Guild Wars 2

I play it for the flexibility and the freedom to do what I want. The engineer is not seen as a powerful ally in most game-modes. We have the repuation to be hard to master, difficult to play with an unrewarding effort/result ratio. That usually scares off the idiots and wannabes you come across the ranks of e.g. daredevils, heralds, berserkers or tempests. It is not a class you pick and are pro for walking in circles and smashing a few buttons in order.

If you stick to the class for a longer time, you learn a lot about game-mechanics in total. Combos, synergy between traits & skills and how to survive lethal blows. We have a huge, nearly endless variety of gadgets and toys which we can utilize for each situation.

But that flexibility comes with a price, dps. Nearly every class/elite out there, except for durid, easily outdamages us. Our condition-damage is good, sometimes seen nearly equal to that of necromancers – depends on who you ask. In PvP we are feared for our survivability and speed.

I still enjoy it as in my first week and I still find new stuff. I play my own builds and it is fun. Some of us obey the meta, worship it as the only true god and WP as their devine prophet. Whatever they like. To each his own. Imho the class offers enough variety for us all.

Ranger, PvE – in most cases this still means longbow ^^. The headache is totally relatable. With the upcoming renegade & deadeye, we are going to run into that issue more often. There are a few options that could work:

- Thief: Using a shortbow should allow you to hop easily between enemies and your friend. You can use venoms to boost her abilities and assist her pet in slaughtering whatever is in range. You should be fast enough to head back in great danger, stealth-resurrect or sneak away together. This option however lacks defenses and the ability to actively heal.

- Guardian: A standard facero… Dragonhunter build and or meditation build should keep you easily alive and make you a powerful damage source. The gameplay is not that difficult. In times of great danger you can use the meditation-teleport skills to return to your friend. Depending on the build you use you can sacrifice part of your dps for support-aspects, do some healing, condition cleansing or even buffing.

- Ranger: A traditional bear-bow combinded with a shout build should work well. I run such a build on a ranger myself. You both will have access to permanent swiftness, regeneration, a good load might stacks. If combined with the 6x trooper rune, you can cleanse conditions while buffing. If you decide to run with a warhorn, you become an even better buffer but you are quite limited with closer range combat, if an enemy ever comes that close. Compared to the other classes you can stick to your friend 100% of the time, what eliminates the range-issue.

I do agree with the others and doubt there is a best solution. Ask yourself what you want to do? Do you want to aid your friend in terms of buffs & support? Do you want to keep danger away from her, fighting in the frontline and doing the dirty work with the pets? Make that decision first and then look for a class that fulfills that purpose best.

Timberline Falls, south-west of Valace Tutory Waypoint, the white rabbit.
Ruins of Orr, champion drake broodmother.
Resurrecting team-mates during Mai Trin AoE phase.

wrathmagik.3518:

I know not everyone likes it, but i’m one of those people that absolutely love it, and I just hope that the water exploration gets the love and TLC that the land does for exploration

Well they look into improvement of water, somehow. We now have the tide-system since Ember Bay. It is surface water, but it makes swiming and walking alongside the coast so much more relaxing and enjoyable.

I hope/beleive they are currently working on a huge underwater update, which may take another few months. Why? SAB. According to the map, the next world is at least partially underwater ^^. Another hint for underwater development, the skills of the new elite-specs mostly work underwater or have at least an underwater-version.

And don’t forget about the giant underwater-cave in TD. Whenever I enter it, I find something new. The mechanics are challenging. During my first exploration tour through the tunnel system, I found the disco room by mistake, tried everything but /dance and left -.-

I also regulary check out the big cave below Behem Gauntlet, for years. Can we please get something in there? I even tried luring certain mobs (shark/armorfish) deep inside the cave to trigger something. Nothing worked ;_;.

So yeah, totally agree with OP. Hope they work on more underwater stuff. A puzzle would be awesome. Maybe a cave system with different currents, triggering switches to manipulate them in order to end up at the final chest? ^^

Increasing either the burn duration or the hits which trigger burn, would significantly boost the FT in a positive way. I use an earth sigil, combined with the trait of firearms, so the attack is basically a blood-jet, not a flame jet. The only way I ever outrun the bloodstacks, when I use the FT toolbelt when unloading the flamejet.

In the previous updates, the devs pointed the FT into a condition direction. The AA-retaliation issue is common knowledge by now. They could make the flame-jet 100% condition. Only placing a burn stack with 0.5 sec duration per tick, but deal 0 direct damage. This would increase the burn-stacks, favorize the condition-builds and erase the retaliation issue at once. But the FT would be a real condition-only kit. In return they could replace the burn & poision effects of grenades/bombs with vulnerability and make them power-only kits.

I’d like to suggest a tutorial-area, preferably in the mists. Whenever you unlock something new, you can enter the tutorial from wherever you are, talk to the mentor npc and do a training for that stuff.

Examples:
1.) First time a player enters a JP area, we had those triggers in the old monthly. In the tutorial area is an NPC, JP master where you learn the basics about JPs. How they work, the importance of camera-use and ofcourse a few training courses, with special focus on different types of platforming.

After completing each course you receive an Achievement, worth 5 AP and at the end of all 3 a title “Jumper of the Mists.”

2.) First time a player gets the mail to enter a dungeon. There should be a NPC in the tutorial area instructing about those. Mentioning the importance of level requirements, what happens when you undergo the recommendations by 2,3,4,5 levels. What scaling means. As well as a short, solo-able minidungeon with triggering a switch to open a gate and a boss fight at the end. At the start and beginning you have to watch a non-skipable cutscene.

After completing the tutorial dungeon, you receiven an Achievement, worth 5 AP and a title “Dungeon Apprentice.”

3.) First time a player obtains a bottle of Elonian Wine. The NPC in the tutorial area teleports you to the old Lion’s Arch Mystic Forge where you are given a test-inventory and can try out different stuff at first. To get the Achievement, you are asked to craft 5 items in a row, ingredients shown as pictures on boards near the MF.

The recipes could be: upgrading 4 green greatswords to one rare, creating a tray of food recipe, upgrading sige blueprints, crafting a mystic clover and crafting one of the special mystic weapons. All ingredients are bound to the instance in a special inventory, cannot be sold, moved out and all crafts get deleted once the instance is left.

For completing the task, once again 5 AP and a title “Apprentice of Zomorros.”

4.) First time the glider gets unlocked. The the gliding tutorial gets unlocked. With each tier of the mastery, another training course is unlocked. Each course explains the basics and gives a few examples + a small race-course (similar to the flying circus adventure). After all tiers are completed. This tutorial includes training and testing of gliding skills, how to precisly land on a small platform using leaning skills with examples.

