Guild Wars 2

Berserker Healer on Raids is only viable if you are with a very experienced group than can avoid most damage, but I wouldn’t recommend it on most PUG groups. Your damage output won’t be very good even with Berzerker gear if you are using Staff anyway.

I’m using Magi Gear and Zealot Trinkets and so far is working fine. I also have my ascended zerker gear if any groups wants me to use it, and Cleric trinkets in case I need to tank too.

I raid exclusively with a healing Druid, and although it’s not as hard as it could be, it can be nerve wracking…

You need to be aware of both the position of the threats and of your team mates, some bosses require you to be in an specific role for certain mechanics (Green circle for VG, “flac-aggroer” for Sabetha, etc.), and you need to know the bosses attacks very well to manage your Astral Force correctly, so you can enter Celestial Avatar form at the correct moments. In fact, learning when to enter and leave CA form it’s probably the most important thing, it’s not as simple as spamming CA heals to buff the party, there are times that you need it more than others.

I use Magi gear and Zealot trinkets, and so far is working perfectly. You don’t want clerics unless you are the tank, so I don’t really recomend it. I just keep Cleric trinkets that I bought long ago if the group needs me to tank Gorseval.

Also, the build with Viper gear that’s on Metabattle is for Condi Druid, witch is completely different. I have never played it but as far as I can see it’s a lot easier than healing, as it’s mostly follow a set rotation and you can ignore a lot of other mechanics other professions need to worry about. It can be an option if you want to raid as a Druid but just want to do DPS. They are not wanted a lot over other condi professions though.

I’m from Argentina, and our debit cards don’t work for online purchases, I can only buy it with a credit card.

My question was mostly to see if the key that I buy from the site can be used with an already active account (not F2P).

A friend of mine already plays GW2 since lauch, but he can’t buy the expansion himself (No credit card). Is there any way to gift the expansion to another account? Or I need to buy it from the site and forward him the key? Can he unlock the expansion buy using that key even if he already bought the base game at launch?

Thanks!

Here’s my Ranger (main), Guardian and Ele, all mix-n-match:

Ranger:
- Head: Subterfuge Hood
- Shoulders: Wolf Shoulderpads
- Chest: Carapace Jerkin
- Hands: Inquest Bracers
- Legs: Glorious Legguards
- Feet: Magitech Boots

Guardian:
- Head: (Hidden)
- Shoulders: (Hidden)
- Chest: Eagle Mail
- Hands: Radiant Vambracers
- Legs: Body of Koda
- Feet: Ascalonian Protector Greaves

Elementalist:
- Head: (Hidden)
- Shoulders: Cabalist Shoulders
- Chest: Apprentice Coat
- Hands: Illustrious Wristguards
- Legs: Trappings of the Lich
- Feet: Aristocrat’s Shoes

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Fixed a bug that caused the drop rate of fractal weapon skins to decrease above fractal level 40.

Ugh, this is so depressing… I’m pretty sure this “bug” has been in the game since the Fractured update, and only now they are fixing it… I run Fractals almost every day since they launched, still missing 3 skins, not to mention that I have never seen the tonic drop…

Bleh, why do I bother, and why am I surprised this is a thing…

Hi, I’m a few days away of crafting a full ascended armor set for my Guardian, and I was wondering which was a good build to run lvl 49-50 Fractals. I tried to see if there already was a similar topic about this, but the search function for this forum is completely broken.

I’m thinking full Berserker, but I don’t really know what traits and runes/sigils to use, any recommendations?

You can’t buy them off the TP, they can be bought from an NPC at the end of the ghost pirate jumping puzzle in Lion’s Arch, like all the pirate skins.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/First_Mate_Shane

Esmee.1067:

Celestial gear isn’t bad if you want some passive survivability. After the changes there were some calculations on the forum, which is likely still find-able somewhere comparing both it’s damage and survivability to Soldier’s gear, so you won’t be hitting hard, but neither do most PuGs in my experience. Another thing to be careful of is that some bosses (Mai Trin for example) are lured to high toughness. I’d try zerker-trinkets instead of celestial if you’re comfortable with it.

