Guild Wars 2

Wow, I actually really like the new additions.
Hunter’s verdict in particular was going to save me a lot of weapon swapping to use GS 5 to pull enemies into traps, and I think I can live without 25% passive movement now because now I have an innate way to do so. The traps themselves got the attention I was hoping for and I can’t wait to get my hands on the new versions. (I’ve always loved the concept of being a trapper)

However,
My criticism remains with Purification. Please consider moving the regeneration to the activation rather than the trigger so the guardian has a little more of a guaranteed return from the ability.

Regeneration on the trigger is putting even more weight on— what in my opinion is— the wrong side of the ability. It’s just more would-be healing you need to force an enemy into the trap to receive. I could understand if condi removal or conversion was on the trigger; for that kind of perk to require a bit more effort from the player. But regen on the trigger doesn’t at all address the reliability issue that’s likely going to keep me and most other guardians from ever slotting this ability over more reliable options.

Other than that, keep it up, I like where this is all going!

Liking where the DH is going, especially the longbow, but there are a few things that feel a little off about it.

NEW VIRTUES
I really like them, and I really do feel like they add something new and cool to the profession, but the activation times take some getting used to. Wings of Resolve in particular feels a bit sluggish, but I feel like that’s more something to get used to rather than something that needs to get fixed.

TRAPS
feel lacking. Compared to other abilities there’s a stronger need for positioning and preparation and I feel like they should have a more impact when the fire off because of it. Especially so given that they’re not ground targeted and the guardian isn’t known for it’s mobility, which can make getting into position for placement for these skill feel like a chore.

PURIFICATION
doesn’t feel competitive for the heal slot. The initial heal is very small, and getting the full heal is made all the more awkward and risky by the fact that it’s deployed at your location and is dependent on an enemy to trigger, whether they don’t set it off, kill you before they do, or you have to rush them to use it point blank. It just doesn’t seem worthwhile when compared to the healing and utility of other options.

I think it could be made a more attractive option by:

• having the triggered heal also remove or convert some conditions.
• during the trap’s arming time, have the skill flip to an immediate lesser heal that consumes the trap without triggering any of it’s additional effects.

PROCESSION OF BLADES
in particular doesn’t feel like a very attractive option for a utility slot when compared against other guardian skills. It’s just too easy to get out of and Daredevils cartwheel through the thing to shed all their conditions. Maybe consider having it pulse retaliation or might and fury to nearby allies for more support function, and so it’s still serving a purpose when evaded.

LIGHT AURA
was something that I was hoping we’d see more of from the guardian. like maybe a trait that grants it to nearby allies on when certain select traps trigger to make them more desirable as group utilities.

25% PASSIVE MOVEMENT SPEED
I really want to see this somewhere, and I think we actually need it now to make traps more usable. For one I’m just so tired of always having to waste a utility on retreat just to keep up. For second, now that we have traps, which require poisoning and placement, lacking a reliable source of mobility and frumping around the battlefield to place them just adds to the awkwardness of having them bundled in an elite spec built around using a ranged weapon.

Other than that, I’m really liking the Dragonhunter quite a bit, and I’m leaning toward it as my new main for HoT (between Daredevil and Scrapper) and can’t wait to see it at release whether this stuff gets addressed or not.

And a quick nod to those responsible for all the new skill visuals and audio. Absolutely loving it.

I kind of hoped they’d set us up with an elite that acted as a fifth attunement. Just call it ‘Primal’ or something and have it themed of raw and possible unstable arcane powers. It could act like any other attunement, just probably with a longer CD after you switch out of it and would probably have the same skills regardless of equipped weapons to make things simpler.

But there’s a ton of stuff they could potentially do with something like that to really make it interesting. Maybe even make it a little risky to stay in it too long, like maybe a building debuff that increases the percentage of damage you take that clears when you exit. That way people won’t just sit in it, they’ll drop it, wreck up the place for as long as they’re willing to push it, then drop out. Maybe even have a finale PBAoE explosion that damages enemies based off how high you pushed it.

I seriously might like high risk play more than most people though.

I always thought if there was an arcane attunement it would function as an elite skill, shifting you out of the standard attunements for access to a single more powerful one, independent of equipped weaponry, to tap into the primal, an possible unstable, arcane energy for a short duration.

Hey folks, this is something I just started working on. I milked all I could out of making myself some exotic gear and discovering all the 400 skill potion recipes but that was only about enough to land me at 430, and my goal is to get to at least 450 so I can start on the one-a-day combines for the ascended ingots and wood.

