Guild Wars 2

Turamarth.3248:

1. Endure Pain
2. Berserker Stance

3a. Balanced Stance
3b. Dolyak Signet
for the CC immunity (via Stability).

Gah, that was silly.

The source of my lag was having a printer plugged in to one of my USB hubs. Unplugged the printer, lag stopped. The printer wasn’t even on – guess it had something to do with the printer’s drivers. I’ll be sure to check my peripherals next time something like this comes up.

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, removing the frame rate limiter (mine was at 60) and enabling Vsync didn’t help, and the only power-related option in my Y500’s BIOS was Deep S3, which was already disabled, and doesn’t seem relevant to the CPU anyway. I will try and check if my BIOS is up-to-date, and if not, I’ll update and look for CPU options again.

I’ve also looked at Winesan’s thread. Disabling Flash Player hardware acceleration didn’t help. Disabling core parking (I had 1 instance of the relevant registry key) also didn’t fix the problem. :|

This should probably go into Game Bugs

Hey guys. Sometime after today’s (Sep 9 2013) patch, I started experiencing a seemingly random framerate drop that would lower my FPS to <6 for ~2 s, and then go back to normal for 4-12 s (with no clear pattern). I noticed it occurring today while I was running through the foggy section of SAB W2 Z3 – which quickly became near-unplayable. It did not happen yesterday while running through the SAB in both worlds.

I’ve tried the following checks ingame, to see if it was an area-specific problem:

• Went back to other sections of W2 Z3 – no difference
• Went to other maps – no difference in SAB Hub, Rata Sum, Queensdale
• Zoomed in so a plain wall filled most of the screen – no difference
• Set all graphics settings to their lowest (from med-high) – no change in frequency or duration
• Switched from fullscreen windowed to fullscreen – no difference
• Waited ~10 min to ensure that it wasn’t a loading problem – it wasn’t

I then tried other games, to see if it was specific to GW2. It happens in The Witcher 2. It seems to happen even in Firefox, though that’s only noticeable when scrolling or typing. It doesn’t happen while playing video through Flash or VLC Player.

I’ve also checked my hardware’s temperatures via Speccy. The drop happens regardless of whether the CPU or GPU are at baseline temps (~40 C) or hotter from hours of play. My CPU normally doesn’t exceed ~70 C, the GPU ~50 C, and the HD ~45 C. I’d think that it’s not a heating problem given that two weeks of invasions didn’t trigger any problems, and since I’ve always been using a large cooling pad+fan under the laptop while playing GW2.

I’ve tried the following out-of-game fixes, to no avail (no effect, even):

• Restarting GW2
• Restarting computer
• Updating my graphics card drivers

Additionally, I’ve noticed via Task Manager that the CPU usage of GW2.exe drops from about 30% to about 20% during the FPS drop.

My computer is a Lenovo laptop running Win8x64 (Speccy snapshot and plain text version )

I feel like it’s a bug introduced by the new patch, but if it was that, it probably shouldn’t be affecting other programs, right? Does anyone have any insight on what the issue is? I’m completely out of ideas here.

I’m fairly sure this is because salvage kits were implemented as “item with charges” rather than “stack of consumeables”.

Another possibility is to take one of the weapon crafting professions (Weaponsmith, Huntsman, Artificer) and make the dowels for masterwork inscriptions. No need for fine crafting materials, just make <Metal> Plated Dowels, available at 50, 125, 200, 275, 350 and 400 skill. And if you make the Mithril or Orichalcum dowels, you can save them and make rares or exotics later on.

Order of operations. Multiplication and division are done before addition and subtraction. To make it easier, here’s the formula with appropriate brackets:

(0.4 * Healing Power) + (1.8 * Level) + 8

None of the combos are essential to group play, just helpful. I would say that the most efficient (that is, during combat) way is to have each of you learn what the fields look like when the others put them down. For example, if there’s a beige ring (common to most of the fields) and fire/lava in the middle of it, you can assume it’s a fire field. Light blue? Either light or ice, figure out whether it’s a guardian symbol or elementalist Icy Ground. It might seem like a lot to do, but with a little practice it becomes very easy to identify which type of field has gone down.

