Guild Wars 2

I had a chance to try this in wvw today. It’s in a semi-viable state right now, had some fun fights. The major issue is the lack of any kind of ranged defense. These are the matchups that give me the most problems:
1) Any fight with more than 1 ranged enemy, which is most fights
2) DH and Rev, due to kitability and lack of projectile defense

I think the one thing missing to make it competitive against axe/shield is to have projectile defense on spin – whether it destroys projectiles or reflects them, I don’t care (though obviously reflect would be nicer).

A couple other nice-to-haves:
- Superspeed on spin – the current 50% is nice, but ultimately doesn’t help ‘catch up’ to most targets as you’re hardcapped at normal swiftness speed. This would help mitigate the ‘kitability’ issue, though this is a distant 2nd priority to getting projectile defense.
- Longer range on axe 4, or some kind of charge animation similar to shield 4. Again, to help with the kitability issue, but much lower priority than projectile defense.

Kinda curious about this. Anecdotally, I tried the 5 skill and it seemed to do more dps than hundred blades for me (ignoring the overall loss from GS might). Am I on crack?

That aside, the 50% movement boost seems like a big push to make it viable in pvp/wvw as a chasing skill. Could be interesting to try out – and with the big damage, you could probably run sword mainhand and do something like leap → whirl instead of the standard shield bash → eviscerate. That would give you a lot of extra mobility (sword leap and 50% movespeed on whirl) at the cost of a 3s block/reflect.

I play maybe a couple hours a week, and yet I already have all the ‘required’ masteries for any content I want to play. My guild, despite being fully casual with some people running yellow/green gear (!!) of no particular stat combination gets together to try raiding once in a while, and we’ve gotten reasonably far with the first boss. I expect we’ll be able to beat him eventually, and I hear the later ones are easier.

The various maps are much more interesting/exciting to explore, and it actually feels engaging fighting random mobs as they’re no longer just damage sponges – they actually have mechanics now. Masteries add a sort of depth to the levels where I can go back and discover new things once I’ve earned new abilities. It’s something I’ve always felt was missing from ANY mmo, compared to solo games like Zelda.

As far as ‘challenging’ or ‘extremely difficult’ goes – entire maps used to fail regularly at teq and other bosses. I remember ragequitting on the spider boss at AC, at the first group of mobs in CM, at alpha in CoE. Fast forward a year or two later, and I can’t remember the last time any of these has failed. Even some of the ‘casual’ people in this thread are holding them up as examples of ‘casual’ activities they used to know and love for the easy rewards.

Frankly I don’t think raids are particularly more difficult than any of these – it’s just going to take some time for people to get used to the mechanics and soon enough it’ll be another farm-for-rewards.

For those complaining that their ‘casual’ rewards have been nerfed – news flash, dungeons were the money maker for ‘hardcore’ players too. I guarantee that this was a move by Anet to ensure that raids don’t just turn into another Aetherblade path, because that truly would be the death of the game. That said, map rewards have gotten WAY better – the other day, Frostgorge was giving out something like 3g worth of reward mats per 2 events or so. Fractals were also recently buffed, so you can hop in and get a decent reward for a 5-10 minute time investment. So as far as I can tell, raiding isn’t necessary for any reason other than personal satisfaction of accomplishment.

The ‘advantage’ of wvw is that it’s actually fun. At least, it is when roaming or zergbusting. Zerging on the other hand is almost as boring as running the queensdale champ train for 18 hours a day.

Agreed with OP that water/arcane reliance is crazy. Going into a fight with/without those traits = winning vs. losing.

Disagreed with others that ele is in a bad spot. They are fine in PvE, and in WvW sure there are some people who I can’t beat 1v1, but especially with fast weapon/trait switching I can hold my own VERY well in solo/roaming (dd 00266) and zerging/clearing siege/defending gates and choke points (staff 6/0/0/x/x).

I tried soldier, then tried celestial. TBH I didn’t notice a difference.

PvP: The damage output is pretty much equivalent factoring in condi (dd ele has 2 burns and some very weak bleed, but soldier does more direct dps), and sustain is pretty much the same too since soldier has more toughness but cele has more healing.

In PvE, celestial is terrible since it does practically no damage vs. objects and condi damage is weak to begin with.

Funny, I could have sworn I read a thread a little while back where people QQ’ed that revealed “is not a counter” to stealth for some reason or another.

Necros: Someone else said this best – “Nobody ever complains about having too many necros in wvw.” On the flip side – “nobody likes necros in pve”.

PvE: I pretty much always swear when a mesmer joins my pug group. Not because the class is bad, but because the players almost never know how to play them usefully. Necros are like “meh, at least they probably won’t die”, and eles are “ok, there’s a chance they will be good”.