So first, from here on out would it be better to try and get as much discovery xp as possible (which only seems to ever come out to 1 skill point at this level) or grind out exotics with the easier to acquire/farm mats?

Further what exotics should I be making if I want to resell them to recoup some expenses? My build uses mostly berserker stuff but are there any others that folks are always needing? Or would it be better to just smash them down for ectos (I have a few BL salvage kits in my bank) or throw them into the mystic forge and play that lottery?

Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated, I’m kind of new to the higher level crafting stuff.

I’ll take a whack at this:
Fire:
These feel like they need the most work.
Scrap Flame Wall: and bring back the pre-release skill, Backdraft as our #5 skill and make it ground targeted. For those that don’t want to click the link it pulls enemies into an area and burns them. They could even make the damage component come from the pull but have the burning component come from a fire field like the current flame wall effect so we don’t lose a field, though I’d be willing to sacrifice it but I can’t speak for all. (Engineer had a similar skill on flamethrower that was also scrapped)
Fire Shield: Change to our #4 skill. Reduce the CD and have it grant retaliation as other have suggested or keep the current cooldown and give it protection. It just seems a little off that any class with a reliable leap finisher can get the same exact effect as a bonus, while it costs me a 40 second CD, and our having an extremely limited access to leaps feels weird to justify it when aura’s are kind of an ele class mechanic. The CD just seems too much for what it currently is.

Water:
Freezing Gust: This skill is completely out of line with other ranged skills that chill, having a longer cooldown and while having less effect, and it makes the skill feel unfinished by comparison. Freezing Gust is 25 second CD for 3 seconds of chill compared to
Spinal Shivers 20s CD, more damage damage, chills for longer, and strips boons and deals additional damage for it
Chilblains 20s CD, more damage, longer chill, leaves behind an AoE poison field.
Winter’s Bite More damage + weakness from pet attack. Only a 10 second cooldown.
So Freezing Gust actually feels pretty pathetic by comparison. Either have it provide some additional form of personal or group support, or increase the damage and give it an AoE radius with a target cap (up to x players), and probably a longer chill duration.
Comet: I actually like this skill as it is for the most part.

Air
Swirling Winds: <3 very yes.
Gale: Reduce cooldown maybe to 40s. I get that it’s the only real ‘ranged’ knockdown in the game but 50s feels too steep.

Earth:
I’m actually perfectly fine with the earth skills as they are.

I thought leveling an ele was a blast, but I guess it depends on what you consider fun. If you just want an easy experience dropkicking your way through content it’s probably not going to be the way to go. But if you like a bit more of a challenge, ele can be a lot of fun. To me it just kept me so much more engaged. Before ele I leveled an engi and a guardian. I’ve tried ele before but never really stuck with it for various reason I won’t get into besides saying a lot of it having to do with perception, and this time I ignored a lot of the BS that held me back before.

I pretty much did most of 1-80 with the staff, switching up to D/D for a few spots. (Not a scepter fan, just don’t find it fun, but forcing myself to use it now to at least be comfortable with it) I just found staff made it all much easier just because of the wealth of control options at your disposal on top of the healing from water staff, I felt pretty durable, albeit with a much more active defense than my engi or guardian.

I mostly ran with Ether renewal, arcane blast and wave, and then signet of air, which I would occasionally switch out for armor of earth or arcane shield if I needed more defense than mobility, and then tornado as my elite. And I leveled into a 30/0/0/20/20 which I’m still using for the time being, and doing okay with.

Reading the forums I was apparently ‘not doing it right,’ but that was news to me. I enjoyed it and didn’t get frustrated and that all that I really care about. The only real negative I can think of from leveling was not trying out knight’s gear sooner.

It still opens up. The problem it is doesn’t stay open for very long. People tend to not stick around to defend it an hour or two later when the events start where you can potentially lose control. IMO your best bet is to hang out in SoD and wait for people to get the event chain going rather than trying to catch a server that just so happens to be open for it’s brief window and getting over to it.

Never mind. Learned the song on a different character.

Ranger or Necromancer would probably get the job done, and I personally like Engineer a lot.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I’m a little curious about aura sharing. It seems like it could be useful with the earth trait that gives it protection, but are they really that useful with their cool downs being what they are? Up until now I’ve been using them more as emergency buttons or a might builder in the case of fire shield, so it feels a little strange to create a build around them, but then I haven’t been in many situations where it might be worth trying quite yet.