When all tiers are unlocked and completed, 5 AP and a title.

5.) First time Ancient Magics mastery is unlocked. Same as with gliding, one course per mastery. Explanations, examples and a test-course.

6.) One NPC master inside the tutorial for class mechanics, e.g. ranger pets, clones of mesmers, turrets, spirit weapons, upkeep.

7.) One NPC master inside the tutorial for elite mechanics, e.g. celestial avatar, function gyro, berserker mode & primal bursts, virtues of DH, wells of Chronomancer, … etc.

8.) One NPC master inside the tutorial who explains what a breakbar is, what CC means, what skills of your class are CC skills, how they work and a test boss which can only be harmed every 25 % when the breakbar is done.

… etc.

All of these tutorials can be done only alone. No mesmer help! Please not. I can already see the LFG adverts
- “FREE tutorial unlocks, donations welcome”
- “unlocking EVERY tutorial achievement, 15g each”

Everything inside the mists, special area. Possibility to teleport from everywhere, with the option to return to the last location. All tutorials voiced, else people are just clicking through like the license-agreements of software. Cutscenes not skipable, reason see the other sentence.

I know it is enough work to keep the developers busy for months and I am totally aware that a large group of players do not like tutorials and delete every user-manual on sight.

I like the newbie dodge tutorial and I liked the old pvp tutorial. Forcing people into a tutorial is wrong. But giving them an option and rewarding their precious time with a few AP maybe pays off with more active and less frustrated generations of players.

If I was a newbie today “Welcome to Guildwars 2. Here have a level 80 booster, now enjoy the endgame!” I would quit within two weeks for sure. And I totally understand every new player and returner who feels overwhelmed and confused.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day.

Function Gyro is difficult to learn. It is a struggle for everyone. Best way to learn it quick is to keep an eye on your party-window healthbars, and if you spot a red one click on it and press F a few times. If the guy is in sight-range, you may notice an orange gyro pop up next to him, performing resurrection.

If you are teamed up with mesmers, elementalists and thieves, who tend to move their downed body across the field, it is very annyoing. The FG does follow a teleporting corpse, but it moves and not teleports. So there is a high chance it gets destroyed on its way to the target. But on the other hand, we have the same issue with the Toss Elexir R.

It is quite useful for teamplay though. You can e. g. send the gyro to a player who got downed inside a DOT field and maintain his health until the field runs out. You can combine the FG with the Toss Elexir R and mind your own business while your ally gets resurrected. If you are engaged in a duel, you can send the gyro to buy you extra time. And once you have mastered the issue with range and cooldown, you also can resurrect dead players with it (but that requires some experience & training). It is also possible to resurrect a downed player during the AoE phase of Main Trin (fractal) with the FG and your personal resurrection. But you need to be extremely fast.

Compared to the other class/elite mechanics, it does not increase our dps in any form, so many consider the FG to be a total waste. I like it, but my opinion on this board has the same value as the FG in dps builds.

Before we get another flood of complaints, I’d like to remind you guys on those two topics:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Listen-to-WoodenPotatoes
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Thanks-Wooden-Potatoes

I remember in one of the threads, it is pointed out that the devs do listen to WP, so there is hope. A thing I already noticed is the gigantic ? above players head when it comes to the excessive energy trait, which is also suggested in that way in that video.

Changes are progress, sometimes backward, sometimes forward. It is a bit too early to determine which update/change in particular was genius or horrible. The next days will show if we can manage to get current builds working with the new stuff or even create new ones. Those of you who obey the meta as the one and only truth in this world can ignore the previous sentence ^^.

It is finally an update which forces me to change stuff, which did not happen a lot in the past so far. So I am excited and motivated to get things running and working.

fashion.6712:

Well frogs, snipers and of course champs are a no go even tho i manage them with nearly all my other chars. I see Dodges are my only defense but i wanted scrapper Hammer to work soooo much...thats why i bought the exp first place.

Now I am confused. Hammer offers two excellent skills to avoid dangerous attacks:
(+) Skill 4 - Shock Shield
This is a 2 second duration, block-everthing skill. It eats whatever attack your opponents throw at you and it does damage-over-time if you stand right infront of them.
(+) Skill 3 - Rocket Charge
This is a 3x leap attack, granting you the side-effects of dodging while in mid air. You are vulnerable everytime you land on the ground. But this move is perfect to neutralize strong attacks or attack-waves.

If you are playing Scrapper, I would also suggest to equip the bulwark gyro. It drastically lowers the damage you receive and the toolbelt skill is a portable reflective shield-dome 5 seconds duration. Whenever the Itzel Shadowleapers start their volley of arrows, the help you killing themselves.

Hammer 5 - Thunderclap
This is an area stun, for regular monsters and a good option to start the fight agains the small groups of mini-raptors. If your HP drops too fast, you can try using the A.E.D., just activate it, when you see the raports rushing to you.

When you talk about champions, I assume you talk about Hero Challenges? These things are designed to be group-content. There are classes out there which can solo these things in Verdant Brink and a few in Auric Basin. But once the easy ones are done, people either run out of time or HP. Don’t do Hero Challenges solo. If you manage to survive the combat, your dps won’t be enough to finish the job in 10 minutes. Again, we are talking about group content (2 persons or more).

May I ask what build and stats you use?

“There’s always a bigger fish.”

What seems to be meta and ultimately perfect is very temporary. If you stick to a certain class and playstyle you will come across ups and downs. Seasons when you are considered superior, seasons when you are considered weaker – for the same playstyle/build/gear. People who like and enjoy their classes can maintain during all seasons without big trouble. When it comes to certain content, e.g. raids/fractals they have to prove their value by actions and skill. The others just have to say they play the current meta and probably need to link their gear/insights as a proof.

What Xca said is somehow true. But there are tons of guilds out there who raid a lot. Many of them do not allow pugs at all. So you would not get into their groups anyway, even if you obey the meta 1 by 1. Some guilds allow their members to play what they like, even in raids and fractals.

tl&dr, play as you want – power or condition build, or even hybrids. If you have problems with getting accepted, join a guild that suits to you.

I love the riddle-mechanics (fights & regular). I grew up with old snes rpgs, like lufia II and when I first saw the puzzle my eyes were glowing ^^. The new fractal is absolutely beautiful. Soundrack, awesome as always.

Please give the physics-team a rise. The tide-mechanic, heat-updraft and the new low-gravity-mechanics (with glider) are mesmerizing. I have played countless low gravity simulations and this is the first that does not feel ridiculous. It is one of the toughest, most frustrating jobs and the players hardly notice it, sadly.