Also, make sure your group isn’t dodging out of white AOE rings (aka allied attacks or even heals).

More important than combos is dodging (at all), dodging at appropriate times (save for hard-hitting attacks), using CC skills to save teammates from certain attacks (graveling scavengers particularly), and otherwise not getting hit most of the time (spacing, blind, blocks, preemptive CCs, other evade skills).

1 set of orichalcum tools (maybe 2 sickles)
2-3 sets of mithril tools if you’ll be in high level zones, sickles mostly excluded
Utility-type nourishment – such as [Master Maintenance Oil] , [Superior Sharpening Stone] , [Master Tuning Crystal]

[Ash Legion Spy Kits] (28kr) 100+; (even for non-infinite-stealth thieves – seriously they’re still useful at times)

[Golem in a Box] (8c) for some extra AOE burst damage on a 20s cooldown (CD added recently)

[Fire Bomb] (35kr) for some insane AOE burn stacking

[Dam Debris] (14kr) ~10 for some fun in groups with bosses – I remember having an easy time against Adelbern because two of us were chain-KDing him with a pair of boulders… you can pick this one up and throw it again!

[Jump Shot] capability, from any rifle for Engineers, or either [Experimental Teleportation Gun] (32c) or [Experimental Rifle] (1s28c) for other classes

[Basic Salvage Kit] (88c) 4-5 (or use Crude if you don’t mind losing a few inventory slots)

[Black Lion Salvage Kits] or for a cheaper substitute, [Master Salvage Kit] (15s36c)

[Disasembler 3BEK Kit] 1 for emergencies (usually in dungeons) – get it quickly if you want it, since Lionguard donations will be removed soon!

[Instant Repair Canister] just 1 for emergencies, if you’re good

[Revive Orb] just 1 for emergencies, maybe more for high level Fractals

I also hear good things about [Skale Venom] (16c) and [Fire Elemental Powder] (1s4c) but haven’t tested them myself.

The following are currently unobtainable:
[Mad Memoires: Complete Edition] as a passive light source for classes that can’t equip torches

Evading (dodging) won’t reduce incoming damage so much as negate it entirely. Anytime an attack hits you and you get the “Evaded” message (or “Block”), the attack has no effect on you. No damage, no conditions, no debuffs. Also, no bouncing or AOE blast, for the skills that normally do that on hit.

Some projectiles track, some do not. Non-tracking projectiles can be ‘dodged’ just by strafing away. Tracking projectiles, or fast projectiles, you will need to avoid by other means. In some cases you can throw off the projectile’s aim by rapidly strafing left and right, so you’re not moving more than ~50 range in either direction before reversing, but the projectile predicts that you’ll be moving much farther in one direction, thus missing (without any “Miss” message).

Things like arrows, gunshots, mesmer projectiles will generally need to be evaded. Fire and ice elemental projectiles generally can be strafe-gamed. Otherwise, you’ll need to figure out how other projectiles behave and which method of avoidance is best. Save your dodges for attacks that either track or land too quickly to move away from. And don’t neglect to use other methods of attack avoidance (blocks, blinds, CCs, line of sight/environmental obstacles).

I’m fairly sure that with runes, only those that drop directly in dungeons will be soulbound. (ie runes from salvaged items won’t be)

I would suggest keeping it for the time being. I doubt you’d be able to get enough materials from salvaging to make up for the cost (~3.5g per piece? You’re not going to get 11 ectos from salvaging it), and you might want to try it again at a later date.

That seems odd. Perhaps try transmuting the Wraith Masque with another helm first – just any cheap-o white or blue, then transmute the result with your exotic, that might fix it. But if you accept the direct transmutation in your screenshot, you WILL lose the rune.

ReDeViLdArK.6572:

Ok, thanks for confirm that this method works on starter items, but anyone know if this works with any soulbound items (cultural, orders, dungeon) Or only with the starter?