So I would say, ele is all round a good choice. For WvW, necro is also good. For PvE, if you’re an elite gamer then consider mesmer, otherwise please choose something else.

Mental Paradox.3845:

I cringed when my character said collecting the crown “wasn’t a walk in the park”.

Because it WAS a walk in the park.

Yeah. I mean, I literally walked into a peaceful little area, saw a brightly glittering pile of rubble, and pressed ‘F’ on it.

My guess is the devs ran out of time with the 2 week schedule and were stuck with making a best-effort at implementing what the writers wrote. It’s probably a lot faster/easier to stick a boss spawn in an existing zone than to create new instanced content.

Actually… that really makes me wonder. How are the big world events going to work with the story journal once LS2 is over? It seems like these might be stuck in as permanent additions…

I think the main reason for people thinking it’s a DPS check is that they assume you have to kill the menders to make the statue vulnerable, and during every 25% phase they spawn repeatedly as soon as you kill them until the NPC charges the sword. I thought it was glitched until the 2nd time when I heard the NPC say ‘hold on gotta charge this’.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Effigy_Fragment

It’s interesting to see your perspective. To me it seemed like dry top had much more exploration than the open world. The open world always struck me as a big flat rectangle with very little of interest except sometimes at the edges, whereas Dry Top has a lot more ins and outs to search. And whereas in the open world the ‘secrets’ to find are limited to a few jumping puzzles, in dry top there are lost coins, buried chests (and llamas?) scattered all over in hard to reach places.

If you want to get somewhere specific (“hey look, a cool plateau”), you have to plan out your route according to available aspects and ledges that will take you there instead of just camping in the world map and navigating with left and right arrow keys while auto running forward.

It would be really nice if we could selectively replay a specific ‘scene’ from the story journal instead of replaying the whole episode. This would be nice for a couple things:
1) Any particularly epic fights you feel like repeating on a whim
2) Going back to look for a specific thing you missed (I read something about the scene with Taimi in ep1 continuing after everyone leaves, but can’t be bothered to replay it all just for that).

I can see this improving replay value, as you can pick and choose your favorite bits instead of having to weigh the enjoyment of said bits against sludging through an hour of things you don’t necessarily want to do at the moment.

Disagree with OP greatly. I haven’t had this much fun fighting mobs since… ever. I still beat it all pretty handily, but on DD ele built for WvW and very robustly built. I will probably go back and redo this episode on characters with much different playstyles (zerk BS thief?) and see if it presents a bigger challenge, or is even viable.

If nothing else, this is probably the ‘right’ way to balance the current zerk meta – make sustain more important with enemies that pose actual threats in different ways. If anything this should encourage more build experimentation.

Just wanted to say, great work with LS2! Just finished ep2 and it looks like the writers & devs are doing MUCH better with this season. It’s not perfect, but I find it much more engaging and interesting than season 1. There are tons of small things, but in particular I’d like to highlight:
1) Player character has a bigger role/importance. We aren’t an anonymous volunteer.
2) Use of cinematics to set more dramatic scenes
3) Better delivery mechanics e.g. some stuff, albeit limited, happens outside of instances
4) LS2 brings exploring back with new areas in smaller more focused doses, and “rewards” (or at least pats on the back) for exploring
5) NPC’s do things in ways that are more relatable to players, i.e. less “make a bridge of magic” and more “blink & portal across”; using real skills in combat instead of auto attack.
6) The story seems… better? Not perfect/amazing, but it feels more like a real narrative and less like “random bad things happening sometimes to people I’ve never heard of and care nothing for”.

Really glad to see these changes, wish the original release followed this pattern but better late than never! Looking forward to more.

wait marjory has an accent?…

sadface but i want it nowwwwwwwww

I get what you mean about feeling more dangerous (I think you’re looking for “immersive”), but on the flip side I already spend most of my time with the map opened up and auto-run engaged, navigating by the little “you are here” tick on the map and my “turn left/right” keyboard bindings until I get from point A to point B.

I’m not sure precisely what the issue is, but it’s probably some combination of the following:
1) Nothing can actually kill my character in ordinary circumstances if I don’t stop and wait for them to kill me. And my character is full glass.
2) Most things appear on the map automagically without needing to explore
3) There’s rarely a reason that I want to get anywhere specific on a map except dungeon entrances or specific world bosses.

Orr is probably the closest to what you’re looking for, as it can actually present a moderate challenge to glass non-heavy characters just traversing the area, and doesn’t have a lot of uncontested waypoints. And it has a number of events that can prove to be of value/interest, prompting you to make the long run.