Also, what about Persisting Flames? I know it’s a deep investment in fire, but AoE Fury on fire busts sounds kind of awesome, and longer fire fields doesn’t sound too bad either.

Leuca.5732:

Going below 20 Arcana is not really optimal, but I guess you can forgo EA if you’re not really looking to be competitive. My first question would be what it is about the trait that you don’t like, because it’s such an amazing multi-tasker.

That aside, I’d also have at least 15 in Water to give yourself some sustain. From there it really depends on what you’re going for. What are you aiming to do with the build?

Mostly I just don’t like dodging when I don’t have to. I still rely heavily on dodging to not die so wasting endurance to produce an effect I don’t find particularly useful just makes the trait feel wasted. When I dodge away things are rarely in range and when I dodge into things to hit with the effects my life-span become significantly shorter. The earth burst feels like the only one that’s really useful anyway, and only because it’s a blast finisher. I get the importance of building might, my main is an HGH engineer, and it’s cool that blasting like that can share the fun, but doing so usually leaves me feeling like I’m in an awkward situations afterward because I wasted a lot of endurance and CDs to do it. Beyond that I just feel like I’m not getting the mileage out of it as a grandmaster trait.

As far as what I’m hoping to do, I don’t really have a set plan. I’d like to start running dungeons but I don’t have a set ‘role’ in mind. I’ve been a fan of staff for events thanks to the water fields and control effects, but it probably won’t being the damage people are expecting for that sort of thing.

FrownyClown.8402:

elemental surge works really well in spvp

I thought about it but from what I’ve read and what little I’ve seen trying it out it might not be the best option for PvE and WvW.

I’ve been leveling up my ele and it’s on the homestretch to 80 so I’m trying to look at what type of builds I want to be running. I’ve noticed a lot of the ele builds use evasive arcana but I’ve just found that I really don’t like that particular trait.

So are there any decent builds that forego taking Evasive Aracana? My foreseeable future is going to be PvE and WvW content, so I don’t really need the top tier competitive builds.

EDIT: If it helps my preferred weapons are Staff and D/D or D/F. Tried really hard to like scepter, but never quite feels right.

I still can’t believe how they put it on the live stream. It basically amounted to: ’ you picked the wrong race to play.’

Armor doesn’t fit charr well. A good number of people don’t play charr because of it. Making it look better takes low priority because the majority play human. So they won’t fix the armor that is causing less people to play charr…

So if that’s how the prioritize what they work on am I doubly at the bottom of the list because I’m an engineer too? One of the least played classes.

Are charr always going to get the short end in future development too because they have to cater to a majority? Leaving charr players always waiting for ‘when they have time.’ Well when they’re always working on new stuff, designed to fit humans well, I don’t see that happening now that I know that’s how they prioritize.

I rarely get angry at the development decision in the games I play, but this feels like one of those times. I just honestly can’t tell if I’m more upset or crushingly disappointed knowing I’m always going to be the lowest priority.

Well, here’s to another year of cultural armor.

Yeah saw that on the Twitch stream as well. Pretty frustrating.

The problem there is that if you ask most people why they don’t play charr they’ll usually cite them looking bad in the various armors.

So the same thing that’s making people not want to play the race is the same thing that’s making the improvement a low priority.

Wonderful logic there. Guess they’ll never have to fix it then, because something else will always be a higher priority if that’s how they go by it.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I’m probably going to stick with my engi since it’s already nice and leveled up. Little frustrating whit the randomness of some of the elixir effects when thrown, but at least every gets some might and loses a condition due to the traits I have. That’s something right ? Also tried a the trait that makes thrown elixirs strip a boon, which has helped on enemies that use retaliation.

The ele is proving to be a little problematic as I near lvl 60, little too squishy and can’t really seem to squeeze enough damage to keep pace. So I’ll probably back burn that for now as entertaining as it was during the last living story stage’s events.

Though this has made me look more into necro now. Played a bit with it in the mists and it actually seems pretty okay. Think I’ve been turned off from the class all this time by the aesthetic and combat noises but I can maybe see it working out. I’m particularly curious about using death shroud for support, like the traits that heal allies when using Life Transfer or leaving death shroud.

Though looking at the support options now I’m seriously considering forcing myself to level my guardian and hope I don’t burn out on it, since they seem to have some nifty tools for outright preventing damage rather than mitigating it, and a proactive approach could be a lot of fun.