Vault changes are ok for me. Our scribes are very happy at the moment, big thanks from them. The tome changed the scrolls from a dusty book in the shelf, to a tourguide. Thanks for the Karmic Retribution, looking forward to enjoy it a few days before people start milking it for real and you have to nerf the loot again. No gathering node for my home instance? ^^

What I saw so far, exceeds my expectations. You walk new paths with your approach. People always complain when changes appear. What I have read on the boards so far, makes me beleive you are on the right way. Keep up the good work and GW2 will remain a glowing star on the firmament for another few years. We are not a clone of that one mmorpg on the market, and that is why we still exist.

This is the method I use:

1.) Turn your online status to invisible.
2.) Stop representing a guild, if you have a bank-guild, represent that.
3.) Teleport yourselves to a lowlevel (starter) map.
4.) Go to character selection screen, server selection and list by Population.
5.) Scroll down to the red & orange names, and pick one that sounds famous.
6.) Press on Guest, proceed and press on Guest again.
7.) Log in again, and look for a small event (newbie maps are full of them). Complete that event.
8.) Now open worldmap and port to the waypoint you want to go.

This method not works 100% and sometimes requires several tries. But for most situations I get what I want.

Note: If you want to check if it worked, type in /ip on the map you start and again on every next attempt. The messages should remain in you chatlog.

The mapping, design and attention to detail in everything.
The entertaining npc dialogues.
The countless secrets and mysteries.
The community is still the most friendly and helpful I have met so far.
The drop, loot, combat and environmental mechanics, including the gliding and the new tides-mechanic. Please make more maps with this.
The JPs, minidungeons and other random chests scattered over the world.
The guildhalls and the ability to decorate them and create own JPs.
The mastery system.
The countless Indiana Jones references. There are also tons of references from other games and movies. I think it is impossible to find all, but I am trying.
The soundtrack.
The great connection to the events of GW1, which still allows players who have not played it to come to GW2 and have a good time and understand the story.
The dynamic events, which still enchant me like playing the first day.
And ofcourse the character-editor, wardrobe and dye system - which eat a great load of time *_*.

At least I now know what goes wrong. Thanks for your answers.

Hi,

we recently run into issues finding enough people for our dungeon/fractal runs. Usually we end up with 2-4 people. Using pugs from the lfg does not really work. Most just leave within a few minutes.

Many of us do not play meta-builds, is that the problem?

Depends about what dye-pack we talk. I used my 4th year Jubilant Dye Pack on:
Shadow Dye Kit => Shadow Abyss Dye

I never owned a black dye in all the years and now I have the purest, most expensive in the game. Big thanks to ANet \o/

When I get untradeable dyes I usually look for my basic preferences which are mostly red, gold and metal-colors. Then I check which are the best looking ones and then I pick the most expensive of those. In some rare cases, if I get access to very exclusive dye-packs, I pick pure colors.

Why it has to be 10 AP for completing three easy tasks? If you want to aquire 10 AP in the regular game, maybe need them asap because you need the gems/skin out of the next bonus chest, you are in deep trouble. Some of our members run in this situation from time to time. Yay, a problem of the rich guys? Maybe, but think about it?

Does it really have to be 10 AP? The tasks are far away from being challenging at all, many people can do them brain-afk and thanks to the hoards of helpful mesmers, even the daily JPs are mostly a joke of 5 seconds.

If you look for reasons for the cap, you mostly read stuff like: There has to be a cap, or the new players can never catch up with the old ones. Which is already impossible, due to the missing Living Story chapters and rotating festival events.

Some people seem to do the dailies only for the AP, which is sad. The loot is imho good enough to be the only motivation.

So my suggestion would be to lower the AP loot. Once a person has reached 15k, daily AP reward turns to 1 or 2. The veterans won’t outrun the new ones any further and get their score pushed anyway. Just takes longer.

modus sceleris: Would it be possible to get another encounter? The combat is challenging and the events are really nice. I like them a lot. Maybe one in central tyria and one randomly in the LS3 maps. Orma is fantastic, but I’d love to see what happens if you are not able to outscale her power with gear and level XD.

NPC guilds: Central tyria has a few of them. Some do certain events and have specific lore, others are just well hidden, waiting for a curious player to find them (e.g. Soot warband). The new LS3 maps have good potential and possibilities to add subgroups of the major factions without stirring the lore/story. The maps are great as they are.

mercy trigger: This one might be horrible to code and implement, but I would love to see it in the game one day. Could you please add a humanoid boss, champion/legendary with a downed state. If the players allow the npc to recover from the downed state it turns green, no rewards but could do one of the following stuffs:
- trigger another event with a secret boss
- assist players during the map meta, ressurrecting downed people (like the npcs in the story missions)
- unlock a vendor
… etc.

lure trigger: Also horible to create. I am a huge fan of the Angvar’s Trove Guildpuzzle. The final event with the dragon. Could we get some switches which require you to lure a certain mob to it and wait for using a certain skill? Or kill/stun it while standing on a switch in order to open a door?

appearance trigger: Thanks to your efforts we can transform into nearly all creatures/npcs. I recently revisited the Song of Final Exile and used my kodan transformation. Sadly no special dialogue :S.

These are just a few ideas. I do not complain. The game is awesome in its current state. You do a great job.

How about avoiding corpses at all and reviving people while they are downed?

We have a large group of players who still beleive, helping a downed ally is the worst thing you can do in a boss fight. Those people beleive their contribution to the dps is critical and should never stop at all, at any cost. Some of them are focused enough to rather risk a full wipe instead of “wasting” 5 seconds of their precious time.

Not to mention the fact that they also let their healers/buffers/cleansers & tanks die, just because dps>all. When the tank is gone, the boss aims for the next. If there are only zerkers arround, it is russian roulette. When the healers are gone, the ammount of corpses increase. And so the ammount of players who refuse to WP.

Don’t blame the few guys who refuse to WP, they are not the problem. Change the problem in the heads of the players. The entire situation is created by the players themselves. Teach your people to revive downed people instead of ignoring them.

for non-raid PvE:
4x Superior Rune of the Traveler
2x Superior Rune of Balthazar

Costs less than a single rune of the berserker, offers:
+ 20 on all stats
+ 15 % boon duration
+ 10 % condition duration
+ 10 % burn duration (+ 20% in total)
+ 25 condition damage

If you use firearms trait-line, you can try superior sigil of earth for more bleeding stacks.

Leveling basically means aquiring experience points. Most of the heart quests are boring or repetitive. They do give several options to complete, but there are usually only one or two which are half way decent. Except you have done that specific heart for several times and know the locations of the other things out of your memory. People mostly just look for the "killl ..." option in the quest discription, as it is the easiest/fastest ^^.