As for build I’d recommend D/F aswell, in the sticky DEKeys has an amazing guide for both Fractal Elementalists and Elementalists in general. I find her information very useful and thus recommend you go through the parts that interest you. Just remember certain tactics won’t work as well unless your whole group is zerker and/or willing to melee.

I run D/F 80% of the time in Fractals, but I understand why some people run staff. First of all Staff is relatively easy to play, you stick to 1 attunement for DPS and the rotation isn’t complicated, nor do you lose DPS if you go at range a bit which some Elementalists find very valuable. It’s DPS is higher aswell, how-ever it doesn’t come near D/F utility and thus survivability. (And any utility it has on Water/Air/Earth will drop your dps by a lot until you can swap back to Fire) Hence I’d recommend D/F with Staff on certain occasions at the most. (E.g. when people feel the need to range, e.g. Fire Shaman) or when DPS beats utility (E.g. Old Tom or Molton Duo, assuming anti-projectile is covered and you’re tactic is bursting them down.)

If you don’t want to check out DEKeys guide (which I do highly recommend) traits I run are:
D/F: 6 (V-VII-XI) / 6 (VI-X-XII) / 2 (VI) / 0 / 0
Staff: 6 (VI-VII-XI) / 6 (VI-VII-II) / 0 / 0 / 2 (V)

Thanks, that’s very helpful. I’ll check that guide out.

I’ll probably go with Celestial gear and Zerker accesories. I have only 3 ascended chest, so I’ll start leveling up the last 100 points on Tailor to craft the armor.

Thanks everyone.

I have some ascended armor chests of different types in my bank, and the stat combination they have in common is Celestial, so I figured I could use them to build my Elementalist to run Fractals.

Is Celestial gear any good for high level Fractals (40-50)? If so, what kind of build should I use with it?

Also, should I combine other type of accesories with it, like Zerker? Or just go full Celestial?

I’ve seen many Eles use Staff on Fractals too. Is it really any good?

It’s been a while since I used my Ele, so I’m not sure how the lastest changes affected the viable builds.

Thanks!

I don’t remember reading about this before, and the search function for the forums doesn’t work, so excuse me if someone already asked this.

Will I be able to buy dyes with Laurels after the update? I know they won’t drop anymore as normal loot, and we’ll be able to buy them on the Gem Store, but will they be still available to buy with Laurels?

If not, then I’ll probably spend a good amount of Laurels on dyes now, I don’t have much use for them.

Here’s my Norn Ranger, my main since headstart.

Is there a best Fractal lvl to farm the skins? I’ve been doing Fractals Lvl 50 since forever now, and the skins don’t seem to be very common. I even think that Ascended Chests are way more common than the skins at that lvl.

I remember getting several skins while I was ranking up from lvl 30 to 50, so could it be that there’s a better chance of skins instead of ascended chest on those brackets? Or was it just RNG?

- If your personal level is 15, and you run, for example, a lvl 1 fractal, you get rewards based on that fractal level, so you’ll get pooer rewards.
- If you run a fractal of a level higher than your personal lvl, you get rewards according to your own lvl (lvl 15, in this case).

JFTActual.5132:

Khairiya.7240:

You don’t actually need to do this in one try. As long as you’ve killed each of the three knights once when the timer is still above 9:00 you will get the achievement.
Participate in 3 events and start with a different knight each time.

Can anyone confirm if this is true? I feel like I’ve started them all in different orders before… and even if not, we always do Green second and I feel like we always finish green before 9 minutes. I’ve definitely done Red & Blue first.

Just killed green on the 5min mark, and no achievement. I know I’ve killed Blue and Red before the 6mins, so I’m pretty sure you need to kill all 3 at the same time.

As far as I know, each mob killed depletes the bar, and different kinds of mobs deplete it in a certain amount. I’ve seen the bar go down by a lot when a Champion dies, so the type of mob is important.

There is, actually.

I’m using the Pirate Needler, a short bow that has the same skin as the long bow of the same set.

You can get it at the end of the pirate ghost jumping puzzle in LA, there’s a vendor that sells pirate-themed weapons for a bit of karma.

It’s also one of the best skins for bows, IMO.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pirate_Needler

I think there’s some other bows that have the same skin for both types, this is the only one I know.