I did actually try a thief. Got into the 70s before I deleted it to reuse the name for my engi. The support build I wanted to try was poison share but the more I looked into it the more I felt like it wasn’t the way I wanted to go because of the long 45-second cooldowns on every poison =/. Though the new torment poison looks like it might be fun. I’ll probably restart one of these but I’m not sure how much effort I’ll put into the support angle.

Howdy folks,

I’m kind of wondering about the support capabilities of the classes. My main is an engineer and I’ve been having a lot of fun there since I’ve returned to the game, but in this last stage of the living story I used the Crowned Pavilion arena and events to get some levels on my elementalist. I was only in my 30s so I didn’t have many traits and focused on doing some support stuff and was fairly impressed with what I was actually able to pull off, and I had a lot more fun doing it that I thought I would.

So I guess what I’m asking is what classes offer the better support options? And how do they stack up when they’re all leveled up and rounded out?

Since I already have my engineer leveled up I’m trying to look into that. Elixir gun looks like it’ll have its uses in this department with condition removal, but its 5 skill doesn’t seem have much impact.

With Elementalist I only got a glimpse and I was upscaled pretty significantly, but was impressed with what I saw, especially being able to detonate my own fields with ease. Little concerned about the damage side of the class though. (run HGH on my engi)

I also have a mid-level guardian, but there are so bloody many of them running around (probably with good reason though) and I always seem to get a little bored after getting a few levels and wander off to something else. Fond of the hammer though.

So can anyone give some info on these classes or any others to consider if I want to be particularly helpful to groups?

In firearms I have hair trigger and infused precision to trigger invigorating speed down in alchemy. If I go 30 firearms I’ll probably switch between modified ammunition and coated bullets depending on the situation.

The gear I have right now is Rabid armor with carrion gems. Not sure why I mixed them that way. I also have a full suit of berserker I’m not currently using I can always swap out if I want to try rifle. I had a lot of Karma saved up.

haven’t really looked into runes and such yet. Since I’m running HGH I’ll probably look for things that make might better or happen more frequently.

Thanks. Good to know about the % bonuses, the game wasn’t really clear on that one.

Trying to avoid grenades focused builds really. Not bad, but not my thing. Bomb kit has good offerings, but my favorite at the moment is the elixir gun, so I’m probably going to work that in.

Not sure if I’ll go for speedy kits. I’m currently using infused precision and invigorating speed to keep me moving in combat, and I can sort of get by chugging Elixir B and using swapping to medkit for stimulates while I travel, but I can definitely see the value of not doing that slightly ridiculous dance, especially since it would free me up to take coated bullets for shot piercing. I’ll have to try it out, luckily re-traiting is cheap.

Hey, I’m trying to work out my build, for PvE and maybe some WvW, and I’m kind of between two traits and am hoping someone who’s more familiar with the class or knows their math can clarify as I don’t have a tone of experience with lvl 80 build crafting.

Basically I’m going for a P/P HGH type build, currently at 10/20/0/30/0 and I’m stick with what to do for those last 10 points.

I’m between going 20 into explosives to pick up Enhanced Performance for the 3 extra stacks of might on my heal skill, or going 30 into firearms for Target the Maimed for 5% more damage to bleeding targets (which I figure will have constant uptime from pistol 1) and give the last major trait to flex between modified ammunition or coated bullets.

So I guess I’m trying to figure out how the 3 stacks of might and the 100 power from the traits in explosive compare to a flat 5% damage increase I’d get from Target the Maimed, and if that 5% has any quirks to it (like does it only effect direct damage? Or Direct and conditions?)

Anyway if anyone can help me out with this, I’d really appreciate it.

I’m pretty torn between these two classes and need some advice and information so I can settle on one, maybe even restart it and learn it proper. I’ve played both enough to know I enjoy them, but I want to try and focus on just one. Dividing myself too much between multiple characters usually ends up leaving me feeling disconnected and taking extended breaks from the game, and kept me from breaking into a lot of the content available because I was always screwing around with alts or on a break. There are a few things I’d just like some info on before I commit to one or the other.

-How welcome are engineers and thieves in PvE content?
I’d like to be able to reliably participate in dungeons and such, but the one time I tried getting into a dungeon group for the arrah story mode at the end of the personal quest I got dropped for a guardian. =/ That led me to rolling a mesmer, guardian, and warrior but didn’t enjoy any of them and resulted in one of those aforementioned breaks from the game. Not sure what’s changed since then. Sounds like the upcoming LFG system will help, but I’d prefer to be seen as a liability because I’m bad, not because of what class I like.

