Guild Wars 2

TwiceDead.1963:

He means maps like Bloodstone Fen, where you can buy those Bloodstone Rings… Petrified Wood is another example, will net you one Marauder Accessory, but you can’t use both of the same item at once.

Alright, thank you. I’ll give it a look see. I have not actually done LS3 yet. Been gone for about 3 years.

Sly.9518:

He Living Story maps

Can you explain further, please?

Kut.7138:

Asur.9178:

P/P outdpses rifle currently…and they’re both bad.

hi, can you explain why P/P is bad, I am new and try learn and I heard it was good dps thx

Its only bad in PvP because P/P has no escapes or defensive maneuvers to keep you alive. In PVE, P/P is actually required for certain content unless you want to spend all of your time dead or on the ground. It out damages Shortbow by miles on single targets (Shortbow is still arguably better for AoE due to Clusterbomb), and a dead thief does no damage.

I am looking to build a Marauder’s set for my thief for the added survivability. Unfortunately, I am having a hard time finding out where the ascended rings and accessories for these stats come from. In my internet search I found out that the amulet comes from HoT story mode achievements. Where does the rest come from?

mygamingid.5816:

That’s a bit of a weird build made expressly to get the highest possible DPS against the golem. It relies in part on proccing Deathly Chill off of an Ice field with Whirl Finishers. Given how many fields drop in gameplay, this isn’t guaranteed or even likely outside of the golem.

The QT build also focused on bleeds. It uses Krait runes and just enough (actually a little too much) Viper’s to get 100% bleed duration. Other condis have much shorter durations. Necros have every condi on tap, so you’re leaving some damage on the table if you don’t go for as much global condi duration as possible.

I expect we’ll have a new Condi Necro meta with Scourge, but we’ll have to wait for the release to know for sure.

So what would be the typical every day all round build then? Given my long absence, I’d like to become reacquainted with the mechanics before trying out niche or specialized builds. I am also unfamiliar with what QT means.

Sigfodr.9576:

for raids: https://qtfy.eu/guildwars/necromancer/condi-reaper/

For fractals or open world PvE, take this and change abit when needed.

Looks like this build uses mostly sinisters, though. Is this one also out of date?

I have been gone for a long time. Three years I think? Anyway, I have a friend thats convinced me to come back for the expansion and I’ve been looking into what the current meta is for necromancers in PVE at the moment. Viper’s stats keep coming up but I seem to be having trouble finding the actual build for this. Metabattle.com isn’t any help as the comment section there for the only Viper’s build shown has people saying the build is very badly out of date.

Does anyone have a link to an up to date build for necromancer that uses Vipers?

Vayne.8563:

—Vayne—

Speak of the devil…

Rauderi.8706:

That might be going a bit far.
Some people just need, crave, must have an argument, even if it’s baseless, in order to seem right about something. :P

Personal flaw vs ANet wasting $$$ on ineffective paid shills in a place where you’re not going to change anyone’s opinion?
Ockham’s razor, my friend.

I get what you’re saying, but you’d be surprised how far companies are willing to go these days. Also something to consider, companies typically do not hire people specifically to do this, but rather ask/coerce their existing employees to do this on the side. EA was caught doing this some years ago when a former employee blew the whistle by coming forward and showing documents given to him to do just this on 4chan. Said he had been made to do it for years on various games, “hyping” them up while effectively being a shill for EA, praising them for everything they’ve done, etc.

GangNamTwo.9780:

Blasino.3128:

First time I’ve seen this one. Using glassdoor to determine the state of the company to determine the state of the game.

I kid.

Oops, sorry forgot to say I already deduced China launch was a failure. Glassdoor just confirmed it. :p.

This is the article that showed me that China launch was a spectacular failure.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/20f1gk/ongoing_riots_in_chinese_gw2_community/

The thing people need to understand about Chinese gaming. First impressions are everything. There are literally HUNDREDS if not thousands of MMO/online games in China, and more are being made every day. They have SO much competition there in this market that first impressions will make or break you as a company in that country. The Chinese publisher for GW2 kittened up royally, and absolutely ruined the franchise there.