Here are a few reasons why doing heart-quests can be useful:
- you gain karma*
- you gain gold*
- you gain experience*
- you get a karma-vendor, which sells unique items. In several cases you have access to nice armor/weapon skins, that would cost a fortune to aquire from TP or crafting. You also gain access to certain recipes for your crafting professions. The shared recipe book finally allows us to consume recipes with any character and use it later on the correct profession. So you do not need to do the heart with the specific character with the specific crafting profession any more.

What gets me through the leveling process are mostly the events. Aside from the hearts, they usually give you real tasks with tougher opponents, more experience*, better gold* and karma*. Also some of the events trigger other events when finished or grant you access to special vendors. Those are only temporal available, but usually sell very cool stuff, which you can not find in any npc-store and ofcourse not on TP. The events are usually connected with the area, tell a story and make you feel more of a hero, because you see the changes after completion.

Exploration is a big chapter, but can also be a little boring one. If you are in a guild that does weekly guild-missions, you may know the value of a character which has access to nearly every waypoint in the game. If you are roaming arround solo, get into a pve-guild. It is always more fun to explore together than alone. Guilds also grant access to certain boons* and usually have some veterans arround which offer plenty of information about completing exploration, reaching vistas/JPs or lend a hand killing a very powerful boss.

If you do not like the idea of mapping, go to your options menue and deactivate the event guide. Now you can walk where you want and don’t feel any pressure. A quick way to gain fast experience is exploring only waypoints and points of interest. To trigger those, you only need to walk close enough to them, no interaction required. I made more than 20 levelups just with that method and in the end the character was able to travel wherever I wanted. Once you have the waypoints, it is rather easy to get to all the events. Just keep an eye on the mapchat and you see people linking waypoints where events currently take place.

* What does that mean?
You can boost your loot by using food and with the guild-buffs. If you talk to an npc vendor who sells food, you can literally pick anything you want. Each food gives at least + 10% exp from kills. If you want more, you can go for the Bowl of Candy Corn Custard it gives you +15 % experience from kills and you can get it easily from TP. For another +10 % you can get some utility buff by consuming e. g. Apprentice Maintenance Oil, which you can craft yourselves or also purchase from TP. The guildbuff, obtained from a guild with a tavern lasts 24 hours and can grant you up to another 10 %. So just with that you can get a +35 % increase in experience from kills. If you do random events only, which usually attract tons of enemies, you get your exp-bar filled in no time.

Another useful thing can be the survival-bonus. When a monster/npc spawns a timer begins to run. The longer it survives until being killed the more bonus-experience it gives. When you kill a npc, you sometimes see two rows of experience below. The lower line is the bonus exp. If you use the above described buffs you can easliy get loads of experience from npcs. The ones that usually survive the longest, are the passive ones with a yellow name. Also try to walk off the roads/treks, get into corners and deadends. These mobs get rarely killed.

Also start to gather materials. That also gives exp and you can either store the materials for your own crafting or make money by selling them. Iron Ore for example is still a good source for money, as it is used on many highlevel recipes in huge loads.

& what the others said above.

Samug.6512:

“Gyro, go get that angry enemy warrior!”
“Whaaaaat? Which guy?…”
“Take superspeed! You’ll catch up to him quickly!”
“You mean that Tiger! Sure thing, boss! Oh, look at that flower…”

Sums it up pretty good. When it comes to AI I definitely prefer turrets over gyros, just because they can not move ^^. If all companions in the entire game had the same AI, there would be no afk farming at all.

I am not a huge fan of the healing turret, so I do use the medic gyro. Sadly it is one of those weird trades, which actually allow you to move while healing but punish you if you do so :S. But it has its good sides. Runes&traits&foods which work with activation of healing skill can be used for the detonation as well, which is nice. The idea of healing allies arround passively is great. And the toolbelt is awesome.

The second gyro I use is the function gyro, wich also a rather broken but funny AI. As it sometimes follows a teleporting corpse although it should not, thanks ANet o/. If I time it well, I can even order it to revive dead players, thanks ANet o/. And it somehow resists many terrain condtions for no reason at all, thanks Anet o/.

The sneak gyro is the one I use the least. Sometimes it can jump over rocks, use stairs, walk through water. And sometimes it cannot pass a tiny stem on the road. The infinite stealth-bug still works after countless reports, thanks ANet o/. The stealth-reveal looks good at first, if we would not have different types of stealth :S.

The blast and shredder ones are a true pain. I have not figured out a proper use for them. But I am confident, there is a way to abuse their broken mechanics as well ^^.

We could use an eater-gizmo. Like mawdrey II or the candy corn gobbler. Big problem is the reward/cost issue. I’d love to have essences of luck in return. But the guys who complain about loads of sigils may have outmaxed luck years ago. I guess luck would be even more useless than the sigils.

possible aquisition:
- gathering a stack of 250 of every rune/sigil in the game for a collection achievement that unlocks the gizmo
- sold on gemstore for 500 gems, uses one inventory bag-slot, cannot be placed in a shared inventory slot (like the gathering tools)
- after completing agent of entropy the last time it gives AP, you complete it another time and get the gizmo, account bound, useable in shared slot

possible costs:
- 10 copper on use of any rune/sigil
- 1 essence of luck, depending on rarity of the rune/sigil
- nothing

possible results:
- 1 essence of luck, always the blue one
- stackable trophies of all four rarities, depending on the rarity of the rune/sigil
- 33 % chance to refund the costs, 33% chance to double the costs
- 1 essence of insanity, if you have a stack of 250 you can convert it to 1 random LS currency

I know none of these will make it past anything, but I hope I entertained some of you a little. It is a very boring topic and affects a very noisy minority of the players. I do not care at all. Just had these funny ideas while reading through the thread ^^. Have a nice day o/

Hello,

normally you start at Brisban Wildlands, that is the territory north of Metrica Province (Asura starting zone) and northwest Caledon Forest (Sylvari starting zone). Then you head north-west towards Fort Vandal. A large open area filled with bandits, mines a giant fort. Go to the fort to enter the Silverwastes.

You spawn at Camp Resolve and after a small cutscene, you head to the southern exit. Go west, hugg the wall to the south until you reach Amber Sandfall camp. Next to this, west of the camp, should be a small hole in the wall. Get in and make your way up to the gate. Now you are in Verdant Brink, the first map of Heart of Maguuma.

Link
The first listed entry is the wiki page of Heart of Maguuma. The first paragraph is “Getting there.” It explains the way detailed from Silverwastes. If you do not know where that is, you click on Silverwastes and read the paragraph for “Getting there.”