-Is it possible to play an effective engineer, or put even put out respectable damage without being overly kit dependent?
I like kits, especially bomb and elixir gun. I just don’t like having three at once, but that seems to be the way of most videos I’ve seen, and that makes me feel like I’m trying to play high APM Starcraft, which I’m bad at. It just always feels like others are seriously out damaging me during any events, but that could just be me.

-Is it possible to play a support oriented thief for PvE or PvP without making my damage output a joke?
I looked into a poison share build, but I’ve heard you have to sacrifice a lot of damage traits to make that work, and the long poison cool downs make it a bit lackluster. I like the addition of torment but it doesn’t feel like that’ll pull the weight.

Anyway, I’d appreciate any info or advice or tips anyone can offer here. Really hoping to get back into the game soon.

Thanks for all the advice. Looking into it I think I’ll give thief a shot since that seems to be one of the most recommended. I tried a mesmer before, and while I didn’t hate it, i did sort of lose interest and the whole shatter mechanic really didn’t click with me. Plus there’s a chance I’ll get a little bit of hit and run gameplay out of it which is a bit of what I’m looking for.

Comeing back to the game after a hiatus and want to start from zero on a new character. I’m mostly looking for something with good mobility and evasiveness, maybe even a touch of CC to compliment. It can die quick when it gets hit, I like the idea of actively avoiding damage better than soaking.

My first character was an engineer so I’m kind of leaning toward something with a bit of melee or close range capability.

Any suggestions?

Okay, great to know it gets better. I really didn’t think I’d like the class, but I’m really digging it despite the current hardship (and an overabundance of purple butterflies that make me question what was in those brownies)

And I appricate the advice on the illusions but for now these things seem to lack any and all survival instinct to the point where even when I get agro before I start bringing out the boys, they seem to go out of their way to put themselves in position to eat the next range attack or sit right in the sweep of enemy melee directed at me, so at this point I’ve been kind of single-shattering them almost the instant they’re summoned, and even then it seems there’s a reasonable chance they’ll get one-shot before they fire off. So it’s a little goofy right now.

I recently came back to GW2 after a short break and found I really didn’t feel like playing the characters I leveled before (Engineer lvl 80, Elementalist lvl 60) and so after checking out some skills and traits I started a mesmer because it was one of the only classes I haven’t tried yet and seemed more interesting than my preconceptions led me to believe.

I’m still pretty low, 15-20 range, but leveling is pretty rough so far. My illusions ususally die in one hit, so I can’t ever really build up a good shatter or get my phantasms to really produce any real damage, and the lack of AoE makes fights against multiple enemies pretty hectic. No matter what weapons I use, I keep running into these out of endurance, everything on cooldown situations because I can’t kill the thing fast enough. I’m probably just more used to a more aggressive play style. But after all is said and done I’m still having fun with it, and I’m okay with a harsh leveling experience but if it keeps this pace into the higher levels or gets worse… I dunno.

Does it ever get better? I’m kind of hoping that traits just play more heavily into mesmer than other classes.

Yeah pretty much what’s been said. I just recently hit 80 as well and found that I kind of had to pick one or two aspects of the game that were most important to me, ankittenrying to make a build around that.

I mostly want to finish PvE content first, and then break into some WvW, so I went with a 10/30/0/30/0 build that’s mostly dual pistols and elixirs with a kit. I figure can switch between pistols/conditions, flamethrower, and elixir gun support builds pretty easily, so hopefully when I start doing dungeons I won’t get laughed out of them, and I don’t think people really care in WvW, but I probably wouldn’t set foot in sPvP with it until I’m more comfortable with the class overall so I know what the hell I’m doing.

Not sure if it granted 2 in some earlier patch, haven’t had HGH for that long, but prior to this latest one it only granted 1 stack.

However, I seem to remember certain elixir gun skills, the toolbelt skill healing mist in particular used to give a HGH might stack, being flagged as Elixir skills. But not any longer after the patch. I could just be mistaken and have gotten the might stack from somewhere else, but I was fairly sure it came from the E-gun skills.

So I leveled up my engi pretty much solo, and just hit 80 before I even really got into the max level areas. Now that I’m there I figure I’ll start trying to do dungeons, never even touched story modes yet. Maybe eventually get into WvW, but right now PvE is my main concern.