I can confirm that it works with all armor and weapon items. Transmute it onto a white or blue rarity item and it will become account bound. Back items will still be soulbound, however.

In my past experience, if you fell and landed on ground then you were defeated, but if you fell into the abyss then you were returned to a checkpoint and downed. Is this no longer the case?

I parked all of my 7 characters at the entrance to Urmaug’s Secret. Logged in to each of them each day after the daily reset time, moved around a bit if I didn’t see the achievement progressing by 1. Quick and easy, no running or jumping involved.

CoaxialMazer.9140:

It originally did pre patch 12/14/12. Block from mace (2) and sword (5) also would reflect projectiles too, now only shield does.

Disagreed on the mace and sword. I’ve been playing my warrior in the last few days and both abilities have reflected projectiles when traited. Interestingly, the reflection doesn’t trigger the counterattack (meaning each one gives up to 2.25s of missile reflection),

bibbiri.6028:

so it is pretty normal ? what in long term? gets any “easier” after a certain level?

I find that most classes get a lot easier to play at around level 30-50, since you get to fill out most of your slot skills and start making good progress on a trait build by then, as well as get a much clearer idea of how you can play the class.

Just wanted to add another note to the discussion: if you have any sort of movement speed boosting effect (swiftness, certain signets, etc), this will only affect your forward movement – not backward movement or strafing.

SumthinRS.6780:

I think my gear is actually kinda sucky, still got some bits that are level 46-50 which is pretty horrific, I just haven’t come across any replacements yet unfortunately. I’ll just have to get some guild mates to take me on some runs with them or something, I’ll figure it out eventually I guess.

Whoa. That’s a major problem, haha. I would suggest that before you do more forays into dungeons, buy a full set of level 80 rare gear and masterwork accessories. It won’t set you back much in terms of gold (shouldn’t be more than 2-3g in total), but will give you a much better fighting chance in all dungeons. Then start upgrading to exotics, weapons first.

I’m fairly sure it just gets added to your “Armor” stat, which reduces incoming direct damage.

This is a fantastic concept.

I’d agree with retaliation. Guardians can easily keep it up permanently in combat (if they build for it), mesmers, necros, engineers and warriors can get it too. Plus the barrage hits up to 60 times (assuming 5 target limit per hit), so that would be plenty of chances for retaliation damage.

Essence Snow.3194:

1st of all you need to transmutate it onto a rare 1st. Once you have do that then you may proceed to transmutate it to the masterwork item. It seems you cannot skip lvls.

When I transmutated duelist exotic amor to my lvl 3 storage toon, I had to repeat that process down to fine/blue and they definitely did not keep the exotic/orange text.

PS..after the initial “fine” stone (from lvl 80 exotic-lesser lvl rare)you may use “basic” stones from there

I don’t think that’s the case… you’d need a Fine stone to transmute a level 80 item at all, and you’d need to transmute onto a blue/white rarity item if you wanted to transfer a soulbound item (this makes it account bound, except for back items), and of course you can only transmute to the same item type, but those are the only restrictions in place.

For the #2, there’s a 10% chance when you are hit that on your next attack, you summon a bird. So if you’re not getting hit often, it’s not going to proc often.

For the #6, it’ll only trigger when you activate your #6 skill, and it’ll have to finish. (So if you’re using Ether Renewal, for example, it won’t proc until the last tick of Ether Renewal)

Aeniklast.9283:

I don’t wnat to encounter a problem like I hit 80 and cannot do something because I didn’t level some professoin up, or get some repuatoin up or complete some class quest.

No worries. There is no content except crafting that requires you to have crafting, no factions to gain reputation with, and you don’t get barred from dungeons or anything else for not doing your story quest.

The main things to do at the endgame are explore the world, gear up to full exotics, get Legendary weapons, do dungeon runs (optional but helpful), do high-level Fractals for a challenge, do WvWvW, do SPvP.