I was not aware of this, I skipped the WvW part on the update notes, and now I’m kind of depressed.

Grinding 500 badges for my Howler was painful, I do not like WvW, I did it mostly through the JPs, and as soon I got my 500, I left WvW to never go back.

I was planning on making a 2nd legendary when the precursor scavenging hunt goes live, I already made my 77 Mystic Clovers, and I was so happy the achievement chests give you badges so I don’t need to grind them again. Now… I don’t really fell like it.

I don’t even know what rank I am, and I’m scared to see how long does it take to get to rank 30. This was completely unnecessary, nobody asked for this.

I run Lvl 49 almost every day with 20/30/0/20/0 , on my gear I use Berserker and on accesories I use Berskerker with Vitality (Bud of the Pale Tree, for example).

I use S/W as much as I can, if a boss is hard to melee, I switch either to SB or LB, depending on the boss. Other than that, I switch weapons depending on the situation (Axe off-hand if I need the pull and the refflect, etc).

On skills, always QZ, Frost Spirit only if I know it won’t die easily, and other skills depending on the situation, but I generaly use SnR, Protect Me, Signet of Renewal, some traps, etc.

There’s also a preview on Joystiq:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/01/14/exclusive-preview-of-guild-wars-2s-origin-of-madness-release/

After all the speculation regarding the DO NOT TOUCH things throughout the world, about the magical leylines of Tyria, the Elder Dragons, Primordius and the Destroyers awakening… and I all we get is a big wurm… I’ll be very, very disappointed…

You should have received two chests in that situation, it may have been a bug. I know that lvl 50 is bugged and you don’t get your daily chest, but Lvl 29 and lvl 12 should be working correctly. Did your party members get their daily chests?

The brackets are 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50. So yeah, you should have gotten a chest.

Also, you don’t need to run on two different characters, everything is account bound now (just in case you didn’t know that).

And remember that each daily resets at the same time the daily achievement does (not sure what server time is, I’m not American)

Waldir.2571:

DigitalKirin.9714:

No word from ANet.

Plus, it’s better to sell them for 4.95 silver than to just throw them away. o_o)-b

Wrong, on the fractured livestream it was said they would be salvageble in the future.

Actually, what they said is that they are aware that rings are kind of useless and they are “looking into ways to make them valuable”, and that salvaging them could be a solution.

I doubt we’ll see an update on this soon, maybe on the next fractal update, but even then I doubt it.

Just finished my first Fractal Lvl 50, and me and some of the other guys from the party didn’t get the daily chest.

My personal level is 50 and I haven’t done ANY fractal today, so it wasn’t a issue about doing the same bracket the same day.

At least one guy DID get the chest, with a fractal weapon and everything, but several others said they didn’t get it, just like me.

Alright, thanks for the responses. I’ll try to run some Lvl 50 so I can see if the rewards are better or not, I have enough AR.

Ascended Boxes, for both Weapons and Armors, are supposed to drop anywhere any Ascended material (Dust, Ore and Fragments) drops. I got an Ascended Armor Box from Lvl 40+ Fractal, but I’ve heard from people that got them on lower levels.

According to the wiki, Ascended Weapon Boxes drop from lvl 21 and up, I guess it’s the same for Armor.

I don’t do WvW, so I don’t know about that.

I’m 2 levels away from Fractals lvl 50, and I’ve been wondering why everyone runs Lvl 49 but I can’t seem to find any groups on the LFG Tool for Lvl 50.

I know they are both at the same daily bracket, but doesn’t Lvl 50 have better rewards, or better chances of Fractal Skins and Ascended Boxes? As far as I know, you even need more AR at lvl 50, which may mean better stuff drops at that level.

I remember reading somewhere, a dev post, that said Lvl 50 is better in terms of rewards than lvl 49, but I might remember wrong.

Level up the one you enjoy the most (Or both, if you have the time). Both are good, but have different play styles. And try not pay too much attention to all the whining about Rangers in the forums, all the “Rangers suck” posts are overly exaggerated.

All 4 professions you listed are good in fractals (in fact, all 8 are), but they have very different roles.