The build I leveled into and has been working out for me thus far is 10/30/0/30/0, because I mostly focused traits I could swap around to compliment my guns, elixirs which I found to be the more useful utilities, and my preferred kits which were flamethrower and elixir gun. That’s what I’m used to so I’m trying to stick with something loosely in that neighborhood that would be useful for someone just getting into dungeons.

My stats are currently all over the place because I pretty much used whatever dropped or was cheap and seemed to have the stats to help me either kill stuff or not die. It’s something like two pieces of berserker, two of carrion, two of knight, and two carrion pistols from 10-15 levels ago, so I’m going to replace it with some basic lvl 80 stuff, but have no real idea what stats to prioritize, because I haven’t really figured out what build to run. Elixers and Pistols work out pretty well but I don’t see the group utility beyond throwing elixirs for condition clensing.

Anyone have any suggestions? Most of the stuff on builds I can find have a few like mine but seem to focus mostly on PvP so I’m not sure how they’d play out in, or what use they’d be to a dungeon group.

That grow that way so Asura can have handle-bars when they ride on our shoulders Master Blaster style.

My favorites are the Dover Coat (Cultural T1) The Inquest Coat, The dualist coat (The first “leather” set in the PvP locker, it’s the first set under medium armor) and the priory coat looks awsome as well if you happen to belong to that order. But not sure what aesthetic you’re looking for so they might not go with your other pieces

They’re not nerfing AoE YET. The part of the stream I watched they said they’re still collecting data and this was a long term thing. If they’re still collecting data, and playing with ideas on how to do it, that means they aren’t even anywhere near testing an AoE damage reduction.

For THIS patch, Engineer might get buffed or at least not messed with.

As for the AoE thing, you can’t really consider it a class nerf if it’s going to happen to every class. They also said that they’re going to buff classes with low single target damage. I’m pretty sure that’s us, so personally I’d rather be HAPPY about that worry about an AoE damage jack that’s going to happen to everyone across the board.

The utlity skill is called hidden pistol. You fire one shot from a barrel hidden in the pistol’s grip and jump backward.
The toolbelt skill is called hidden pistols (plural) where you have one in each hand and fire a barrage from the hidden grip barrels. It’s basically a weaker version of thief P/P dual skill.

But traits generally don’t effect racial skills. A warrior or guardian’s shout traits for example don’t effect the charr racial shout, because if you notice the tooltip it’s not classifed as a shout like your class based shouts are. If any racial skill is getting trait boosts it’s likely a bug.

Anyway to see all the toolbelt abilities go here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Racial_skills
Click on the skill you’re curious about and the toolbelt skill will be listed in the information box on the right side of the screen with a link.

I love the charr cubs in Dissia. They’re creeped out by the disembodied singing and assume their friend/bandmate Anya ran scared, meanwhile she’s the one humming while she tends to her secret strawberry patch at the other end of the brief jumping puzzle.

Also yeah, the Crush warband are awsome.
“RAWR!”
“What are you doing?”
“Praciticing my roar.”
“Oh… I thought you were going to throw up.”

One of your problems might largely be that soloing is kind of dull on any class.

I play elementalist and guardian.

Yeah people complain about the ele, but most are just upset it’s not a glass cannon WoW style mage, or ended up being too dependent on one particular build that anyone could have figured was going to get fixed in the first place. Traits are a little all over the place but I’ve always enjoyed playing it, and can make it work. I like the challange of the class, it feel like every button you press matters, but if you’re the type that gets hung up because it feels like everyone else is having it better than you, you might want something else.

The guardian is only ‘spin 2 win’ in solo play mostly. I love being able to protect my teammates with walls, wards, reflections and such to keep enemies away from them. Throwing out boons like they’re candy is quite nice too. I feel like my presence makes a difference.

I played Thief to 50 but got bored of it. I felt like every fight came down to spamming the same move until the thing died, and doing anything else was wasted iniative. It’s fun in small doses but nothing I wanted to dedicate myself to primarily. I imagine there’s more of a payoff in PvP but PvE was dullsville for me with this one.

Can’t really give you too much advice on the others, since I haven’t spent too much time with them.

I honestly think add-ons do more harm than good. I mean in WoW there were a few that were kind of helpful but most of them took so much away from the game.

If there was something you couldn’t do, there was no incentive to get better, you just downloaded the add-on for it. Then the players who could do it already wonder why they’re busting their hump when this other guy’s setup pretty much does the work for him, so they get it too. Ultimately the player experience is reduced to a Pavlovian response of pressing buttons to various stimuli and triggers while fixating on health bars, or worse, DPS meters, and the game itself gets buried underneath them. Suddenly, you’re playing the add-on more than the actual game, and worse people get too dependent on them to the point of not being able to function come patch day when they all break.

