Guild Wars 2

I’ve sent some more gifts, and that’s pretty much the last of my stuff. Thanks for all the well wishes and good humour.

Have fun all!

I’ve sent a bunch more! I’ve still got 1 ticket for a Timekeeper skin, and a few other BL skins and such in my inventory.

Minx.7521:

Daclaw.5107

The mail rejected this username, a typo perhaps?

Several more gifts sent!

Taxidriver.2043:

if u are quitting why do u even care who gets ur stuff? Just go around around LA or noobie zone and hand out the stuff to new players.

I care to the extent that real people are playing the game, and will continue to when I’m gone. The items that no longer have any value to me, may have value to them, so if I can improve someone’s day even a little bit by sending a few mails out, everyone wins. I have also been giving out random gifts over the past few days.

IntheCoconut.3497:

Why are you quitting?

Giving all your stuff away seems pretty extreme. Its almost like selling your account in a way because now you’ll have nothing to come back to…which I know is the point. But what happened that made you want to leave so absolutely?

I’m quite certain I won’t be coming back to the game. In any case, most players’ account-bound items and achievements are probably more valuable than their tradeables at this point. Thanks for your concern though.

Tree of Savior looks pretty nice actually. I might be getting into Blade & Soul too, although for me, quitting GW2 isn’t really dependent on having a replacement MMO.

A few Wintersday gifts have been sent!

Hello all! I’ve decided to quit the game, for various reasons. Instead of listing those reasons or making any arguments about the state of the game, I’ve decided to jump straight to the “can I have your stuff?” part.

Yes you can!

Nominate a player and why they: are a helpful community member; have terrible luck with RNG; are super dedicated to GW2; are a great roleplayer; or some other such quality and I’ll send them limited edition™ Wintersday gifts of Black Lion skins, mats, etc.

Two nominations can also include a request for a specific Timekeeper weapon skin (as I can’t mail BL tickets directly; 2 available).
Edit: 1 Timekeeper ticket left

**I checked the Code of Conduct before posting, and I think doing this is safe. I don’t want anything in return and only need to send in-game mails containing items.

I haven’t bought HoT, as there doesn’t seem to be anything in it that interests me. It does give the impression of being light on content, or rather, of being a couple of Living World patches squished together with a price tag stapled on.

displacedTitan.6897:

kitten in FF14 Heavensward had much less content but people will try to spin the “it had 3 new classes and we only got 1” while ignoring the fact that not only does Rev alone have more skills than all three of those combined but we also got more skills on each of the elite specs than those entire new classes.

I’m not invested in the debate here at all, but I have to respond to this… uhh… optimistic claim that Heavensward has less content than HoT. Might want to check that …

Burning awesome WvW trolling glorious mighty best class

Couldn’t get it in less than 8.

Was just thinking of making a post along these lines. I play Warrior exclusively, so my interest in HoT was almost entirely riding on whether or not I liked the Warrior spec.

And I love it. Great job! Robert seemed really enthusiastic in the livestream too.

Torch is a very meh weapon choice. I’d hoped ANet might make HoT look more like an actual expansion and create a few new weapon types (greataxe plz).

But the spec itself actually looks cool, I’m glad Warrior was taken in the unstoppable/supernatural physical direction rather than any kind of magic stuff.

He’s completely terrible in every way. I maintain that my Warrior chopped this absurd, awkward, utterly bland and condescending excuse for a character into so much kindling in a moment of reckless wrath, with Zhaitan’s blood still on her hands, upon completing the Personal Story.

And that every other character simply looked the other way, either because they shared my character’s hatred, or knew they could be next.

But hopefully we’ll get a chance to slaughter him more officially in the next Living Story chapter, when he inevitably, inexplicably becomes important again by being corrupted by the salad dragon.

I second this. Also, we’re getting our reduced banner cooldowns re-implemented, right? Right?

1. Torch. Because it’s the most boring by far.

2. Spear (terrestrial). 1h main or 2h, preferably 1h main. Probably not gonna happen! Second option: focus (1h main and offhand); add some new skins for fighting gauntlets, magitech power gloves, claws… yeah, that’s not gonna happen either.

3. A rage/defiance/berserk “energy” meter that functions kinda like the Thief’s initiative, but gained in reverse (slaughtering your enemies fills it, requiring constant offensive momentum to maintain optimal skill use). Also serves as a modifier for a scaling passive in-combat Power/Swiftness/Ferocity buff.

4. Meditations, representing supernatural physical skills and reserves of fighting spirit. Elite skill: the Warrior dies … after x duration, during which the character is an unstoppable force (maybe with a revive mechanic when conditions are met).