Just wondering if it’s usually noon servertime when they push the patches, or midnight or w/e. Cause I feel like exploring

While some may complain of the small map – I greatly applaud.
1) Less running to get where you’re going
2) You can actually explore every nook and cranny
3) There is more likely to be something worth finding in every nook and cranny
4) It feels less generic. You actually get to know the terrain visually by landmarks, instead of running through a flat plane for several minutes before reaching the next hamlet.
5) The sandstorm! It gives you a real sense of a dynamic ecosystem with how drastically it changes the landscape and even which critters come out to play.

Content wise – the mechanics of delivery are much improved:
- stuff like the notes already being there but taking on added significance in the story
- having green stars that lead you to the area but have you actually figure out what to do once you’re there
- animated 3d cutscenes and in-scene dialogue instead of the horrible “2 actors standing against a hand drawn background”
- Having the NPC’s do interesting player-like things (mesmer blink & portal, yay!) instead of being a dialogue-reader and random useless body. It takes away some of the sting of them being the ‘heroes’ of the story while we do all the work.

Story wise – Better than LS1. I do think the couples’ soppiness could be turned down a notch. Maybe emphasize synergy/trust and how they make great duos, and de-emphasize “kiss your boo boos all better because love!”

Black pepper cactus salad = 70 toughness + hp regen

Anyone know what these food bonuses give? don’t see anything on the TP.

Idk. I didn’t think Strength sigils were that great for (optimized) PvE even after they got buffed, except mayyyybe for eles and warriors. It seemed more like a hype train than anything else, i.e. “they’re new, let’s buy a bunch” → increased price → “they’re new and EXPENSIVE, they must be the best” → increased price.

Anyway, I lol’ed when I saw the notes, and feel really bad for anyone who might have spent 110g on a set just before the patch notes hit. I’m guessing we’ll see a slight shift back toward Scholar, though only for PvE content.

If WvW was better gold than PvE, then nobody would do PvE.

“Now heres the real problem and some have mentioned to me- “Your voice is just ugghh. Theres no enthusiasm at all.” And even recently i got told “Your voice makes people suicide”. When i heared this in the beginning then i just tried to ignore them, eventhough i knew they were/are right. But now i just dont know what to do…”

People make fun of commanders’ voices all the time. It’s generally just good-natured ribbing, i.e. people make outrageous statements that are meant to be obviously way over the top and ignored/laughed at. I am not the one receiving these comments, but it sounds to me like you are taking things seriously that you should be ignoring or laughing at.

Personality makes a big difference, whether you’re light hearted and joking or serious/swearing, congratulating/praising for good work, encouraging when things go wrong. Speaking confidently/decisively. In other words, morale management. If you are taking jokes about your voice so seriously that you start using expressions like “washed-up commander with an ugly voice” and “Abandoning the only thing I love” about an online video game, then that is probably a way bigger issue to your followers than the sound of your voice. Especially if you are telling your TS followers about your confidence issues – nobody wants to follow a depressed and insecure leader because it makes them feel depressed and insecure too.

EDIT: Straegen posted what I was going to say at first. Pugs follow commanders who ‘win’, not people who lead them into meat grinders. Wiping once is usually OK, but wiping 2-3 times in a row without taking any objectives will quickly bleed away all followers and prevent them from coming back in the future. Karma trains and easy objectives will keep pug interest up.

Cmon guys. 0:52 of the trailer.
1) Ship blows up.
2) Camera pans over to a hidden ambush site on a cliff, where Braham & friends are looming threateningly and brandishing their weapons
3) Shots of LS1 heroes plunging into the storm to finish off any survivors

It’s pretty obvious who the villains are this season.

I’ve run into a few good condi bomb rangers. They are scary as hell. But yeah, bearbow ranger = pretty much free loot bag.

TL;DR. Let’s put it this way: Classes have SO much more potential for imbalance than a measly sigil or two. And pure class potential aside, player skill makes a MUCH bigger difference than a few % in stat points. If I wanted eles or engis buffed, I would pick something more important and less difficult to change than stupid sigils.

1) Glass cannon builds are not viable period. Any somewhat tanky build pretty much beats any glass build for any class. Thief is simply better at killing other non-viable builds.
2) For those saying AoE is not a counter: The point isn’t really that AoE is a counter for stealth; it’s that glass thieves are hard countered by “anything that does damage”, and stealth does not mitigate AoE.
3) Glass staff eles are great for zerg fights.

8/10, points for looking different

Here’s mine; I went for sort of a ‘deadly professional’ look.