I really hope that never happens here. I’ll cut myself off from the internet and go luddite before I look at another healbot interface or optimal resource gathering path.

That was a combo. Notice how many moves are listed as either combo fields or combo finishers. Using a combo finisher in a combo field results in a bonus effect, in the case of firing arrows, projectile finishers, through a fire field the arrows then cause burning to their target.

Pretty much just shoot your arrows through any fire field created by another player. You can also create your own fire field with the utlity skill ‘flame trap’ but this is going to be a bit impractical to do solo just because of how traps work.

Ray of Judgement can bounce to you/allies and give regen, and also procing AH. Shield of Wrath blocks 3 hits, each gives might which also procs AH. Vigor in crits which are more likely since the final attack in the chain is 3 seperate hits so better chance of rapid crits..

At least that’s what I can figure.

AuldWolf.7598:

Speak for yourself, Hyena.

I did speak for myself. Hence the use of the personal pronoun, “I.”

And I haven’t played EQII in a while, but I played for the first two years after launch and to my recollection the armor stretching to the various body types was pretty terrible. What I remember of it is that every piece of armor, without exception, was maniupulated to fit your character’s wireframe. Textures were stretched terribly on the torso of the ogres, iksar males, and trolls while looking overly stretched horizontally on dwarves, and did nothing to compensate for the digitigrade stance of the ratonga, making their footwear look like some bizzare pair booties.

But I guess they had time to work on that with the addition of other races with abnormal body structure. If it ever reached a stage of the armor stretching being considered an example to follow, it must have happened after I stopped playing, meaning they had a few years to get their stuff together.

Guild Wars 2 is just 3 months old… just sayin’ they might have bigger priorities at the moment. And once again speaking for myself, In my book the fact that they bothered to adapt a few leg and boot models right from the get-go puts them ahead of the game by comparison.

Yeah that’s vengence. If you don’t believe you’re hitting down 3, take off your armor, find something to beat the crap out of you, when you’re downed check to see if it’s set to auto-attack. If you at any time accidentally CTRL-clicked the skill, whenever you’re downed and it comes off of its initial cooldown, it will auto-cast, and basically give you 15 seconds until you’re respawning at a waypoint.

If you’re downed and skill 3 has arrows around it, then this is what’s doing it to you.

Doesn’t bother me. Realistically, I don’t expect them to go back and design unique better fitting armor for the sake of one race. I just mix and match from various sets to get the look I like best.

But that said, they did redo several pieces of leg armor to make them better accomodate the tail, adding little slits and flaps of cloth to cover the tail base and soforth

There’s also a memorial statue of him outside Eir’s house in game.

As for class… well one could make the argument for elementalist but he and zojja (who was an elementalist) bicker over the use of elemental magic in golomancy in the book, so that’s probably not it, so maybe an engineer? But the skill challange in metrica at Oola’s lab mentions a strong connection between golomancy and necromancy, since it’s basically binding an animal soul or elemental spirit so that’s also a possibility.

They’re all versitile PvE options, thief is a bit more fragile but you have stealth and shadow steps to make up for it.

All classes have support functionality and the thief is no exception. With the right skills you can stealth an ally if they have too much heat on them, use traps, scorpion wire, and caltrops to keep the enemy from getting at them, venoms to inflict conditions, and with the traits bountiful thief and thrill of the crime, every time you steal you grant nearby allies might fury and swiftness for 10 seconds, vigor for 15, and two additional boons you can steal from an enemy.

Challange wise, I couldn’t give you exact details since I found all 3 to be fairly easy to play with.

I imagine a navigator or scout would have a familiar knowledge of stars. It might even be basic survival training in the fahrar.

I’m not sure if you can set downed skills to auto attack but I’d say unequip your armor and go get you butt kicked to force the downed state, Vengence, the skill in question, is downed skill 3, see if it has the arrows around it’s border. If it’s possible to set a downed skill to auto attack (not sure if this is the case) if you at any time control clicked to toggle it, it will activite the moment it’s availabe, every time you’re downed.

Also down the road, Sweet Revenge, a Major Master trait in the disciplin tree will allow you to live if you kill something while in vengence, but for the time being I haven’t heard of the skill activating on it’s own.

I see this with people sometimes.

Who have a habit of typing in quick short sentences.