5. Berserker, because of datamined info. Seems appropriate, if a bit muddled due to sharing its name with the stat set (especially considering its prevalence).

Jekkt.6045:

[…]

http://i.imgur.com/poeKy9c.png

[…] does not show any weapon.

..!

Unarmed/fighting gauntlet Warrior confirmed!

I wish. Really nice image though, clearly depicting a Warrior vs. Ranger scenario in PvP; moments later the Ranger will be a small puddle of gore and splintered bones on the floor, as it should be.

Donari.5237:

arenta.2953:

how to fix zhaitan fight
kicks Traeharne off the ship
problem solved >=D
he died like he lived, a failed character.

Hard to do since he’s not on the ship. We do the Zhaitan fight without him.

That’s no excuse; my character would gladly drag him onto the ship in that battle, for the sole purpose of kicking him off it.

Tipper.6973:

The spin does less dps than the auto attack, and they both can hit 5 enemies… so what’s the point of the spin?

The spin (Axe 2) is what inflicts the Vuln (4 stacks for 8s), which makes it worth fitting into a rotation if Vuln isn’t already stacked.

But I agree with everything else you wrote, and with the topic in general. I love mainhand axe for its auto, its spin-to-vuln, and Eviscerate, but the trait would be pretty meh even if it weren’t competing directly with the glorious overlord of the Strength line, Berserker’s Power.

The new trait system would seem to heavily constrain future tweaking or expansion, though (in addition to being very narrow in scope as it is). Were Axe Mastery moved, what would it replace?

No, but then I try to join PUGs as the only Warrior, and run full Berserker’s and Phalanx Strength, so I guess not many parties don’t want that.

I will say I find the “anti-meta”(?) attitude quite strange. A significant part of what I enjoy about fighting in a party is that I personally contribute something important (or at least beneficial) to it.

The “I’ll play [something useless] if I want because screw the meta” seems at odds with the whole purpose and value of playing in a group, regardless of personal feelings about optimal builds etc.

Surely the best approach is to play whatever you like, with parties who like to play the same way. “Metazerk elite speedrun pro bbq” LFGs might look a bit goofy, but their purpose is very clear. I see a lot of “everyone welcome” and “chill run” LFGs too. In that case, you’ll only be kicked if you or members of your party are really terrible and/or antisocial in some way.

Trahearne is completely terrible in every way. It’s just not so apparent in GW2 because all of the other characters are completely terrible as well.

I run GW2 on a 256GB Crucial MX100. I did a lot of research beforehand, and came to the conclusion that the write wear isn’t even worth thinking about in 99.9% of usage scenarios. 7 months in, it loads everything very quickly and I haven’t had a single problem.

1. Buy a new SSD, with more capacity than you need. Prices are a lot better per GB than they were not long ago! And do some research into the specific model you decide on.

2. Research some basic info on how to install and optimise SSDs in your system (eg, Windows settings, don’t defragment the drive, etc).

3. Forget all about your write usage and enjoy your ~15s Lion’s Arch loadtimes.

Just finished a CoF run (on my PS Warrior), with two Revenants in the PUG. Conclusion… it’s tanky. The players seemed to know what they were doing, but the class wasn’t doing anything very impactful that I could see. Tried it in the last beta, too, and nothing about it makes me want to switch from my Warrior.

Also, telling Miku to L2P is hilarious.

Any positive experiences with the traited burn on LB auto? I haven’t played with a condi build since the patch, but if you want to get a lot of damage out of LB that seems like the best (or cheesiest) route right now.

Hi Miku, thanks for the update and awesome guide.

One thing I think might be worth a mention in the “utilities when banners aren’t needed” section is the new Frenzy, which gives 5 Might stacks as well as Quickness and a stunbreak, and no longer has the +25% dmg received.

I always slot this in place of “For Great Justice” now, personally. I could be overlooking something though (it does have a long cooldown).

Purple Miku.7032:

About the warrior banners – I was linked to a livestream past broadcast where they intended to merge Inspiring Banners with Inspiring Battle Standard. Apparently they forgot about it…

So, yeah. That’s where it’s supposed to be.

Now the question is, how long is it going to take for them to remember to add that back in? xD

I hope this happens soon, I didn’t really appeciate that trait until it was gone. Feels really clunky now with the downtime and tighter effect radius.

More OT, I agree with all the points. I’m just not hopeful that the regular, small balance/bugfix/tuning patches we need are going to happen, in favour of the current “hit it with a sledgehammer every few months” approach. I don’t see a consistent or deep understanding of game modes or design philosophy behind any of it…

OTOH, I do really like the new UI and art for the specializations. I think an ordered list with text labels would solve #3 completely.

You could try the Juggernaut!