The second or third entry on google is a video on youtube, showing you directly where to walk.

Yikes! What is wrong with you guys, how many threads about the turrets to you think we need? Actually we do not need a new thread anyway, write your comments directly in there. You wanted those changes. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Thanks-Wooden-Potatoes/first#post6532897

I like the new patch, it improved most of my builds. I even plan to use the healing turret finally on a build and I am absolutely not a fan of it. In my opinion, the patch makes it even easier for new players to get into turrets as there is now less confusin with the overcharging.

Recently I have been running a few situations with the supply crate and used the toolbelt a lot to heal in distances. The cleansing effect is welcomed. Will use the crate more often now.

“Skills and traits that previously granted pulsing stability now grant a block of stability up front in order better allow for counterplay through boon removal.” For some weird reason they did not touch the Juggernaut trait o.O – yet. Maybe the FT is still not strong enough to be considered as a real threat. Fine for me ^^.

We are highly overpowered in pve. Challenging fights keep us entertained and motivated. There are npcs out there which can beat you up easily without relying on cheap tricks, but most of us never fight them under fair conditions, so they are weak insta-kills. The modus sceleris are of that kind. Extremely powerful mesmers, hard to beat if you dare to solo them with average gear in the recommended level. That situation rarely happens, in most cases there is at least one 80 outmaxed killer-machine arround who turns the epic fight into a 5 seconds mini-event. Another tough memser npc can be the norn lady at the snowden drifts hero challenge. Even some 80s characters have trouble, if they dare to fight her alone. Those only use regular mesmer skills.

Now we enter the new zones and meet new enemies. We also meet those strange and extremely powerful ones. But compared to the above mentioned, we can not return in a few days with level 120 and ultimate mega roxxor gear to beat the sugar out of them.

I rather have challenging and powerful enemies, than weak 1hit kills. Never understood what is so fun with doing dungeons/fractals and other content with groups full of outmaxed characters to kill everything instantly or asap. We play the game for entertainment, not to be done with it as quickly as possible. If I want that, I can go to work instead – better loot.

I actually use one mesmer on a F2P account for Porttmat’s Lab – the math one. It is always a pain for me to do that one, especially during guild-trek with the timelimit.

A few thoughts:

- Spread your squad into 3-5 sub-groups, each lead by one of your officers. Those groups head for 3-5 different locations.
- When people do GMs, there are always a bunch of people who think that now is the perfect time to play an alt with nearly 0 % map completion. So make sure one of the sub-groups heads for a town/starter-zone location. Depending on the maturity of your guild you can either allow the members to spread up into the groups themselves, or do it yourselves.
- Avoid maps with worldbosses, dailies and huge farmable meta-events, more crowded = more lagg & longer loading times. If we have Shadow Behemoth daily worldboss or queensdale daily events, that map might not be the best choice.
- If you do a trek with 15 or 30 locations, point out the group locations and claim them for this. But allow the impatient ones to grab the others. Do not force everyone to come to the group locations. Some people live by “time is money, money is short.”
- Do your entire communication via guild chat only, no squad/party and not TS/discord. All those other things might be nice, but you always have a few people who not use them or do not have that certain chat in their tabs. Guildchat is known by everyone, used by everyone and read by everyone. Some people argue, that you disturb people in the guild who not participate the missions though. Well, the missions are a guild-group-activity. There is no better use for that chat than organizing the GMs.
- Only the group leaders will push the buttons. Say that at the start of the trek and repeat several times.
- Never feel bored of explaining the rules/mechanics of the GMs at the beginning. Sometimes you have new members or even new players who are not familiar with the stuff.

Guildmissions require leadership, coordination and a little discipline from the participants. You can do most of them with 5-8 people if you you are well organized. Larger groups require more organization.

Been waiting for a thread like this for some time, thank you! After I watched the power engi video of WP, I was very angry and created three power based builds.

offensive
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlcThqrYbXw8KQ+FLsFFdzP8Pv4GNFPB4IeiBAA-TxRBQBA4CAUk9HinOgAq+DFeAAMSJIZU+RKAKmaB-e
I started my hammer experience with this build. As the above mentioned ones, it works with the core HGH abuse of the Drunken Engineer build. In order to kitten the WP fanboys off, I decided to use the utility goggles. Which, in combination with the rune-set, make up for a furyduration of 2 min+ in combat. It is also a wonderful stunbreak with short cooldown and the toolbelt is nice for fighting bosses solo, especially LS bosses. Friend of mine uses the same build, but rocket boots instead of the goggles.

survival
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlcThqrYlVw8KQ7FLsFFdzP8Pv4GVFPBYIeiBAA-TxRGABQp8DgHAQ36A6Y/B8UC2u6PCcBAIFgZStA-e
Allows a small permanent HP regeneration during the fight. When I am close to death, I either go ranged with the mortar kit or aim to the ground, rapidly press auto-attack and run in circles. It works like the bomb kit, but with motar. You run, hurt and recover health fast. Maintaining the 10+ mightstacks for the Applied Force is no problem for both builds. The Thumper Turret can be used for dealing CCs or as blastfinisher with any of the fields. If you have no use for that, you can either plug in one of the above mentioned gadgets or go for elixir R. Which, in combination with the function gyro, allows you to quick ress even people who manouvered themselves into lava XD. Currently using this build.

The third one was meh and used the thermobaric detonation trait. Still figuring out how to use it with better impact.

Can we have numbers infront of the trek locations, please?

It would make doing them a lot easier, especially for larger groups of participants.

Thanks for reading & have a nice day o/

Swagger.1459:

What will it hurt to have the option of using a secondary main weapon, like every other profession besides ele?

The revenant would have this feature today as well. But ANet allowed the player-base to give feedback mid-development. Horrible idea if you ask me. Brought us one of the most broken class-mechanics ever. In underwater-combat they can swap weapons as well, but only have access to one weapon type. It was a quick decision, because they feared the revenant would not sell well.

Swagger.1459:

Also, maybe you don’t, but ppl swap weapons all the time and have various builds designed around different weapons.

Weaponkits 101. Including the healing kit, we can swap between 6 different skill sets. Other classes have access to 2.

You want to remove a core-mechanic of our class, because weapon-kits are weaker than normal weapons? That is the deal, versatility for power.

Swagger.1459:

Because that’s the hard choice an engi and ele have to make while all other professions have optional access to both… and weapon kits aren’t suitable replacements for engi, and they come at a cost of losing a slot skill in the process.

