompatibility.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

If they were separate pieces, then it seems they would be set up to mix and match within the different outfits. But they can’t. Each is a standalone set.

The way dyes are applied to outfits is a good point, but I remain unconvinced that this is necessarily how outfits are set up on the back end. On the old armor sets that were converted into outfits, gloves can be hidden. This suggests that the outfit system has at least been designed to handle these exceptions and perhaps even still treats the skins as separate pieces. In the same way the ability to hide specific pieces of an outfit could be predefined, so too could the dye channels be designed to automatically apply to multiple pieces of “separate” armors skins. Without first-hand knowledge of the back end, this could go either way.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Guhracie.3419:

As far as I’m aware, each of the three armor types use a different mesh, and I’m pretty sure outfits use a fourth.

A dev has more or less stated this outright, I believe…

If you happen to remember when/where this was said, I’d be really interested to see this. This discussion over outfits v armor sets keeps popping up, and confirming that there are in fact technical limitations to the outfit system that would make this proposed compromise unfeasible could finally put this argument to bed.

I read that response of OP as dismissing the claim that then hackers can “send off double the amount of money” because, with the new gold limitations, it wouldn’t matter if spam suppression was made more lenient.

Methinks OP just needs to clarify. /o\

Edit: beat me to it!

I’ll second FrownyClown’s recommendation for WvW d/d roaming. Celestial mixed with zerk/cav gives you a well-rounded distribution that slightly favors DPS.

For WvW staff, condi and healing are typically wasted stats. Whether or not you’re WvWing for PPT or zerg busting/GvG/open field should determine which stats you favor. If you expect to encounter and handle siege, power main stat is all that matters. Mix in toughness/vit to suit your needs. Zerker/soldier mix is an easy solution.

PvE: zerkzerkzerk

Sounds to me like he’s referring to the mail system’s spam suppression.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Moot as in they have no place to be discussed, or moot as in it doesn’t matter if it’s brought up because it won’t happen?

Hah, I think you’ve read to far into what I said. If anything, I felt that others were too quick to shut down constructive discussion of ways to implement this feature by limiting discussion to their personal interpretation of how it would be implemented, and then arguing against it. I meant that such claims are moot because we don’t have to consider only one possible implementation, when there can be so many!

I also think you’re far too cynical about the heart of the discussion. Frankly, I’ve got a great inventory management system with my numerous ascended weapons with alternative sigils, so I’m otherwise content for things to remain the same. But in the same way it would be great to have build templates or gearsets, I could see this being an additional quality of life improve that I do think is deserving of the Legendary rarity. I don’t think this has to be perceived as elitist, and I hope I’m not.

@Mourningcry

I think you missed the entire point of my post — that every counter argument has presumed one specific implementation of this feature. There is no reason that the feature necessarily must remove the cost of swapping sigils.

Moreover, this distinction you draw between the equivalent “sunk” and “opportunistic” costs of legendary versus ascended weapons (and any subsequently introduced “economic disparity”) offers a conveniently narrow view of the economic impact of such a feature when, in reality, how this impacts the market as a whole and in the long run is entirely dependent on the equivalent “sunk” costs. You cannot simply toss these out as inconsequential or moot and still claim to offer a full vision of the economic impact. For the same reason, ANet can safely add items like the gem store home node packs, knowing that the vast majority of players will not gather the material resources equivalent to the gold-value of the gem price. You could argue that players have willingly accepted this “sunk” cost and are then freely generating additional income to the inequality of everyone else but, in the grand scheme of things, gold (or potential gold) is removed from the economy.

As others have already mentioned in the thread, the claim that ANet’s intent for legendaries to be “on par” with ascended precludes them from also having a convenience feature like sigil swapping is already undermined by the addition of stat-swapping functionality. It has always been my own understanding that ANet simply does not wish for legendaries to be another stat tier unto themselves, and neither swapping function violates this. The same driving principle from PvP applies here: in combat, players are on equal footings.