I tried this in hotjoin today, having never really played GS in PvP before. It was chaos, along with all the condi madness and super-Engis and so on, but surprisingly fun, and I felt so mobile and dynamic compared to the old longbow builds. I’d say I’m a mediocre player, but when people made mistakes against this it was usually gg.

I think I’d like GS/sword+shield even more though, so I’m going to try Elegie’s suggestions next.

All of the suggestions I would’ve made (eg. Honor of Humanity) you’ve already got there. He looks fantastic.

Edit: The Crimson Lion weapon skins might fit the theme too, if you wanted some variant sets (and the cost isn’t an issue).

YuiRS.8129:

It’s just here to prevent the double Killshot Signet of Fury stuff.

Use Killshot at 2 stacks of adrenaline, then pop Sig of Fury and see what happens.

Wow. I didn’t know about this. I just tested it and, sure enough, the cooldown on rifle burst is instantly reset along with the adrenaline gain.

I hope we can infer from this that we have bad technical writing and confusing/confused dev commentary on a rifle burst fix, rather than a global burst nerf.

yanoch.7051:

41m40 sec

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/669362853

I think it means you can’t use a T3 earthshacker then swap and then use T1 Arcing slice. English isn’t my main language so I might be wrong.

I think you may be right. I can’t make out what Roy says at the end of that part.

I don’t play Necro, but this use of the skill Looked Awesome (not allowed in GW2) and must have been Fun (actively discouraged).

The more I think about this the less sense it makes.

As stated, they specified “that” burst skill, but since burst cooldown is already skill-specific regardless of adrenaline tier, the situation can never arise that any tier of the same burst can be re-used before its recharge is up again.

The alternative interpretation would be an incredibly horrible nerf.

Edit: Oh, I forgot dual weapon sets of the same type… maybe that’s all it means?

Was tempted to make/buy The Predator sometime, but it looks like there’s even less justification for it as a Warrior-only player now.

Unless… Soldier/Commando/Space Marine spec (main/offhand pistol + main/offhand sword w/ chainsword skin + rifle trait share).

chronometria.3708:

Well, if rifle wasn’t already in the dust, they just dropped the worlds largest dolyak on it from the height of the lion’s arch diving board.

Hahaha. This needs to be someone’s signature!

nicknamenick.2437:

GreyerSkies.6287:

nicknamenick.2437:

using a burst skill for your equipped weapon will now set the recharge of all adrenaline tiers of that burst skill

Does anyone understand this??

It means both weapon sets will share a single burst cooldown. So if you use your longbow burst then switch to, say, hammer, you’ll need to wait for the 7+ second cooldown even if you have enough adrenaline.

I think? ANet’s writing isn’t very clear.

uuuh wow so that a huge nerf right?? i mean no more blast finishing?
and no more swap to GS > fast and cheap adrenaline lvl 1 burst?? omg!!

Yeah… I hope I’m wrong, but I can’t figure out what it means otherwise. Adrenaline tier doesn’t affect burst recharge/cooldown, without switching we have to wait for the cooldown anyway. But they specify “that” burst skill. So I dunno…

nicknamenick.2437:

using a burst skill for your equipped weapon will now set the recharge of all adrenaline tiers of that burst skill

Does anyone understand this??

It means both weapon sets will share a single burst cooldown. So if you use your longbow burst then switch to, say, hammer, you’ll need to wait for the 7+ second cooldown even if you have enough adrenaline.

I think? ANet’s writing isn’t very clear.

The slides were full of typos, so I’m not getting too excited yet about the possibility of CI proc’ing on activation like it used to.

Sadly its Grandmaster status means the otherwise very nice Last Stand changes are never likely to see use.

That was sad. How do you just forget an entire traitline? The 2 hours of relentless Engineer buffs that followed didn’t exactly raise my spirits either.

And yeah, a practically useless trait now has +20 Toughness. Right. They don’t know what they’re doing, don’t care, or both.

Did a key run recently, got absolute trash in the BL chest, and rage-clicked an unidentified dye knowing that it would give me Pink Ice Dye or something. It gave me Abyss instead, that was nice.

Also got Razah’s Nightmare from a quick CoF run recently. I’ve never seen (and don’t expect to see) a precursor though.

I’d love the Sunless axe skin, but I’ve done Teq almost daily for a while now and no sign of a hoard. One of the chests did drop Entropy recently, though.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

Don’t you mean “hoard”?

I hope so. A Tequatl Horde would be unstoppable!

Well, the new traits seem to retain two revive-specific ones, both minor traits in Tactics (Determined Revival and Reviver’s Might).

I’d rather they were merged into a single minor trait, but I think the concept does fit the Tactics Warrior’s theme of being the mighty, well, warrior holding a banner and dragging the puny lesser classes back into the fight with her.