Thief and Mesmer have some useful utilities like Shadow Refuge and Portal. Many people don’t like Thief for fractals, but I’m always happy to take them, it makes some content a lot easier. They are the most squishy though, and can down you more easily than other professions.

Guardians are always welcome in all partys, mostly due to being a heavy class, their reflects and support. Depending on how you build it, your heals can be very helpful.

Engineers… I don’t know much about them, but they are pretty good. In fact, I think most of Engineers try harder than the rest of professions, and end up being very good players.

What you should really do, it’s try the first 10 levels of Fractals with each profession and see for yourself. You don’t need agony resistance and it’s easy enough to run without exotic gear. See which profession you like the most to use.

I only run fractals with my Ranger and I’ve been running Fractals 48 for a long while now, and I find the old Brazil’s berserker build still very effective.

I use Frost Spirit and sometimes Stone Spirit, as long as I know I can protect them. The problem is that high lvl Fractals are sometimes full of hard hitting AoEs that just one-shot them, so sometimes it’s just better to take a skill with more utility, like Signet of Renewal for condition removal or Search and Rescue for party support. I always run QZ tho.

For Elite Skills, switch depending on the situation, sometimes the Spirit or Entangle are very useful, but most of the time you can stick with Rampage as One.

Always try to use Healing Spring, specially if you’re using Warhorn or another person on the party has a lot of Blast Finishers. If you need heavy healing in specific fights or you’re not stacked in one place, use Troll Unguent.

I’m running 20/25/5/20/0, a variation of old Brazil’s build, but the new one posted by Taku seems good too.

I use Berserker gear and “Berserker with vitality” accessories (Bud of the Pale Tree, etc…). I find the vitality helpful in Fractals, where everything just hits too hard, and you don’t really lose too much damage (you actually just lose a little bit of precision).

Regarding the “how do I not get kicked question”. Just know what you need to do in each Fractal, learn the attacks of the enemies to dodge them. Don’t always try to go melee on bosses at high lvl fractals, they just hit too hard, and it’s very difficult to dodge when using a sword. Be ready to switch weapons, skills, pets and traits when needed (A ground targeted spike trap can be very helpful even if you’re not traited for traps or condition damage, for example).

Also, as pho says, don’t skip levels. Level up at your own pace, you’ll learn the fight a lot better this way.

I usually just create my own entry in LFG and wait for people with not prejudices against rangers to show up. Shockingly, there are a lot, I haven’t had any problems with getting a good party in a long time now.

Haven’t seen a thread about this yet, so here we go.

The silvary is obviosly Scarlet, but what about the monster behind her? At reddit they are speculating that it can be either an Oni or a Margonite, enemies from the original GW, or just some standard Nightmare Court monster/mutant.

To me it kind of looks like a concept art version of Subject Alpha. CoE revamp maybe?

May I get an invite, pleae?

Just logged in to support this.

There’s been post giving these same suggestions, but after a year we still have a very poor pet GUI.

I think the priority is the ability to see what boons and conditions are affecting our pet. We have always had problem maintaining our pet alive, and one of the reasons (among others) is that we have no idea what is affecting our pet at any given time.

It’s also so simple, just add the icons above the pet’s health bar, and done! You have given us a great tool to help us manage our pet.

I really hope ArenaNet implements this in a near future.

I think I’ve said this before, but I’ve done Fractals 48 with all kind of setups and it always comes down to skill, not profession.

Once I did it with 2 Rangers (one being myself), 1 Ele, 1 Warrior and 1 Thief. Second fractal was Grawl Shaman and everyone started freaking out.

Thing is, we did it without wipes, it was one of the most smooth boss fights I’ve had in a while, and we did it without any Guardians, when everyone thinks you NEED a Guardian or whatever to finish that fractal at lvl 48 (Not to mention Rangers are not very welcomed in Fractals 48).

I try to stay away from “only guardians” post and the like in gw2lfg.com or people that start spewing elitists comments when I join the party, those are the groups that end up failing.

I still need to watch the videos, but I can say this: I main a Ranger and I do fractals lvl 48 almost every day. I already have 8 Fractals Weapons in my bank, plus 2 on my Ranger and 2 on my Guardian.