On this point, I also believe your counter-point comparison of “n ascended v 1 legendary” is internally inconsistent. You are willing to concede that stat swapping does not violate the equality of ascended and legendary, but sigil swapping does. Imagine that instead the release of these features was reversed. We could presently swap sigils but not stats. By the same reasoning you have provided, you could argue that any two zerker ascended weapons with X and Y sigils is the equivalent of any single permanently-zerker legendary weapon because, as you argue, “the Legendary will be the equivalent of any one of those Ascended.” With regards to whether or not either one of these swapping functionalities violates the “intent” of legendary weapons, they are in principle individually the same.

Has everyone forgotten that this thread is nothing more than a suggestion? And yet every doomsayer here has warned of some inevitable market impact without even knowing or specifying the cost/method of acquisition of such a feature, or how the feature would be implemented.

Mourningcry.9428:

As I said in response to another post, and noted by Aomine, sigil swapping would provide an economic imbalance in favor of Legendary over Ascended, which is not intended.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Suppose you permit Legendaries to Sigil-swap without needing to purchase a new Sigil. That implies you don’t need to purchase them any more, if at all, which indicates all that money you wish to be saving for convenience isn’t going to circulate.

Like these. Consider if “unlocking” single sigils on legendary weapons instead involved “feeding” them ascended weapons bearing the sigils. The cost of crafting multiple ascended weapons to achieve the same effect is maintained, and the argument is reduced to the benefits of saved space. (And if you’re genuinely concerned by the advantages of saved space, there’s an entire thread that I think you should read about how bank tabs, bag slots, and the Salvage-o-Matic are pay2win because they increase/save space and allow owners to farm for longer durations without stopping, thus effectively increasing their gold income over time. This is a bad line of argument.) The same defense can be made for a “legendary sigil” that functions completely independent of any legendary weapon.

My point isn’t that I necessarily believe these would be good implementations of such a feature, but that people here are unilaterally tossing the suggestion out the door because their specific vision of how it has to be implemented might have negative consequences. These claims are moot.

Boris stated a while ago that he was unlikely to ever support MMOs with ENB. Frequent updates mean more work for him to keep it up-to-date (and greater risk of things outright breaking), bad graphics pipelines, distribution problems, etc.

It’s a shame though. In GW2’s downtime, I’m revisiting Skyrim. Took the time to get mods and ENB set up before starting a playthrough, and it’s looking pretty spectacular (for a 4 year-old game). I’d love to have the option to give GW2 the same treatment.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Those outfits were actual armour sets, you could mix and match every piece if you wanted. They were just turned into outfits. New outfits don’t get that option.

Yeah, I guess I got caught up thinking of Hexed as the exception to that possibility, but I suppose it is practically copied from the Witch’s Outfit.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

I wonder if any of them let you hide the shoulders?

Doesn’t appear that you can. Assuming Naus is correct, I’m not sure why ANet wouldn’t then also allow shoulders to be hidden on these previously-armorset outfits.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Actually, from what I have seen, gloves can be hidden on outfits (I tested it on the Hexed outfit, and hiding your gloves does indeed hide the gloves on the outfit as well).

So I’ve never looked into this and don’t have or make use of nearly enough outfits to have noticed on my own. Apparently the ability to hide gloves is an exception made for certain outfits and not others. So for example, gloves can be hidden on the Hexed and Mad King Outfits, but not so for Ceremonial Plated or the upcoming Crystal Nomad Outfit. I also could not find any mention of this made on Wiki.

I honestly can’t tell if this is by design or oversight.

Dawdler.8521:

Lol the leaderboards was rendered obsolete years ago when you got AP for salvaging, giving some players 10,000+ extra AP.

AP earned in excess of the 250AP limit on Agent of Entropy was removed from players’ totals when the leaderboard was introduced.

Once again, most people seem intent on limiting solutions to either-or scenarios. There’s no reason ANet can’t both continue to support/produce outfits and also make them available as individual skins through the wardrobe. This does not demand that new skins be produced for each armor weight, as has been done for the traditional armor sets. People simply want options, and it’s hard to argue against.

Moreover, I suspect ANet may already be working within their old skinning system, and that outfits are already individual skins in some way flagged as being part of a set. This might explain how helmets are hidden on outfits in the same way they are for armor. (That shoulders and gloves cannot be hidden could be an arbitrary limitation and design decision.)

