Guild Wars 2

I’m sure this has been said a thousand times before, but I’m disappointed with the pricing of HoT. If it was originally $20 for the base expansion or $30 with an additional character slot, I would have bought 4 copies of it pre-release. If it would have been $30, or $40 with an additional character slot, I would have bought 2 copies after release.

However, I don’t own HoT yet, because I didn’t think it was worth the $50 price tag, which is about what I paid for the original entire game.

As this is the 6 month anniversary of the HoT release, I figured they might lower the price by $10 or $20, but… they didn’t. If it would have gone down to $30, or $40 with an additional character slot, I would have bought one copy this weekend.

I’m not here to hate on GW2 or the Dev team. I like the game and I was very impressed with the Spring Update. It’s a great example of under promise and over deliver. Even without owning HoT, I feel like I got a lot of benefit from the Spring Update.

However, I think the pricing of HoT is hurting the overall GW2 community. Keeping the entry price to the new content so high discourages new and returning players from enjoying that new content.

I understand that it’s a business, and they need to make money. So here’s the crux of the issue:
I’ve spent a lot on Gems since I bought GW2. I have a decent job and more money than time, so ArenaNet has gotten far, far more money from me via the gem store than the original price of the game, but not everyone has that option. My suggestion is to make the entry price into the new content cheaper, and let the players decide if they want to spend additional money as needed for gem store items.

I have purchased gems to convert to gold when I wanted to craft more Ascended gear, since I don’t have time to farm the mats, run dungeons frequently, etc. Recently though, I’ve stopped that practice, as I don’t have the new expansion, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to get cheaper anytime soon.

At this point, I feel far enough behind now that I may just quit, rather than keep playing another 6 months waiting for a price drop. If there are many more like me, ArenaNet is missing out on a lot of new and returning players (and therefore revenue) by asking a lot for HoT up front, rather than less up front and allowing players to choose to spend additional money on gem store if they want to.

Am I alone in this opinion? Or are there a lot more out there who are thinking something similar?

If an enemy has stability, and you hit them with a single Diversion shatter while having the Shattered Concentration (Domination VII) trait, will it strip the Stability first and then Daze them? Or will the Stability negate the Daze, and then get stripped by the Shattered Concentration trait?

@Guanglai Kangyi

Is this with Berserkers gear? Or some power/condi hybrid?

As a Guardian, I wish I liked sword, but I don’t. As a Mesmer, I love sword, but had trouble dealing with the squishiness of the class. So this is a build I came up with wanting to use Sword primarily and stay in the fight, rather than going ranged. Key goals are survivability and mobility, while still doing respectable damage. I don’t normally run Deceptive Evasion, so phantasms are the main illusions in the fight most of the time. This isn’t a min/max build to be sure; its purpose is to have a fun play style with the class.

Weapons are normally Sword/Sword and Sword/x, although if I know it’s really a ranged fight I’ll break down and use Sword/Pistol and Greatsword.

Armor is all Berserker with Traveler Runes for PvE. I’m still working on the WvW suit, so I’m not sure where the sweet spot is yet (adding some Knights and Valkyrie in), but the Traveler Runes are there to stay.

Build link:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQRAsc8dnsISlaWoGmpB3aIJMfo3nUE9lj+A2Lpg34G-zgCBYfCiYLJjIAkKIQZmFRjtMsIasqFYqSLqW5CwbgRrOAACAzMQKgIGDA-e

The core build is 0/15/15/15/15 with 10 points left for personal preference. I usually run 0/20/15/20/15, as shown in the build link.

Domination 0
Dueling 15 10 (IV Blade Training) – I like Swords. If taking 20 points in dueling I’ll also take II or IX
Chaos 15 10 (IV Illusionary Defense)
Inspiration 10 (V Persisting Images or II Glamour mastery if you prefer that)
Illusions 10 (III Compounding Power)

You have 10 trait points left, which you could get two 20 point traits or a single 25 point trait. You could also get the 10 point Illusion damage buff in Domination. If Phantasmal Haste (Illusions X) worked properly, I would probably put 5 points there to take that… but last I heard it’s still broken for most of our phantasms. Come to think of it… seems like half our phantasms are broken…so don’t send them to do a job you can do yourself. :-)?

Utility skills:
For healing I usually use the Signet of the Ether as I expect to have illusions up most of the time. This will give passive healing from both the Signet and the Phantasmal Healing trait. Between that and the iDefender, survivability goes way up. I don’t use the Signet active unless things are really bad, since the passive heals you would lose during cool down are much more than the active heals for. If conditions are likely to be a major issue, I’ll take Mender’s Purity instead and use the healing Mantra.

For WvW I’ll probably switch to Mirror or Ether Feast, but I haven’t run this in WvW yet, as I’m still collecting armor.

Normally I’ll have iDefender as one slot skill, with either iDisenchanter or the cleansing Mantra for handling conditions. The last one is personal preference/need depending on the situation. I usually take Mass Invis for the Elite skill, because I only think to use my Elite when things are going very poorly.

Any comments/suggestions are welcome.

IGN: Taejmir
Server: Henge of Denravi
Playstyle: PvE and WvW. Looking into sPvP, but haven’t started yet.
Role: Scholar
Playtime: 7:00pm-11:00pm Pacific time

If so… how broken are we?

I just started playing my Mesmer more frequently (PvE and WvW), and have been looking into PvP as well… but I’m getting concerned about the bugs I’ve seen both in game and on the forums. I have encountered the following in the past couple days.

1. iWarden bug – just stands there doing nothing
2. iDefender bug – just stands there instead of attacking… perhaps a pathing issue?
3. iDuelist bug – Targets something completely different than what I’m targeting, usually out of my field of view.
4. DE bug – clones target something other than my target, even ambient creatures… which they insta-kill and then despawn. Makes using them for shatters impossible.

It seems like the phantasm issues happen more often when summoning them immediately after weapon swap, but that may just be my perception.
DE issues seem totally random… sometimes they work as expected, sometimes not.

In reading the forums there appear to be several other issues that I haven’t experienced yet.

Are the devs aware of these issues? I haven’t seen much about it in the bug forum.

Also, any suggestions on free/cheap recording software so I can document these issues better?

Anet… please fix my Mesmer!

I am also a recent convert to Zerk builds on guardian. I spent most of my play time using tanky/healy builds (Hammer and Mace/Shield) which allowed me to roll through open world PvE content pretty much AFK.

When I first tried a zerker build, I died too fast and gave up quickly. I also like WvW (zerk build to glassy for that) but I kept going back to it for PVE because the damage they do is insane.

The main thing I had to get used to is having much better situational awareness. As a “healy/tank” I can just stand there and take it, and eventually stuff dies. That won’t really work in dungeons anyway, and definitely not as a zerk build.

I improved a lot by just fighting stuff in open world and working toward harder mobs and groups of mobs. Keep them blinded, and they don’t hit you. Greatsword and Sword/Focus gives you a blind on each weapon set, plus the one from VoJ and the (Radiance 5 trait), which is renewed every time something dies (Radiance 15 trait). With multiple mobs, you can use the GS pull to get stuff all together, and then blind it all at once.

Obal’s guide is great. Just follow the advice there and practice, practice, practice :-)

I’m still learning myself, but as a fellow guardian I’d encourage you to stick with it. In the end I think you’ll be quite happy.