It has nothing to envy the Warrior. Zerker Warrior may be good on CoF runs, they can clear it very fast, but Fractals is another monster entirely. Bosses have so much health that a burst of damage every now and then doesn’t make them easier. Plus, on almost every fight I see them using Rifle, which is not optimal at all, and it doesn’t offer anything better than a Ranger with SB. Now, please don’t get kitten ed, I’m not saying that “Warrior suck”, I’m happy to take a Warrior into Fractals, I have no issues with them, but they are not that much better than Rangers in high level Fractals, and I always lol a little everytime I read “Guardian or Warriors only” on gw2lfg.

That being said, pets NEED a rework, even with the most amazing micro management they get destroyed. And I’m not talking about DPS loss, but all the other stuff we lose when the pet is dead: Signets, SnR and shouts in general, the pet’s skill, traits, etc. You can’t save a pet from a random axe throw from Mossman or attack from the Grawl Shaman, or the endless AoE on the Asura, or just almost every attack of every fractal boss.

I’d wish ArenaNet realizes that they’re not only a burden to the Ranger, but it’s just not fun. Having half your skills taken away on every boss fight it’s just stupid, and I hope they start making changes to fix this. Giving them immunity or reduced damage to AoEs could be a start, but so would be giving us more tools to manage it and make the best out of them.

I see that you use Sword a lot, which is probably the better choice, and I would love to use it myself, but having a more than average ping (being in South America does that), I simply cannot dodge reliably fast to keep bosses from stomping me, specially because of the sword root, so for now I’m using a power/condition build, but I’d really like to try Brazil’s build.

I’ll end with this: I remember when we beat the Grawl Shaman fractal with 2 Rangers, 1 Warrior, 1 Ele and 1 Thief with no wipes (No guardians!), it made me proud to be a Ranger and having another competent Ranger (and other party members) by my side, when everyone else think Guardians are a must-have in Fractals 48.

I’ll check you videos right away!

Man, truly an amazing guide, thank you so much for writing this!

I’m getting close to level 80 with my Ele, and now I have an idea of which build I want to use. I’m torn between the classic Aura Mancer and your Hybrid Dagger-Hammer build. The main thing I want is support for group, but the DPS from Hammer seems sweet.

Thanks for your answer!

Regarding traits, I was thinking something more like 0/10/0/30/30, not something more focused on air, but according to your build I should go something like 0/30/0/30/10, right?

I know that water is kind of a must-have for support, but neither Air nor Arcana seems that cool for support, so I guess depending on which bonuses I want is the trait line I should choose.

I’ll keep trinkering with it, thanks.

Hello all. I’m getting close to level 80 with my Elementalist and I’d like to start getting my gear and my build options ready. I main a condition Ranger and I also have a healer/support Guardian, so I’m trying to build my Ele to be something in between.

Thing is, I don’t fully understand how’s that suppose to work for an Ele yet. Although I have have some ideas regarding traits, I don’t really know which stats to use on my gear.

Which is the best way to build it to for a support role when also doing enough DPS, mainly for dungeons and PvE? Which weapon is the best option for this situation?

I’d really appreciate your help.

I made an extensive post about this a couple of days ago, but it got deleted because of making “staff callouts”, I got so angry I haven’t played the game since then. Here’s my recent experience with the “leader” system and the 2-vote kick system, from that post that I made:

Fractals lvl 48. We started on the wrong foot when this Guardian started trolling me at the first fractal about Rangers begin useless. I should have leave there but, silly me, I stayed.

Fractal two, he tried to kick another guy because he pointed out he (the troll Guardian) screwed up (more in a joking manner) at the fan in the Raving Asura fractal. Nobody voted, so he just left, presumably because of “connection issues”, and left his girlfriend (instance owner, won’t say her name because I don’t want this post to get deleted too) with us, who started defending his boyfriend and threatening us about leaving and breaking the instance.

Fractal three, she allied with someone else and kick the other three of us.

If the instance/leader system cannot be changed in the short run because of technology issues, then the 2-vote kick system, which I’m pretty sure is a lot simpler, NEEDS to change. It causes a lot of headaches to a lot of people, it’s only useful to the trolls and people that wants to kick everyone and invite their friends at the last minute for the reward, and it gives a lot of power to the instance owner, everyone has to suck it up because nobody wants to get kicked.