There are 3 main components to transmutable items:
- Name and skin (includes description and stat-specific prefixes like Berserker’s)
- Stats (rarity and affix, eg Exotic with Knight’s stats – doesn’t include the stat-specific name prefix)
- Upgrade component
When transmuting, you pick one of each component out of the two items you are transmuting. So if you were transmuting a level 80 exotic with the Jotun Greatsword, you could end up with a level 80 exotic Jotun Greatsword which keeps the description of the Jotun Greatsword, but doesn’t pick up the prefix of the level 80 exotic.

I’ve gotten 28s from one of them. ~7 more gave me between 1 and 4 s each. It’s just RNG. (And this was disclosed in the notes of the patch in which they were added)

I like the Lakittenail Devourer. Decent ranged damage (rarely aggros extra mobs, unlike melee pets), applies a poison sometimes (good for my conditions ranger), can apply 7 bleeds on demand, and is pretty tanky due to the high Toughness. My backup on land is usually a Polar Bear (tanky) or Ice Drake (for the chill).

Congratulations!

Winter Ice (or something like that) is also quite close to white.

(Continued)

Make sure your equipment is up to scratch:
- Don’t wear anything lower than level 80 greens.
- Try to get exotic main weapons (maybe rare secondaries) before venturing into Orr. The faster you can burn down mobs, the less damage they can do to you, and the gap in attack between rares and exotics is pretty big.
- If your class doesn’t have a lot of escapes, take advantage of consumables such as the Ash Legion Spy Kit. This one is particularly good for grabbing skill points, and pretty cheap (28 karma for 10s of stationary stealth – run to the skill point, pop a kit, and commune to your heart’s content).
- Gear to your build’s strengths. I had an extremely easy time on my Altruistic Healing + Hammer/Scepter+Torch + Boon/Protection Duration guardian thanks to the constant protection, healing, retaliation and high Toughness. I had a harder time on my glass cannon D/D elementalist, but was still generally OK as long as I could burn down the mobs before they respawned to keep me in combat.

Some class-specific examples from personal experience:
- Glyph of Elementals was very helpful for my D/D elementalist. The Earth Elemental was distracting and tanky enough to either let me heal up and finish burning down the mobs, or grab a skill point without taking any damage myself.
- Constant Vigor uptime is incredibly helpful. If your class has it, use it, and get whatever you need to keep it up (eg if you’re an elementalist or guardian, get it, and make sure you have at least 30-40% crit as well)
- Having a Hammer was very useful as a guardian – strong AOE capacity in addition to high uptime on the Protection boon saved my butt many times.
- Grenades or Bombs are great as an Engineer because you can attack enemies behind you while running forward. Easier with Bombs, while Grenades have the benefit of range. And in both cases you get a toolbelt skill with tremendous AOE potential.

Completed all of Orr solo 3 times now Here’s what I did to survive (as accurate as I can make it from memory):

Make use of aggro range:
- Learn the aggro range of each mob type
- Keep the vertical dimension in mind when you’re underwater
- Use aggro range in your movements so you aggro as few mobs as possible (you can often aggro nothing just by moving between the aggro radii of mobs)
- If you’re not sure you can get between without aggro, just pick one side to be safe. That way at least you’re only aggroing half the mobs.
- Always try to find a path to take where you aggro few mobs, if any. (Unless you’re confident that you can take all of them)
- If you’re good, you can get to most of the skill points without having to fight much.

Consolidate your ability to fight:
- Watch for telegraphed attacks, figure out how hard each of them hit or how much potential damage they can cause (eg a knockdown when you’re fighting large numbers), triage accordingly (unless you have constant Vigor) and dodge the worst of it.
- Don’t stay still. Avoid damage through movement: strafe around to kite melee mobs, rapidly wiggle left and right for ranged mobs that use projectiles.
- If you’re up against a large group, it might be wise to keep one of them at low health so that you can quickly rally if you go down.
- Take advantage of what ranged weapons you might have. Thin out enemy numbers before engaging directly, whenever possible. In this case, range the ranged enemies first, since they generally won’t run to you (bringing everything else with them).
- Use aggro range tactically: risen are much easier to fight piecemeal than as a large group, and you can usually avoid pulling the whole mob. (Even easier if you have a long-range pull skill)
- Try to keep a weapon equipped that you can easily kite and damage with. Unless you don’t mind running to reset the fight whenever you run into a mob you can’t burn down quickly enough…