For those of you who do not know how the Chinese run things over there, its like this. A foreign company is forbidden from directly selling merchandise or services there. In order to sell your product in the Chinese market, you must either have been a company that was formed in China, or you rent/lease your product to a Chinese company who then resells/redistributes it under their logo. This means that NCSoft and ANet are forbidden from publishing and/or administering the game in China. Once a product is leased to a Chinese company, they are given full freedom and control to monetize it as they see fit. This is especially risky for non-Chinese companies as they really have absolutely no way of telling how that company is going to represent their product in that market. Its really a crapshoot as far as that goes. Even Blizzard has had issues with their Chinese partner for WoW.

Ayrilana.1396:

—all of this—

No. I pretty much have to disagree with all of this. I’ve been around a long time. I’ve seen the stupid twisted things people do. The Glassdoor thing doesn’t reek of any of it. I also only said a “few” of the positive reviews struck me as same person. I didn’t say all. Its a very common thing among HR departments to keep track of this kind of stuff within a company and fill out fake positive reviews and ask their employees to fill out a positive review to counterbalance the negative ones. These aren’t really genuine as they feel “too good” when you read them. Its very easy to spot a PRed positive review just by the tone and way its written. Its also easy to spot a rant designed to discredit a product or company done out of malice. None of the negative reviews felt malicious, and even praised aspects of the company.

Dunno if you’ve seen this, but read it. Don’t just read the headline, I mean read it. The “even the negative ones” doesn’t really apply here since rival corporations only smear products, not workplace employment. Besides, the complaints here for ANet are just to accurate and reflecting of whats going on in the game itself for it to be just random negativity.

http://business.time.com/2012/08/28/why-you-shouldnt-trust-positive-online-reviews-or-negative-ones-for-that-matter/

Astra Lux.2846:

They are sitting on a quite a few unused/removed weapons and armours from PvP and other stuff. Pretty happy that they confirmed that some of them are coming back at some point.

Soon™? Honestly, ANet has been saying that since back in 2014. I don’t have much trust in ANet to do anything they say they are any more. If they do bring it back, it will likely be locked behind some ridiculous grind or time gate like everything else is these days.

Ayrilana.1396:

Companies can post fake positive reviews just as the same employee can post multiple fake ones. I stated somewhere in this thread that neither can be necessarily relied on. Or at least not as your sole source without anything more concrete, credible to back it up. Some negative reviews can be a distortion of the facts are similly a misunderstanding on the reviewers part.

I don’t buy this. You can easily spot a fake review from the same person by how they type. Penmanship, or typing patterns, is a lot like finger prints. There are just certain words, syntax lay out, and punctuation that people subconsciously fall back on without even realizing it, and you can easily notice these patterns if you know what you’re looking for. A few of those positive reviews scream “The same person wrote this.”, but not one of those negative reviews remotely stands out as one person writing them.

Furthermore, all the negative reviews are focusing on the exact same things, and they’re not bashing the company like your typical smear campaign would. In fact, every single negative review also has very positive things to say about the company in general. Its just those key points that keep repeatedly coming up. What gives these negative reviews even more credibility is how they talk about Mike. You can tell the man is rather clueless about his own game just by the blog posts and public posts hes made. If that isn’t enough, its hit home even further by just looking at the state the game is currently in.

GW2 is an utter mess. Its a game that doesn’t know what it wants to be. It had all this great content that was slashed, smashed, and gutted, leaving it all a hollow, barely working mess. We have developers actively disincentivizing already existing content to push an agenda from some clueless upper management type. Exactly what the negative reviews say is happening.

I am really embarrassed for ANet at this point. I really have to wonder how they’re going to live up to this disaster, and how they’re going to make it up to their customer base. If they do nothing, well… Yeah.

Blaine Tog.8304:

TerminalMontage.5693:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Destroyer_Scythe

This weapon is super cool. Why is it even in the wardrobe if it’s impossible to get?

Because it used to be possible to get, and the wardrobe wants to show all possibilities.