Again, access to 6 skill sets compared to access to 2 skill sets. This is a class mechanic. Again it is a trade, versatility for power. If you do not want that, don’t use kits. We have that system in all classes. You either go for power or versatility in your utilities. Signet builds vs anything else, for example. Or take the revenant’s genius facet of nature mechanic. We just have access to a greater pool of skills for a greater cost of power, compared to other classses.

The only thing I really agree, we need more weapons to choose from. A wrench/mace for melee would be nice.

The tooltip says 900, but the pistol 1 ends with an explosion (radius 120), so we are at 1020 range, not so far away from your 1050. The explosion can hit up to five targets and cause bleeding. I consider it one of the more powerful auotattacks in the game, speaking of ranged weapons. Looking at the thief, who also has to live with a 900 range of his pistol skills. It is a one-handed weapon.

You list up dragonhunter, ranger, necro to compare with.
=> Dragonhunter:
- Scepter (single handed) 900 range
- Torch (single handed) 400 range
- Staff (two handed) 1200 range
- Longbow (two handed) 1200 range

=> Ranger/Druid:
- Axe (single handed) 900 range
- Shortbow (two handed) 900 range
- Longbow (two handed) 1500 range
- Staff (two handed) 1200 range

=> Necromancer:
- Axe (single handed) 900 range
- Scepter (single handed) 900 range
- Staff (two handed) 1200 range

From a little distance, it appears to me like single handed weapons are set with a standard range of 900 while two handed weapons come up with a standard range of 1200. Do we have a two handed range weapon? The rifle. And it does have 1200 range.

The elexir gun is at 900 indeed. But as it is only a kit and not a real weapon. Kits are always weaker than real weapons, so I guess the 900 range is fine. On the other hand we have our mortar kit with a ridiculous range of 1500. All skills of this kit are aoes and hit up to 5 targets.

Gadgets are not that bad! They are not part of any meta builds, which is the sole reason for most of you to not have a single look at them. Not the meta = non existent. The rocket boots are designed as a leap for distances, not as a devastating attack. I have never seen a ranger/elementalist/necromancer complaining that his speed signet’s active does not deal damage. If you do not like the rocket boots, go for the jump shot of the rifle. It has your demanded 1200 range anyway.

The toss elexir toolbelts work also great as they are. It can be a little tricky to aim them well, but the ground targeting allows us to spread them farer than most buff/cleanse skills of other classes, even multiple directions.

Bombs are for closer range. I have never seen a warrior complaining his hundret blades needs to be ranged, because his targets run away. Root them, stun them, we have tons of CC ski… ah, I forgot, you don’t like gadgets, eh? ^^

I visit this forum once a week, for years now. Most discussions are about:
- PvP
- Meta
- why engineer cannot be like elementalist/warrior/guardian/necromancer/thief/mesmer/revenant/ranger
- all utilities but kits are useless
- all kits but bombs/grenades are useless
- the last update is bs because … [see the three above]

A tiny little % of this boards content are new builds and suggestions. The drunken engineer build thread was one of the best in a long time. It changed my opinion about elexirs and created a base for six or more builds I have created later. They are working, used and liked. Can we have more of these threads and less complains?

Engineer is not easy, I think we all got that point by now. It is not like any of the other classes in the game. It is fun to play, for those who like it. For those who do not, there are 8 more classes to choose from.

First three times I failed. Then I learned on what point I have to start and it gets really easy. There are two edges at that spot (A & B – see picture). If you are too far to the right (B) you will sink into the floor for and inch or two, which ruins every jump. As long as you stand on the left edge, you can even place yourselves an inch or two into mid air, keeping your heigth and perform the jump.

Note: I have to admit, that I do not do dodge jumps. I beleive that every jump in the game is 100% possible with a regular long jump. This one definitely is.

Could we get a fractal of the Battle of Lion’s Arch?

Those who joined the game March 2014 and later, never had a chance to play that episode. We have that sort of cutscene ANet added, but it is not much enlightning for new players. Also we still have recipes which require certain materials which droped in that area. We already have small sections of the war as fractals. The molten facility, the nightmare tower, the atherblade retreat, but the battle of Lion’s Arch is missing.

I do not ask for a way to get back the old currency to purchase lost items from the event vendors! We have tons of lost items in the game, which are now rare on purpose. Everytime people ask about that, the answer is no. It is gone.

But we still have the spinal blades recipes, the blueprints are getting rare on TP now. Farming bladeshards without the forge is sort of a pain and the assault cores, well I heared a rumor of some high tier NM fractal runs. So I guess at least that is possible, somehow. We have other Backpacks tied to living story, Mawdrey in particular. All required episodes are accessible for everyone, still. If you are willing to unlock them for gems.

The battle was so much fun and a great gameplay experience.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day.

I dislike meta-gameplay at all and I do not do PvP. That are the two major reasons why I rarely post on this board.

The engineer is mostly considered a weak, rather uesless joke class with tons of toys and none of them work properly – compared to true dps classes. This grants me the freedom to try out a lot and use plenty of skills&traits which are considered to be useless/weak/buggy. Although I play this class for years now, I find something new nearly every week. More knowledge allows better synergy. The ability of adaption to constantly changing environments and combats is the major reason for me to stick with the class. I enjoy it everyday and it still is my only main.

Dejavu?

Hello there. We had that exact situation not so long ago with dungeons and fractals. Back then we had a small, but annyoing, ammount of people who only looked on a persons AP score. The magical border there was … 4000k or 6000k? We had several discussions on the forums, the same problem. But as dungeons are now outdated, noone cares anymore. With the AP score we had those funny situations when the grinders tried out dungeons/fractals once in a while. They had AP scores of 20k+, but the skill of a 3 weeks newbie. As thrag above me describes, it seems also to be possible to farm LI. So I assume there are also a bunch of guys out there with hillariously high scroe and nearly 0 knowledge/experience. That is the risk when people only focus on raw data.

Was there as solution to the problem? No, ofcourse not. This is a problem created by the players themselves inside their own heads. Raids are still sort of new, so people are hyped and impatient. Time will solve the issue in most cases.

I have not given the raids a real try yet. That elitism stuff is toxic for a community and only leads to conflicts. This is a game, right? If I want stress, I go to work.

Even after the nerf, even as a mostly power based engineer, I still use the flameblast quite often. It works nice to hit enemies twice, good aoe for taging mobs and dealing final blows and if it is not final, the enemies have another burn stack. Damage was cut in half, but it is a lot less annyoing than I expected.

I also have to admit, that I do not use that skill for damage most of the time. We are a combo-class and there are quite a lot of combo-fields out there in combat nowadays. It is actually quite fun to launch the attack, let it pass through a useless poison/lightfield and trigger the blast inside a water-field, near wounded allies or a firefield to buff some might, while I can already be somewhere else. The aiming however is a little confusing, my success rate with this method is barely 60% only :S. But I keep training and one day it may be better.