Always have an escape ready:
- Be able to tell from a glance whether mobs can run up a slope or to a ledge. You can use these to escape by jumping on them to reset melee mobs, and moving out of line of sight to reset ranged mobs.
- Slot the appropriate skills/weapon swaps. Either something that covers distance rapidly, controls mobs well enough, or grants you enough invulnerability/stability/mitigation/etc to cover the same distance on foot.
- Keep a source of Swiftness and ideally Stability handy whenever you can. Or if your class has access to a passive +25% movement speed boost, use it.
- You are faster out of combat than in combat, regardless of what speed boosts you have. Sometimes you’ll need to pop a condition remover to get out of combat and regenerate before respawns/other mobs catch you.

Some specific mobs to watch out for:
- Risen Putrefiers: Not a big deal as long as you can dodge their anchor throw (this is telegraphed) and keep out of melee range.
- Risen Acolytes: They have a HUGE aggro range, keep that in mind. Their autoattack is absurdly easy to dodge if you just rapidly wiggle left and right. They do have a long immobilize that I haven’t quite nailed down, but it doesn’t seem to be used very often.
- Risen Corrupters: Like Acolytes, their autoattack (either the dirty Vapor Blades or a glob of dirty water) is easy to dodge by wiggling left and right. Make sure to dodge their breath attack, it applies a chill if I remember it correctly.
- Risen Nobles: These will shadowstep to you pretty much immediately upon aggro, keep that in mind if you are trying to run through while keeping your out-of-combat speed.
- Risen Farmers: These can knock you down quite often with their hammers (not really telegraphed). Keep well out of melee range, especially when there are other mobs trying to beat on you.
- Tar Elementals: The tar they throw at you will immobilize briefly (pulsing a few times), be sure to dodge it if you’re already on the run.

(Continued in a second post due to 5001 char limit)

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Base DPS of a weapon is meaningless without a build to supplement it. Maybe at levels 1-10 when you don’t have access to traits yet. Otherwise the “base” DPS doesn’t tell you a thing. If my hypothetical 1 damage weapon was actually the best weapon in the game but you were only looking at base damage, then you’d pick the vastly inferior other weapon even though in practice you’d be able to get much better results with the other weapon. If you’re not taking that damage-optimizing trait, then obviously you’re not optimizing DPS and you shouldn’t be looking at the numbers in the first place. The most obvious example is for Engineers since they get traits that significantly boost one weapon only (Grenadier, Juggernaut). The base damage on grenades in particular is extremely low but with Grenadier you get an extra grenade, so everything is boosted by 50%. You wouldn’t even be using grenades without Grenadier anyway so there’s no reason to leave it out of the comparison.

Also, if you really care about base DPS that much, you should note that the guardian’s base DPS on greatsword is actually higher than the warrior’s. So even if we went by those numbers the conclusion would still be that the guardian is the best DPS class.

You need to know at least the relative DPS (not necessarily absolute base DPS) and DPS components (eg base 14% from symbols) before you can accurately determine how well a weapon will perform in pure damage compared to another within a specific build. Unless you have no traits that affect specific components of weapon damage (eg symbols). Then you’d only need the relative DPS.

More importantly, nowhere am I suggesting that you should base your choice on that. That’s your (mis)interpretation. It’s just another tool for analysis, but one that really is needed when you’re comparing different weapons within a real build, and like Obtena said, it’s even more important when you’re in a dungeon where you can change your weapon but not your build (unless you’re not the party leader and your party doesn’t mind the delay).