Liquid: Thanks for posting your cele build. Based on my spreadsheets, it looks like we hit about the same toughness; yours trades 8% EDmg for 14% more hp and ~200 healing, with toughness about equal. Aside from total stats, I see a few functional differences:
1) 2 points from water moved to air – lose condi cleanse on cantrips, lose dmg/boon, gain fury/swiftness on aura
2) Hoelbrak runes instead of Traveler for -20 condi
3) -40 condi food
*4) +300 condi dmg

Pretty interesting comparison, basically -60% condi vs. extra condi cleanse; fury vs. dmg/boon; swiftness vs. traveler… stat wise I think yours comes out ahead, especially if you consider condi damage. With extra fury uptime it might actually close the gap EDmg wise too. I may have to try this out…

edit: So the healing power according to the build calc comes out to 5-6% more healing on attunement switch, 10% on cleansing wave, 3.6% on ER. But due to boon duration, actually 2.5% less on regen. Interesting…

Quakeman: So my overall thought process for this was that I wanted to be able to out-heal most of the damage thrown my way. This mean high toughness and/or high healing power. Ordinarily I would say screw healing and put those stats in toughness, as Knight’s + soldiers would probably give better damage + survive than Celestial. But toughness only affects physical damage, and I figured with condis everywhere, healing might be worthwhile investing a bit into.

On the other hand, healing scales so poorly that I couldn’t justify putting anything into it via cleric/zealot. E.g. putting 200 stats into healing would mean going from 1900 ish power to 1700 ish for barely any increase in healing other than regen (which seems to scale slightly better than others). Or worse, losing 200 out of toughness…

So the only way I could justify putting any stats into healing was to have Celestial gear, which has slightly higher total stats. Then I ran into the issues with low DPS etc, so I basically started with a full set of Celestial and swapped out pieces with knight/soldier/zerk until I hit the minimum EDmg, hp and toughness figures I wanted. The 2 pieces are what was left when I was done… and admittedly, they contribute only ~80 healing between them so it’s not like they make a real difference there anyway.

So shrug I guess I don’t really need cele, just started out as a cool idea then slowly got chipped away to nothing.

I’m looking for advice for a solo/small group roaming ele build.

My initial thought was to go full Celestial, since pretty much every stat is useful to an ele. Plus I’ve seen a few posts that suggest using it (for that reason). But I ran some numbers through a spreadsheet, and found that celestial does even less direct damage than Soldier’s (!) due to crazy low power, and with even less toughness/vita.
(celestial) http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoIGAAAIjRKDA-T1BEABS8AAsb/BtU+1neAAOBACqEET1fIDQ+EA-w
(soldier) http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoIGAAAIjRKDA-T1BEABS8AAUU9H72fwJlfAcCA4SJob6BIDQ+EA-w

Based on my understanding that soldier’s does practically no damage to begin with (correct me if I’m wrong about that), that seemed unacceptable to me. So with the goal being to be able to hit not completely like a wet noodle, I fiddled around for a few hours, and came up with the following setup:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoIGQEIIntUNKoc7YKA-TFCEwAwU/x++DcVCyU5hkHAgWlYAOBAu1DQGg8JA-w

Does this seem more/less viable than a pure soldier or celestial build? I have basically 0 hours of pvp/wvw on my ele, so I don’t know if I’m missing something about the playstyle/mechanics. I based my target HP/armor roughly on what works for my mesmer (also, prioritizing toughness over vita due to healing abilities), and filled in the rest with zerk pieces to up the damage.

Vanthian.9267:

Emissary.3792:

Make the default option “refuse duels”. Done.

Or you could simply conduct your causal dueling in the specified area of the game made for it.

Not practical for casual players or queued areas, as mentioned many times. Besides, is this not a legitimate solution for the issue you raised? Because your solution does not address the needs I pointed out.

Vanthian.9267:

Believe it or not, I actually PvP.
—snip—
Even still open world dueling is trash in most games.

As I said above, you being a PvPer means you are exactly the wrong type of player to enjoy having a duel feature. Because you enjoy hardcore/competitive play, and duels are casual.

Vanthian.9267:

Why? Because most of you will not be fighting friends. You will be bugging PvErs.

Make the default option “refuse duels”. Done.

EDIT: For clarification, I’ve spent the last year or so doing almost nothing but dungeons, and run a PvE build that is useless in WvW (haven’t even bothered trying in SPvP). I am not a pvper looking for a chance to stomp newbs in queensdale.

Mythoryk.7984:

Are you seriously suggesting WvW is a proper form of PvP?
—snip—
If you want dueling, duel in Custom Arenas. If your argument is that people can interfere, buy your own Custom Arena Stater Kit and make it private and assign allowances
—snip—
it will most likely be tied to sPvP/tPvP as a practice and learning tool.