We consider our guild to be a small one, although we have arround 100 members by now. During the build-up time of the guildhall (0-40) we had ~ 5 active donators for materials/gold for the guildhall. We just liked the idea of a place for the community and each of us had personal goals with the guildhall:
- one guy wanted the pvp-arena
- one guy wanted the guild armor/weapons recipes
- one guy wanted the gathering nodes
- one guy was in for the potions/buffs
- one wanted to build and decorate the huge place

So we discussed a lot how to reach those goals, we helped eachother when we saw a certain upgrade close to completion. And if one of us had access to a quite rare and valuable resource, we contributed those as well. If we sold the stuff and made money out of the materials, each of us could have 2-3 legendaries.

As the others said, people need something to donate for. A mysterious void where you can put in stuff without knowing the results – we already have the mystic forge for that. Make sure your people are aware of the things they benefit from. Tell the PvP/WvWvW players about the potions/tavern-buffs which boost their loot. Make sure the legendary crafters are aware of the gathering-potion and the karma-potion. And tell all of them, how to get max % for all.

The gathering-nodes can be used for all the Heart of Maguuma daily gatherings, also allow your guildmembers to aquire tenebrous/shimering stones to later craft weapons/armor with special skins. This information is critical and if you mention that the gathering nodes include a leather/cotton node, you do get attention for sure.

Create the rank of the decorator in your guild, tell people if they have some ideas they can try out stuff in the guildhall. There are builders in every guild, you just need to find them. Once they see how much/less is possible, they will ask how to get better stuff and find a personal goal worth to donate for. You may also get one volunteer for a scribe, or do it yourself and offer the builders access to better decorations in return of some compensation.

The guildhall might be ultimately yours, but if you want people to use it and donate for it, you have to share it. We own gilded hollow. We have like 3-4 active builders now, still did not run out of decorations and some places became really beatuiful, even with basic decorations. If you have a JP player, he may want to create his own JPs. Give him some space in the guildhall to try things out.

The tour during the first visit of the guildhall is a great idea. We do that as well. But we do not actually ask for certain things. We had times where we worked for certain upgrades and placed an information about what was missing to unlock in the gmotd. But we noticed the results were a lot better, if we took a few minutes with our members and explained how the Treasury and the NPC work. That solved many unasked questions and people with that information simply just check their upgrades of desire and donate directly.

It works, it is a benefit for the group and I do not have to change my build, yet it boosts my damage output. Win Win Win. Also big thanks for that Thread, I totally overread that change in the patchnotes.

I was expecting a very powerful nerf to powerbuilds, especially the FT. There is a not so small part of the community and devs who beleive the FT to be a condition-only-kit.

Still, compared to the previous balances and “purity of purpose,” we escaped the explosion with a broken rib and a scratch in the face. We can still move and fight. We’ll find a way to sustain and improve, as we always do. We are engineers after all ^^.

Motoko.2361:

…
I’m not the only one that hates crafting.
…

That is the reason for your survey?

In my old guild, years ago, I was the boring guy responsible for analysis and surveillance of guild activity and its members. Back then the guildroster did not even display the last online intel. I ran monthly, quarterly and yearly surveys about activity, class/level and crafting disciplines and AP count ofcourse. I did that for a total of ~ 2 years.

The quarterly reports and yearly reports were special and my leaders ordered me to make them look good. Progress, success in leadership, the usual stuff what companies also do. Drawing funny colorful pictures of circles, cakes and skyscrapers which should display how good our guild was.

Here are my conclusions:
- the ammount of people who actually cares about statistics is significantly low. Most people just grab statistics to prove their own prejudices. It is not worth to run a survey. Watching grass grow is more enlightning and less frustrating.
- facts and numbers are flexible. You can draw figures as you please, no matter what the raw data says.
- the raw data needs a polish, always. As it is already old, the instant you work with it.
- prejudices about majorities and minorities are usually false. Back in that time, we had the constant global opinion that the game was flooded by warriors and guardians. The ammount of people actually playing that class was nearly constant and every class was played more or less equally. There were ups and downs of certain classes, but nothing to be worried about.
- the community of a game who actually uses a forum is a minority of the playerbase. So any survey done on a forum will not result in any useful data at all. And that is probably the reason why ANet never runs polls on the forums.
- There is a correlation-effect between AP score and crafting disciplines maxed.
- correlation does not mean causation

tl&dr; statistics are boring and a waste of time. GW2 is a beautiful game with tons of possibilities. If you do not like crafting, just don’t do it. If you need crafting for legendaries or ascended gear, use the gw2crafts.net.

But to answer your question:
- all professions except chef and scribe on 500
- chef 400, scribe 45

I am most greatful with this episode. The map is by far the best of the entire Living Story 3. All maps share a huge attention to detail, lots of work and love. They can and do compare the the original maps, although they use new mechanics. It looks and most importantly feels like a real warzone. The timed events, the buildings and npcs create a magnificent atmosphere. Whenever I have time, I pay the map a visit and I always find something new. The minidungeon is awesome and the hidden source is my new place for relaxing. Excellent job!

The story also creates an astonishing immersion within the first minute and keeps the player bound and attracted. For old explorers the final chapter was a real giggle, especially when the rotation started. That proves me, that you have been far ahead in the future, the entire time. The letters are a nice gift for lore connection, big thank you for that. And also a very big THANKS for granting my wish ^^. I cannot beleive you actually did it. Really enjoyed it. I hope others do/did as well.

I am looking forward to the next episode, but please do not hurry. I still feel that I have not even discovered half. ^^

Our guild tried the leather farm last night. As it was promised as a challenging group content, we entered with a group of 10-12. The first thing I noticed was the massive presence of champions in the upper area and their very quick respawn cycle. We made tons of champion bags within half an hour.

It is basically Halloween labfarm with tougher mobs and loot focused on leather instead of candy corn. The leather loot was nice and it was fun for some time. After a while it gets horribly boring, as you simply walk in circles like … labfarm. Those who enjoy that, may enjoy the leather farm as well.

If your group is made of meta/zerk players, you may need a healer. Luckyly they made the mobs tough enough, so afk farming may never be an issue there. Ofcourse never say never, people in this game are very creative with this stuff.

When I first used gliding, I had that problem as well. For a person who loves JPs, this is a horrible thing. As many of us, I also grew up with good old Jump & Run games on consoles. These games had a feature to extend the jump heigth/distance the longer you hold the jump key. I also used to play the THPS games in my youth, which taught you to keep the jump button always on hold for additional speed. It is very annoying.