Nice work! I’ll like & sub!

Edit: I just realised it’s not your video. Thanks for posting it!

Yeah, I sense some cognitive dissonance is owed certain posters in this thread…

Anyway, this objectively will hurt Berserker (or any non-condi stat amulet) Warriors. But longbow will still be more or less essential (probably more), it just means we’ll be doing less damage over time. A condi-cleansing fire field, a blind, and an immobilise are hard to argue with regardless.

But the reason I mentioned hybrid builds (insofar as they’re viable at all) is a ’Zerker axebow can still hit like a truck regardless of how significant condi damage loss is; but a hybrid sword thing might not have the stat numbers to make the trade-off in direct damage even remotely worth it now.

Seems like bad news for any kind of hybrid build in general.

I’m not very familiar with all the numbers as regards sPvP… the 700+ spot for equal or better condi damage isn’t going to be reached by any typical hybrid/power Warrior is it?

I noticed this as well, particularly in Lion’s Arch. I run the game on an SSD, so the difference seemed to be fairly significant even if it’s only a matter of a few extra seconds.

Here you go.

Eiland.1405:

Unarmed could be real cool – just give warrior 5 skills +burst when no weapon is equipped (or only OH or MH) but where would you put the sigils?
On SPVP the sigils are separated from the weapons so it can work, but in PVE/wvw it is not.

I had the thought a while back that the Warrior’s new weapon could be the focus; not as an arcane/symbol type of item, but as a fighting gauntlet/fist weapon equivalent.

It seems each specialisation’s new weapon will have a unique new skin to match the spec, so Warriors could get a gnarly gauntlet or fighting-claw skin for MH/OH focus in that case! And… meditations?

I can dream…

“Dragonhunter” is pretty bad. It’s generic in the wider context of fantasy, and yet too-specific in the context of a GW2 spec. I think pretty much anything would sound better, and invite speculation on the spec’s possible roles, rather than just… saying it, in the most basic way possible.

I assume ArenaNet are being consistent about single-word names for professions and specs (even if the single word is a combination of two).

Avenger
Seeker
Vindicator
Invigilator
Warden
Nemesis
Dragoon
Pursuant
Pathfinder
Zealot
Campaigner
Armiger

And don’t forget the new Spiked Armor, as shown, gives Retaliation on crits and blocks and +150 armor under Retaliation.

So traited Shield Stance is a mobile “it’s a really bad idea to attack me right now” mode on a 24s cooldown. Seems like a good way to destroy all those pewpew Rangers.

Guardian to me feels more like an arcane warrior or battle priest, with limited mobility and a lot of active “spell effect” type skills.

I struggled with this choice for a while myself, and now play Warrior almost exclusively. Warrior feels much faster, more aggressive and straightforward, in the sense that you’re a charging, leaping, stomping powerhouse with regenerating health and some of the most satisfying direct damage skills in the game (eg Eviscerate).

Both classes are very good in most, if not all, game modes and their heavy armour has the best skin options in the game, IMO. If you’re getting the HoT expansion, the Revenant might be a competitor too.

tl;dr: WARRIOR!

Edit: This should help you decide.

Seed.5467:

Maybe i missed it. But what happened to “Sure-Footed” trait?

Sure-Footed’s effects were merged into Last Stand, along with Vigorous Focus from the Discipline line. Meaning Last Stand gives us Balanced Stance auto-activation, +25% stance duration, and 6s Vigor on stance activation.

Yeah, that is a shame. I agree that Dogged March as a minor trait would round the Defense line out perfectly.

OTOH, traited Shield 5 is really strong, I don’t think shield builds are any less viable.

I really like the concept, and I’m relieved they weren’t removed. There are certainly ways they could be handled much better, though (eg, I’d love it if characters had a passive slot exclusively for a utility/movement/falling trait).

On my warrior, Death From Above can be a lot of fun. I’ve dropped down onto a small group (or zerg tail) in WvW before, with extremely entertaining results.

Looks amazing, really pleased with most of the proposed changes. As well as some specific (and obvious) PvE beast builds, it looks like our overall utility will be improved. Not to mention our mobility (oh hai Savage Leap + new Blademaster trait).

However, we probably shouldn’t tell ANet that. Yes. Warrior changes are mediocre, oh how we’ll suffer in PvE/WvW/PvP, nothing to see here.

I enjoyed your video a lot! It’s made me want to play WvW/PvP, which I haven’t tried before.

I definitely can’t give you advice as I’m quite new to the game, but I love your jumping dodge rolls (is the jump just for how cool/impressive it looks or does that have a purpose?), and bowing to your opponent is very classy.

Nice looking character too.