I really hope Anet is listening, because this is a real problem in the game, and I simply cannot understand why they’ve been ignoring it since launch.

Man, you were spot on with Antique Olive and Dijon Dye, they look exactly like the ones in the shield.

I’ll start experimenting with different shades for different parts of my armor, but those are going to be the main colors.

Thanks!

Hello all, I managed to get a ticket for Jade Weapons, and I’m thinking of getting the shield for my Guardian.

I wanted to know if any of you figured out what dye colors the weapons are using, to use on my armor and perfectly match them with the shield.

The closest I got was Peanut Butter Dye and Green Shade Dye.

Any Suggestions?

I found a screenshot of the same pants + boots before update, check the pic.

I’ve encountered some armor clippings that I’m pretty sure weren’t there before the last mayor update.

I noticed it with the medium HotW boots + medium SE pants, on my norn ranger (see first two pics)

The thing is, it also happens with two pieces from the same dungeon set, medium SE boots and pants (see last two pics), so I’m pretty sure there something wrong with the pants skin.

The last part of the rapids level, where you fight ninjas on top of the raft, may be a reference to Final Fantasy VI.

In the game, you get on top of a very similar raft, going down the rapids, fighting some random battles, among the enemies you can encounter there are some ninjas or fighters-like enemies (the whole zone is actually a mountain where one of the main characters went to train in martial arts, you encounter plenty of these ninja-like enemies throughout the zone).

I have problems viewing all my personal story chapters, when I scroll the list past one of the chapters (“State of Decay”, see screen), the whole list goes blank…

This is actualy a very old bug, it’s happening maybe since Christmas, but I didn’t reported it because I thought it was just a temporary bug that it will get fixed soon.

It didn’t… I still can’t see all my chapters in the list. Is there any way to solve this?

Character: Marcus Ironforge.

Thanks.

Although I don’t have it yet (just need T6 fangs and bones and I’m done ), I’ve watched a couple of videos and I agree. I also thought that the “added footsteps” I saw in the patch notes was a mistake, because I could’t see any footsteps. :/

The fog effect around your character is kind of cool, but it should be increased a little, and I don’t really like the water effect when you unsheath it, it doesn’t really make much sense (fog doesn’t really make you that wet), although that might be just me.

Haven’t met many people that have it, so I can’t comment on the howling/moaning sound, but when I asked a norn ranger about it she mentioned the that the howling gets anoying.

All in all, it’s a great looking legendary, and I can’t wait to have it, but the effects could use some work.

92 views and no answer? -_-

How about this condition build? Has anyone tried it?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMMQNBMhVakoKuuuSyi1OQ0UwJLxeYIE9onCap+MG6kZPA

Hello my fellow rangers. I’m thinking in switching my build to a Sword/Warhorn build, I’m getting a bit tired of my SB/LB build, and I wanted to know if there’s any viable build to use on Dungeons (mainly) and PvE?

I’m not sure if the right way to go is condition or pure damage/crit. And also, I don’t event know where to start with the build, I’ve been using my condition SB/LB so much that I don’t even know how good or bad the damage with other weapons and builds is.

I’ll probably use SB too, for when I need to go ranged in dungeons, so I’d really like to keep Piercing Arrows, and probably 15 points in the BM line so I can get plenty of quickness for both melee and ranged. Other than that, don’t really know what to pick.

Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks for the tips guys!

2) Run AC for tokens to buy Exotic Warhorns to toss into MF. Run CoF for money and tokens to buy level 70 rares (heavy helm!! for mithril and chance at Ori) for your ectos.

Lvl 70 rares give you Ectos? I thought only lvl 76+ have a chance on droping them.

1. I’m going for Howler
2. I have Gift of Exploration, Gift of Wood, Wolf Statue, Gift of Thorns, and I’m close (maybe a week away) to Gift of Battle.
3. I’m working towards fully completing the Gift of Howler (need gold for the Icy Runestones) and then farm my kitten off to get the T6 mats and the Ectos. Also, I’m still missing the precursor.
4. Adition information: I hate WvW and the kitten tokens. T_T