The following things helped me to live with the GW2 jumping issue:
- pick a character of your choice, asura if possible <3, and look on it from front. Now jump once and release the button immediately after pressing, check the heigth. Next you jump again but hold the jump button, check the heigth again. Once you have that “aha”-effect, you begin to adjust your jumping-habbits automatically. It will not be perfect at first, but after a few days you will see a huge progress.
- talking about jump distance. Most of the jumps in this game can be done without any speed improvements. That is common knowlege I guess. What I noticed a few weeks ago, most jumps can be done with safe jumps. The mehtod is simple, just press the jump key shortly and use the arrow key while in mid air. Not before or during the jump. That technique is quite useful for some JPs, especially narrow jumps which can be overstept easily. It is quite surprising how many gaps can be crossed with this method, although it looks like the jump distance is a lot shorter.

You will get along with it, but it will take some time and patience.

I totally agree with the others, it is an awesome idea. It can be at a specific spot in every home instance and maybe develop/increase over time? If done with the hero panel, they could just link the books with the specific achievements and allow us to read them by clicking on them.

At the moment I use one of my unused, forgotten characters as a mule for lore-items. It is a temporary solution, but there might come a day I have use for a druid again ^^.

The game did not become any smaller last evening. My huge to-do-list did not vaporize and all of the content we have still works pretty well. We even have an extra day with the lunar year event.

Keeping up the hype-train for every new patch is part of ANets personal decision of advertising this game. It worked out many times without a problem. This time not. It happens, in every company on the world.

Keep up the good work & good luck on solving your problems. It takes as long as it takes.

I am using Sentinel Outfit, which imho suits excellent with the auric weapons.
1 | 2
3 | 4

1 = beige
2 = orange shade
3 = Autumn
4 = mint breeze

I experimented nearly two hours to find that combination. It is still not perfect, but I like it that way.

Smaisteri.9630:

I just don’t want to have a dedicated party of players, I’d like to jump in and out of the game on my own pace and make gold along the way.

I am walking that path for nearly four years now. While I am sure not bathing in gold, I have my personal level of 160g permanently and enough money for smaller projects. Even managed to get a full ascended armor/weaponset within half a year.

First of all I do 3 dailies of my own choice, most of the time I try to to WvWvW-Dailies as well. Once in a while there is Big Spender in the dailies, which allows me to trade my tokens + some short money for cultural armors. That way I can easily enlarge my wardrobe without spending too much gold for skins. After the dailies are done, I have my 2g. Some days it is my only loot ^^.

After the dailies I farm my home instance. I always try to get all nodes I can reach, without visiting TP.

I am a huge fan of jumping puzzles, when I am not too tired, I do at least 10 per day ^^. About two years ago I decided to get some extra loot out of my hobby, so I created a “Treasure Hunter.” It is a thief asura which I only leveled with mapping and reaching waypoints to access chests/JPs. That asura has a level of 28-35, so I get a silver doubloon once in a while. Those sell for 1.4-1.8 g, which is a nice bonus sometimes. However it relies on our dear RNG. Key message here is, find something you like to do in the game and find a way to gain money out of it.

Sometimes I do join a dungeon run or a fractal run, but it is a single run and not a full run. And dungeons, usually story modes. I also do worldbosses, and meta events in bigger maps, depends on my mood and motivation. Out of those I get a lot of blue/green gear, which I salavage into materials and refine. The lootbags I collect and open with my two bag openers. One is my treasure hunter (level 30) and my old treasure hunter (level 50). They open my loot bags and grant me access to other material tiers.

At the moment I refine my materials once per week and see if I can craft a piece of ascended crafting material. Those are still quite expensive and sell for 6-10g each, which is a nice bonus.

When I get an exotic drop, I usually use my BL kits. When I get an Inscription/Insignia I either use it to level my craft-professions 400=>500 or, since I am done with that, I sell them for usually 1-3g, again some bonus loot. Sometimes I get a very pricy rune out of those, which gives additional money.

All my sigils and runes land in a special bank-tab. Once the tab is nearly full and I have stacks of 8-10 of most items, I wait for the mistic forger to appear on the dailies. Then I take my package and gamble at the forge. Most of the time I get trash, but sometimes I get expensive runes/sigils or doubloons, which can be sold for good money ^^.

I also hoard a lot of materials. Hoarding means max 5 stacks of refined materials and max 2 stacks of original materials. Compared to the “play the market”-gurus I am an infidel and a peasant. And stuff I think could be useful some day. I am using my intuition, no black magic or leaks. For example every lunar year event I buy like 5 rare backpieces. I either give them to friends or use them to make good money. Food and buff-items are also collected in stacks. It is a gamble which can be lost. I am still sitting on 8 stacks of scrarlet toop slayer potions XD.

The new maps, ember bay and bitterfrost frontier supply me with nearly infinite karma. So I travel the psna daily and get the mapping reward items. Sometimes the npc-vendors have quite rare recipes to offer. For example yesterday one sold the recipe for the superior sigil of torment, 25k karma. Sounds much, but the recipe is over 7g on TP, so it was a good trade. It is worth to doublecheck every vendor before buying the mapping reward items brain-afk. Anyway I usually wait for the map items till blood-week arrives in FGS. Then I use them all there and get a nice load of T6 blood, giant eyes and other expensive items. Sometimes I do not wait for bloodweek. If I have a project running and need some certain materials, I just wait for a map to have those materials on the list ^^.

At last I have to admit that I do buy gemcards from my money I earn in RL, 2-4 per year. It is a wonderful game and I enjoy it for 4+ years by now. We get so many updates for free. There is no monthly fee to pay … and some people still complain that they paid too much for the game itself >_>. What I use my gemcards for? Convenience and Fashion ^^.

tl&dr; It is possible. The gap between between you and a farmer is huge. But that does not mean you are poor. Just use your head ^^. sorry for the long answer

I’m using a combination of Soldier/Commander stats on my engineer. Jugg/ mass momentum with flamethrower work excellent, grant tons of might stacks and longer uptime of quickness and two stacks of stability (instead of one). Even the weak-considered Flamethrower autoattack does decent damage with this. It is not meta, but a lot of fun ^^.

Everytime I notice another Indiana Jones (1-3) reference. When I was a kid, I always dreamed of exploring ancient tombs, temples and dungeons just like that character in the movies. When I enter these places in GW2 my eyes begin to glow and when I actually notice a direct reference to the movies, I smile and my child-self laughs of joy.

The attention to detail in this game is mindblowing. I can travel the same locations for years and always find new stuff. I even found the holy grail, just a few days ago *_*