When and how? This is the first time I’ve ever seen it.

Wahaha.7938:

Given that this very thread contains a post saying that a dev will post a thread in the official forum, I think people should relax.

Only because people have been making a fuss lately about ANets lack of communication where it counts. Not everyone has a Reddit account. Not everyone uses Twitter. Not everyone uses Facebook.

Frankly, Gaile likely didn’t even know about that post until someone linked it to her. Pretty sure Gaile only made the post here because there are not one, but two threads on this very topic on the front page right now.

Jax.4903:

Granted this layoff happened in 2013, but surely a talented game designer could shift his focus from dungeons to other world content.

Absolutely, but the keyword here is talented. ANet lost that talent years ago. Its extremely evident with what HoT actually gave us. Theres also the problem of the community at large still wanting dungeon content, and ANet ignoring this desire. This isn’t exactly how you retain old customers, or bring in new ones.

Wahaha.7938:

How many times does it need to be said that devs posting here or on reddit is entirely V O L U N T A R Y. They are not obliged to post anywhere because it’s not part of their job requirements.

And like some said, why would they want to post here lol, so many nasty people in this thread.

This is how you lose customers. And yes, it is part of their jobs. At least I hope so, because if it isn’t, thats just one more pile of crap to add to this sorry sinking ship.

Zakka.2153:

Because Raid content isn’t just a giant big stupid dungeon?

No.

Daharahj.1325:

Actually the people who designed those dungeons left the company, so technically #2 is wrong.

This is wrong. They didn’t leave. They got laid off. AKA, ANet fired them because they no longer wanted to support dungeon content.

Its just more unprofessionalism from ANet. The original team is long gone. The guys they have now don’t seem to understand what is necessary for good customer service. If I did even half the things these people do at my job, I’d be booted out and then blacklisted from the rest of the industry.

They’ve always avoided those areas like the plague. Even long before HoT was even a thought.

Carrion does not have ascended stats on trinkets. Its been reported since forever, but ANet has never addressed this issue.

MeveM.7913:

Kravick.4906:

MeveM.7913:

People that find the open world hard needs to stop the berserker gear mentality. Try soldier and such and you will have loads more fun. I can autoattack things to death in soldier gear without problems.
If youve tried the more defensive stuff and still struggle then im not sure what the issue is. I just think a lot of people cant be bothered to explore different builds.

This is a rather ignorant statement. Perhaps you’re the one who needs to change. Try Berserker so that you can wear everyone elses shoes, then you can see where they are coming from. It has really nothing to do with the difficulty of the content, and more to do with the content just one shotting people with zero telegraphs. Berserker gear is fine. What isn’t fine is people not having the chance to react.

So youre confirming that because arenanet has finally made other builds wanted they have ruined the 1 build game they had for 3 years.

Such a sad and backwards outlook you have. I don’t think I’m going to waste my time trying to explain this to you. I understand you find yourself unable to perform with a certain type of gear set, but is just down right ignorant and selfish to try and impose your own limitations on everyone else.

MeveM.7913:

People that find the open world hard needs to stop the berserker gear mentality. Try soldier and such and you will have loads more fun. I can autoattack things to death in soldier gear without problems.
If youve tried the more defensive stuff and still struggle then im not sure what the issue is. I just think a lot of people cant be bothered to explore different builds.

This is a rather ignorant statement. Perhaps you’re the one who needs to change. Try Berserker so that you can wear everyone elses shoes, then you can see where they are coming from. It has really nothing to do with the difficulty of the content, and more to do with the content just one shotting people with zero telegraphs. Berserker gear is fine. What isn’t fine is people not having the chance to react.

Nike.2631:

Kravick.4906:

I found it rather confusing that ANet would add PVP to precursor crafting. Especially after they went and removed the PVP zones from world completion so people could finish that part of the legendary more reliably. Its almost like they didn’t learn from their previous mistake and went ahead and backtracked on it. Do they even know what they want at this point?