I’m not at all familiar with their back end, so I’d defer to the better judgment of someone who is (i.e. ANet, that_shaman).

The whole “outfits versus armor sets” argument, as if we should only have one or the other, is stupid. The ideal solution is to allow use of skins as either.

If you’re not already, be sure to run the game in “Fullscreen – [your resolution]” rather than “Window” or “Windowed Fullscreen.” Occasional and random drops in FPS can be expected when running some games with a borderless window setting.

The balance changes seem fairly reasonable, even reserved, and the nerf to Battle and Might will hit many specs and classes, not just ele. From some of the previous threads discussing a shave to ele dps, the reduction to Burning uptime from Drake’s Breath was easily the best recommendation, and I’m glad to see they went that route.

As for Lightning Whip, like others have pointed out, the net gain appears to be in ele’s favor. Although I never really saw the stow weapon exploit actively used, a fix to that is a welcome change.

Can we mostly PvErs stop kidding ourselves with this myth that PvP has gotten loads of attention from ANet?

As others have said, swapping to focus will help tremendously. Signet of Fire, Arcane Shield, Ice Bow, and Glyph of Storms are valuable, depending on what you need in each fight (and the size of the boss’ hitbox). If you have the money and already maintain 25 stacks of might, you could also craft an extra weapon and use a Sigil of the Night. Additionally, you may want to consider reverting to the max dps 6/6/2/0/0 build.

However, consider also that your group may be part of the “problem.” If you run with a disorganized group comprised of players that aren’t even slightly optimized for dps, the fights will last longer and you’re more likely to run into trouble sustaining yourself. If that’s the case, you could always just run the more traditional Evasive Arcana build (slightly modified for higher dps), which is safer and can bring great party-wide sustain. With really good groups, it’s arguably a bit selfish to run this, but for pugs it may be advisable.

Elden Arnaas.4870:

Elestian, would you mind if it was moved away from the “Deposit all Materials” option in the menu?

Not at all! I just meant to say that if it’s a recurring problem for anyone, they may consider working around it in the meantime, such that it doesn’t cause difficulties with inventory management.

Honestly, I’d even like for them to have their own keybindings, since I imagine most players use them so frequently. I just don’t know how functional that would really be. Chances are, if you’re using them, you’re already looking through your inventory anyway. /o\

I actually make frequent use of both Deposit and Compact in conjunction when managing my inventory. I store vital items in my topmost bag (Perma items, 1 of each weapon type, and important consumables), followed by several more regular bags. At the bottom are a craftsman’s bag and several invisible bags to store additional armor sets, weapons, common stackable drops that I don’t want to deal with (BL chests, Blade Shards), and other important but less frequently used items. This makes swapping out gear through the Hero panel much quicker for me.

I think the key is to develop a system that works for your needs, depending on what game modes you play and the types of items you always carry. The Compact function can be a useful part of that.

The only thing that would make this worthwhile is if this upgrading process also introduced new legendary armor skins (akin to Mawdrey’s progressive cosmetic enhancements).

Without the ability to also swap sigils/runes on legendary gear, the usefulness of swapping stats is severely limited. I’d argue this would be an even greater problem for armor because runes are often more closely tied to stats and build than sigils. As with legendary weapons now, it is more convenient, functional, and cheaper to craft additional ascended versions of the gear you want. This way you can apply upgrade components best suited to the purpose of the item and its stats. With good inventory management, this also makes swapping out stats easier than dealing with the current, cumbersome stat swapping interface on legendaries.

Look, I’m as unsatisfied by the game’s series of insubstantial content updates as the next guy, but kitten… The amount of whining in this thread is almost unbearable.

Sure, having the points gained per consumption more readily displayed would be fine, and having gold prices standardized would bring it in line with karma (7 karma/point for all drinks, no exceptions), but…

I guess I don’t understand why you would invest a sum of gold that you consider “a lot… to waste” in these drinks without even first confirming their points per consumption through the achievement panel? Is using wiki any different in outcome than personally checking these values? And considering there’s no reasonable expectation that such values are standardized in the first place, would you not still want to compare these points/price among vendors across all explorable regions?