You seem to be making dueling out to be a form of competitive play (albeit one you look down on as unskilled and pointless). I argue that it’s simply a QoL feature for casual/PvE players who are explicitly NOT interested in hardcore/competitive PVP play.

Personally, I want something to occupy my time instead of running in circles in front of a dungeon entrance waiting for my guildmate to finish ‘just one last thing’ for 30 minutes.

However, I can also see it serving as a gateway of sorts – Once you’ve dueled a few times, I can easily see it enticing a PvE player who previously had no interest in PvP to try out some new builds and maybe finally step into the arena for real competition once they think they’ve gotten a feel for it.

Justin ODell.9517:

Why do you feel custom arenas do not work for those that want to duel?

Dueling is an extremely casual activity. It does not need leaderboards, extensive balancing, anything. It’s a time filler and a way to experience facing a live opponent without making any kind of time/gear/learning commitment. Examples:
1) Waiting for the 5th party member to show up while they’re emptying bags
2) Waiting for newbie to finish watching long cutscene or redo a long trash run
3) Waiting for Marionette to spawn, because you don’t want to get queued
4) Waiting for ladder matchup
5) Waiting for buy orders to fulfill on TP
6) Newbie wants to fight a live player
7) Curiosity of how your PvE build stacks up against another PvE build

SPvP requires finding a new area/leaving your current area, setting up a new build using gear that has different stat allocations than PvE, learning what the game/arena types are and how to join them, etc. All of this is confusing and intimidating to anyone new (or not new) who just wants to try their hand at poking at a friend or other player without any serious commitment.

7/10 I like the character but the clothes are a little plain for my tastes.

Here’s my mesmer.

Yeah, I’ve gotten stuck before with baddies who only range (rifle AA, not even using 3 or 4), and say ‘well i’m full zerk so what does it matter’.

Hey Osi,
Was playing around with the build editor looking for a way to hit the same stats as Hidden Cat 3.0 with the zerk trinkets I already have for PvE, and came up with the following:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAR8flwzKqHTTkGb9IhpHE33AnkCV/6SKwttB-jUCBYgCypmQ5mKrZnBsMsIas6aYKXER12cDRzaO1SBMqyI-w

Based on the critical damage chart:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit
and the stats reported from hovering over the equipment icon in the build editor, I believe this setup is actually slightly better as the toughness/vitality are both slightly higher, and the direct damage the same or better. Also due to shifting to precision instead of critical damage %, it will proc more bleeds from clones.

Let me know what you think!

When was the last you checked wax? Warden was ‘supposed’ to work, but was definitely broken after one of the xmas patches. Idk if they ninja fixed it in the last week or so though.

Sadface This is pretty much a game breaker for my mesmer, as it cuts reflect/absorb uptime from near 100% down to maybe 30%.

I think the patch notes said they’re now a currency, so you should see them in your wallet.

It probably has something to do with each character being able to rep a different guild. With the number of bugs out there in the actual core game mechanics and class skills/traits, I doubt this will ever get changed.

The ‘agony resist’ slot can only be filled with an agony infusion, the ‘versatile simple infusion’ will not go into it. You are probably overwriting the same infusion over and over.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%2B1_Agony_Infusion

The ‘versatile simple infusion’ fills the offense/defense/utility slot.

P.S. welcome to the new level of gear grind. it takes 512 “+1” infusions to make a “+10” infusion =)

This is probably sorted by severity, priority, difficulty to fix, time to test, estimated resources required (recode, test and release).

Given the number of things that break with each patch with few if any bugfixes coming down the pipeline, there can’t be THAT much testing involved.

Bump. I made a previous post on this but Xavi has more details.

As of today’s patch, it seems iBerserker is also broken with phantasmal haste. Anyone else notice this?

1) I understand that Phantasmal haste is intended to make the phantasms attack more quickly, not to reduce the cooldown on conjuring them in the first place.

I don’t know what the state of the skill was pre-patch, but post-patch I’ve verified that it has NO effect on the frequency of attacks of either iWarden (focus) or iBerserker (greatsword). I haven’t tested on other weapons yet, but I expect it’s more of the same.

tho i agree that people don’t get what playing is all about – having fun – not ‘working’ to hoard shinnies to ‘have’ smth to show off

Erm you know for some people that IS fun.

Then I had about 7 months of break and when I came back it was like this game had been around for 3-4 years, everything was done, everybody had completed the whole content.

Yeah I agree this is kind of a bummer, though you’ll actually find a fair number of like minded people if you post a LFG for “newbies only, exploring the dungeon”.