Instead of writing out a complete thought point before pressing enter.

Not sure why people type like this.

I guess so they get their word in before the topic moves on.

Or maybe a method of dominating a conversation?

Not sure.

What I do know however,

is that it gets annoying to read.

Like you’re listening to someone trying to catch their breath.

Also that I’m on a pay per text plan

so my friends need to stop this crap

or pay me for each stupid drunk text

but I digress.

Anyway, not sure if this is the case with you but if you’re a staccato senetence typer then you’ll hit the suppression real quick, especially if talking to multiple people.

As far as aesthetics go, that to is subjective but luckily you can go to the mists at any time and preview many different armor and weapon appearances in the game at the PvP locker to get an idea. Some things might not look good on one race but not another. That’ll probably help you get a better idea of what you’re going to look like.

As for the actual class, if you like the ele and necro but are wary of the eles squishiness (we are made of fabrege eggs and tissue paper without pressing the right buttons) I’d say definitely go necro. A buddy of mine was a lock back in WoW and he jumped on Necro immediately, and I have some passing experience with the class.

Basically, in the necro you’ll find a survivable caster that can dish out conditions to eat way at a target while making yourself stronger. If you get in trouble you can death shroud for more utility or to save your life, and you can cause a broad array of conditions to render an enemy impotent. You have a few weapon options each with a different way to operate, including daggers as a melee options, axes as a midline damage dealer, scepter for condition stacking, and staff for peppering the field with damaging trap areas. And if you’re fighting underwater you can summon ‘vampiric shrimp’ to attack your foe… I guess I don’t really have a point there, it’s just amusing.

Don’t choose a class based on the likelyhood (lack thereof) of it get nerfed. If you like a class more than the others and it feels more natural to play it, do that one. Like for me I love the elementalist, most people are down on it because you have to work harder to get the same payout as other classes, but I personally like that about it because it feels like every button I press and when I press it matters.

As for getting nerfed. Never in the history of any MMO has a class been rendered unplayable. You get nerfed, you compensate for the change, that’s not just the game, that’s life my friend. Not playing it because you’re afraid it’ll get nerfed is like not wanting to buy a car you love because it might break down, or not going to a movie you wanted to see or play a game you’ve been looking forward to because some critic somewhere said it was crap, and if you operate that way, you’re going to miss all the cool stuff in life and die angry. Don’t die angry.

As for what class to play, it’d be a little easier if you got a little more specific with what you’re looking for. “Not dying every fight” is largely dependent on the player and “Fun to play with” is subjective as hell. Do you like to be in the thick of things more? Always on the move? Do you like a more agressive style where you objective is to punch that guy in the neck as hard as you can or more controlled approach and shut down a target like a dunken doughnuts after the weight watchers meeting lets out?

Thief.

In dungeons? Stab things get loot.
Soloing? Drop caltrops, stealth, stab things get loot.
Events? Equip a shortbow. Use cluster bombs. Get loot.

The warrior would be good too, more weapons to choose from to deal with specific encounters, and mistakes are a little less fatal.

Engineer is nice but requires a bit of finness, so it might not be totally what you want.

Also they’re not lying about the ranger, they said they’re not done with them and they’re fixing things over time. I mean look at other MMOs, you have to wait months, here you get them every 2 weeks or so. You’re not going to see those dramatic patch fixes all at once, because they do them little by little at a quicker pace.

I think a comparison the guadian’s hammer would make for a better shot, since I’ve seen some crit hammers taking names and dishing out heapings of blunt force face rearrangement. The third hit in their chain is a longer swing but because of the symbol it creates they can self-combo almost every time it’s down with skill 2 and the right traits, regularly giving themselves and nearbys retalliation and protection. Doesn’t do as much damage but there’s more you can do with it, so their hammer feel a bit more thought out than warrior hammer. (Plus I hate getting trapped in that darn ring of warding and beaten like a pinata)

Out of the hammer and mace skills between guardian and warrior, the war’s hammer is the only one where all three swings are quick. Do you think it would be worth it to have the third swing significantly longer for more function? Because I get the feeling the lack of added effects with the Hammer chain is because they made it quick to keep the damage output at a pace.

All I know is the toolbelt skill for Hidden Pistol is awsome and gives me a nice extra bit of damage output on my Engi. If the damage wasn’t good enough it’s kind of hilarious to see your charr shooting bullets from the wrong side of the gun. I still don’t know if this is a bug or intentional, like a second barrel hidden in the handle of the pistols.