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

As for the DPS tests, they are fine. If hypothetically there was a weapon that only did 1 damage per hit at level 80 and a weapon that did 10,000 per hit, but the former had a trait that multiplied the former weapon’s damage by 1,000,000 and cut the latter’s damage in half, it’s obvious that the former does more damage in practice. You wouldn’t compare damage between the same build for both weapons because that’d be ridiculous. You’d inherently be favoring one over the other by choosing to take or to not take that trait.

I think you’re missing a few points:
1. You can pick a build with no traits that affect the damage of a specific weapon so that you get the relative base DPS of each weapon
2. You can pick NO build (ie 0 trait points assigned) so that you get the true base DPS of each weapon at a given level
3. Your example isn’t true for anyone that didn’t have room for that trait in their build and only considers the impact on the guardian’s damage

Altruistic Healing heals you for ~70+ per boon application. It goes really well with Empowering Might, symbols, shouts and anything else that applies boons to allies. Staff #4 becomes about as good of a heal as your #6 if your party is within range.
Monk’s Focus heals you for ~2k+ per meditation, excluding Merciful Intervention. Goes particularly well with Smite Condition which has a short 20s cooldown. But you don’t really get any direct benefit from having allies around.
Which one is better will depend on the rest of your build and playstyle.

It also helps to pick up the Arcana 10-point trait Renewing Stamina, which gives you a 33% chance on crit to gain 5 seconds of vigor (with no cooldown!).

Voltar.8574:

and i’m guessing stability doesn’t work on this one.

Stability works for this. I’m surprised nobody else mentioned it…

~5s of stability is enough to get through each half of the bridge run. Wait on the middle island for cooldowns.

Elementalists, warriors, guardians have it easy with their stability-granting utility skills. Other classes can use their elite skills – Necromancer’s Plague or Lich Form, Engineer’s Elixir X, Thief’s Dagger Storm, Ranger’s Rampage As One. Mesmers can probably manage by charging Mantra of Concentration, popping it twice and using Blink to cover half the distance on the second leg.

Slick Shoes by itself shouldn’t increase movement speed. If you were referring to its toolbelt skill Super Speed, that is a little bugged in that it doesn’t allow you to go faster than Normal + Swiftness. However, I haven’t tested it in combat with conditions like Chill or Cripple – maybe in those cases the tooltip of ‘double speed’ would be accurate?

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

As a matter of fact if you do want to run a hammer build you’ll have to resign yourself to taking ten minutes to kill anything. You could go Hammer/GS and just never actually use the hammer? I dunno.

I’m not so sure about that. I find that my hammer doesn’t do as much direct damage as the greatsword, but it comes close enough that with the hammer’s blast finishers, protection, almost-constant retaliation and protection symbol, synergy with Altruistic Healing, and the CC options, I almost never use my greatsword anymore. Only when I need the pull or longer leap, or when I need to DPS while moving straight forward.

Lordryux.9785:

is thier anyway to reset ur crafting ;x :P

Sort of. You can just ask another master crafter to teach you Profession 3 (and choose to unlearn Profession 1) and then if you want to go back to Profession 1 later, you can talk to Profession 1’s master crafter to reactivate it (and choose to unlearn either Profession 2 or 3) at a cost in silver.

The phoenix only removes conditions on its return hit, IIRC. So if the phoenix got stopped by a wall or something, or if you ran away from it, it wouldn’t remove conditions.

The clock tower final chest (at the very top – not the first three) seems to give the level 80 exotic Mad King’s Slippers every time. There’s also the scavenger hunt for the back slot book (the second one is worth replacing your level ~40? quest back slot item with). Beyond that, I don’t think there are any major guaranteed item rewards from the events.

Sylvari engineer, no boosts.

As Kimbald said, you only get to stack one type of sigil bonus. BUT if you have one sigil bonus already and you kill a mob while you only have the other type of sigil equipped, you still get a bonus to your current stack.
(It’s been awhile since I played my guardian so maybe my memory is off – test it yourself to be sure)

It’s like this for pretty much all of the races. One story arc based on a char creation choice until level 10, a second arc until level 20, then a ‘meeting the orders’ arc until level 30.