In instances like this, it seems to me that the advantages of using wiki as an additional resource are obvious. Even if the points per consumption were added to the items’ description (an agreeable improvement), you should still find yourself using wiki’s comprehensive information to maximize efficiency in whatever you do, such that you spare yourself the labor of needlessly researching these things in game.

The heals given by blasting a water field scale with the healing power of the player source of the blast. This is why a single ele’s healing power is largely irrelevant when placing a water field in, say, WvW for a zerg to blast.

As such, Aquatic Benevolence will also not benefit the blasts of other players. The trait will only increase the healing you dish out to other players directly through your water fields and your own blasts.

Players who use invulnerability skills to secure a stomp may be paying a high price to do so by putting those skills on CD in the middle of a fight. Easy access to stealth is just a perk of the thief profession and, to a lesser extent, mesmers and engies.

Consider that downed state skills are also not equal across professions and that the downed state is, itself, a mercy other games don’t afford you.

This was my biggest complaint after spending a lot of time in there last year. I think it’s most fun when villagers are running around and putting up a fight instead of hiding, and when the courtiers rely on traps and skills other than the emotes. Especially when it comes down to the last couple villagers fleeing from a mob of courtiers, using the emotes is lame.

Efficiency often becomes the goal in end-game content in MMOs. Nothing really unique to GW2’s community. Not even players being rude is extraordinary on the internet.

Then again, story mode isn’t even end-game content, and anyone complaining about time wasted in AC story (the fastest+easiest of all stories) is a fool anyway.

So enjoy them cutscenes.

Wyrden.4713:

one way to nerf the regen of ele would be to for example: 15 s cd for EA instead 10

I don’t think this increased CD on EA would affect the typical d/d rotations at all. With Burning Speed/Ring of Fire/Frozen Bust on 15s CDs, the additional on-swap recharge of all off-CD attunements, and good use of Lightning Whip, the typical rotation is already about 15s.

I believe the only solution is to change your account name to TheOger in solidarity with Foulbear’s misspelled gate in Fields of Ruin.

It’s a nice thought, but I don’t think it would make a balanced addition to eles. An extra blast would be redundant for s/x or d/x, which already have great access to blasts.

On the other hand, staff has the least blasts of all ele weapons because it also has easy access to waterfields. I fear adding another easily-accessible blast available every 10 seconds would give too great a boost to a weapon and build that already boast great support and sustain.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

However it hurts me to see you still deny there’s inflation (and lately pretty bad one at that), when there is.

I’m fairly certain I recall John Smith acknowledging that there is inflation and that it’s “very well controlled.”

I’d say the issue wasn’t caused by the account binding of legendaries, but rather by the introduction of the Wardrobe. There is no ideal solution and, whether or not they chose to allow some form of compensation, one party is going to feel slighted by ANet.

However the achievement is available to anyone, and the values of achievements and those to which titles are attached has always been arbitrary and inconsistent. This is no special case.

The cast animation for Meteor Shower on charr characters makes good use of staff. Has a very tribal/ritualistic look, as if beckoning the magic. Except for Air 2, the rest of the skill animations are pretty lackluster and plain, making use of the offhand and not the staff, itself, as you point out.

I do hope it will eventually be made such that this gold text from GMs cannot be hidden like normal whispers. I rarely hide any chats, myself, but know players who often do, and this is clearly the kind of whisper that no one would want to miss.

I know you say the specifics aren’t up for discussion, but I must confess I’m made incredibly uncomfortable by this new system, given what appears to have been a heavy-handed approach to account terminations in past incidents. Perhaps offering warnings is actually something of a departure from that. However, like Vanthian somewhat more passionately touched on, my concern is that, by banning players for certain actions rather than promptly addressing/fixing the issues, players are put in a position in which they must be the party responsible for interpreting whether or not they are in breach of the design intentions of ANet. This can be a troublesome gray area.

(I recognize there is quite a difference between accident and willful abuse on the part of players, and I realize that fixes are not always easy and cannot necessarily be made quickly. I don’t mean to trivialize that. I understand ANet has to protect the integrity of the game and especially its economy.)

Anyways, thanks for the heads up to the change and your continued work, Gaile.