The point was PvP was always intended to be part of the “mastery of all aspects of play” imagined as part of the legendary journey AND adding a sellable item to PvP tracks moves some of the Silverwaste gold out of the hands of the PvE crowd and into the hands of the sPvP players. Win-Win from a design perspective.

This is another huge problem with the system. ANet needs to stop catering to the TP and market flippers. Not everything needs to move through the kitten trading post.

I found it rather confusing that ANet would add PVP to precursor crafting. Especially after they went and removed the PVP zones from world completion so people could finish that part of the legendary more reliably. Its almost like they didn’t learn from their previous mistake and went ahead and backtracked on it. Do they even know what they want at this point?

Shoe.5821:

Yeah, when I found out what it actually takes to make a precursor, that was the tipping point. I’m giving up on this game. I think I’ll go play Skyrim again instead. This game has gone way to far away from its manifesto roots to be considered a game any more. Its just another badly designed korean grindfest MMO at this point.

ahaha. It’s expensive and time consuming to get the best possible weapons in the game, so its a korean grindfest mmo?

Eyes cant roll hard enough

Its the precursor you dolt. It is literally 1/4th of the overall legendary. Its not the legendary itself. The rest of it already costs a literal arm and leg. The precursor cost now adds both your kidneys and your heart as payment.

And what are you talking about “best”?

Yeah, when I found out what it actually takes to make a precursor, that was the tipping point. I’m giving up on this game. I think I’ll go play Skyrim again instead. This game has gone way to far away from its manifesto roots to be considered a game any more. Its just another badly designed korean grindfest MMO at this point. If I want to play a korean grindfest MMO, there are several out there that do it better, but I hate grinding, so kitten this.

GW2 is a Korean grind fest game. This is what they do. I personally have given up trying to make sense of any of the design decisions the developers of this game have made over the last few years, and simply chalked it up to NCSoft meddling. This game stopped being fun a long time ago, and at this point all I’m doing is waiting for a new MMO to come to replace this one.

I currently use both of them with my reaper/GS spec as my ranged weapon. The auto attack is still god awful, but axe two combined with focus four is a really solid LF generator. These two skills also spike decently hard. I use both to get back into reaper shroud quicker.

As far as ranged weapons go, its axe or staff, and both are lack luster for range DPS if you’re power based. No other real options.

Nemesis.8593:

Actually… i think i’ll keep some information to myself for a while…

Please do this forever.

Getting one shot isn’t challenging. Especially if there aren’t any dodge queues to avoid said hit, like on Legendary Wyvern in VB. When it does the fly by attacks that leave the acid on the ground, if you get hit by the fly by, you instantly go down, then die from the acid. No chance to even recover. The fly by has no tell, no marker, nothing. It just happens, and you have to be lucky it doesn’t target you, otherwise to bad, so sad, dead.

ChrizZcE.5981:

Silverwastes has already been nerfed. There are fewer chests now.

They already nerfed this once. So they nerfed it again, did they?

IndigoSundown.5419:

This sounds like a massive over-reaction by ANet to forum complaints about how the game lacked difficulty. The problem with deciding to make something as mundane as a Hero Point challenge a large herd of players is that any smaller increment of players finds the point frustrating. This is going to be problematic to any late adopters.

I’m fine with the game offering more challenge. However, there’s a lot of room between a Hero Challenge in the base game and what’s being described here.

People wanted challenging content in dungeons, but Anet fired their dungeon guy like two years ago and have gone on record stating they want players out of dungeons (hence the major dungeon nerf). I think its fairly obvious they want people to mindlessly zerg. As to why, I haven’t a clue. Its the most boring and uninspired gameplay this game has to offer, and if they ever do make it difficult for people to mindlessly zerg the content, they won’t do it.

I’d say silverwastes still until someone figures out if HoT has a more efficient farm, but I really don’t think HoT zones will. They’re aggravating to navigate, and so far all the HoT zones seem to be rather empty anyway. I see far more people still doing Silverwastes than I do HoT zones.

Its going to get nerfed. One of the developers have specifically stated that they’re trying to divert people away from dungeons.

Linken.6345:

Kravick.4906:

warbignime.4610:

Kravick.4906:

Xytor.1267:

Your logic is based on the idea that if there were no hearts, there wouldn’t be anything else in their place. The only thing hearts did for the player besides karma and map completion was add a few armor and weapon skins, and recipes to the game.

Guess what – meta events give karma. Participating in said events gives you % completion rewards and currency for that zone. New vendors give recipes and weapon/armor skins (and more) once the mastery for access is unlocked.

So to my understanding, there is plenty of direction and different forms of progression depending on what you want to do. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t still theme park, but the expansion sure has a lot more to offer than what hearts offered back in the day and now. Your whole ‘no hearts no direction’ argument really falls apart here. Find a different reason why you have a problem with the expansion, because this is bogus.

No, and even by your own admission, heart quests were added to give players the ability to actually progress. Otherwise people would be stuck grinding the same two events over and over, which is what people are saying they do not want to do.

No hearts were add because new player feel lost otherwise. Devs literally said this.

Right. To give people direction. Not to mention that without the hearts, people couldn’t figure out how to level up and progress to the next area.

You mean like people do in expansion content otherwise ppl would be stuck at the first tiny part of map and there are people on second and third already.

No. Expansion has little green dots to follow. AKA story quest.

Yeah, I’m crashing a lot too. HoT definitely added some stability issues.

warbignime.4610:

Kravick.4906:

Xytor.1267:

Your logic is based on the idea that if there were no hearts, there wouldn’t be anything else in their place. The only thing hearts did for the player besides karma and map completion was add a few armor and weapon skins, and recipes to the game.

Guess what – meta events give karma. Participating in said events gives you % completion rewards and currency for that zone. New vendors give recipes and weapon/armor skins (and more) once the mastery for access is unlocked.

So to my understanding, there is plenty of direction and different forms of progression depending on what you want to do. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t still theme park, but the expansion sure has a lot more to offer than what hearts offered back in the day and now. Your whole ‘no hearts no direction’ argument really falls apart here. Find a different reason why you have a problem with the expansion, because this is bogus.

No, and even by your own admission, heart quests were added to give players the ability to actually progress. Otherwise people would be stuck grinding the same two events over and over, which is what people are saying they do not want to do.

No hearts were add because new player feel lost otherwise. Devs literally said this.

Right. To give people direction. Not to mention that without the hearts, people couldn’t figure out how to level up and progress to the next area.

Xytor.1267:

Your logic is based on the idea that if there were no hearts, there wouldn’t be anything else in their place. The only thing hearts did for the player besides karma and map completion was add a few armor and weapon skins, and recipes to the game.

Guess what – meta events give karma. Participating in said events gives you % completion rewards and currency for that zone. New vendors give recipes and weapon/armor skins (and more) once the mastery for access is unlocked.

So to my understanding, there is plenty of direction and different forms of progression depending on what you want to do. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t still theme park, but the expansion sure has a lot more to offer than what hearts offered back in the day and now. Your whole ‘no hearts no direction’ argument really falls apart here. Find a different reason why you have a problem with the expansion, because this is bogus.

No, and even by your own admission, heart quests were added to give players the ability to actually progress. Otherwise people would be stuck grinding the same two events over and over, which is what people are saying they do not want to do.

nightwulf.1986:

GW2 was originally intended to not have hearts at all, but they figured people like you needed direction early on. That’s why Orr has no hearts. They figured by level 80 you wouldn’t need to be told where to go. You experience the story through exploration (for which there are some achievements in VB), which Verdant Brink and the rest are brimming with.

What I’m hearing is you expected more content direction like the lower levels and didn’t get it so it’s bad design. I can only disagree. Some counter points to consider. The “useless gating” referenced is what made games like metroid popular in design and gave depth to replaying a single map. So there is merit to the design. Anet (and players) wanted horizontal progression which means players will experience some degree of delayed gratification in achieving their goals. Anet might fine tune it later on, totally possible, but expecting most progression features given right away at launch was only ever wishful thinking.

Without heart quests, this game would have died a very quick death. Games often need direction, unless your game is a sand box like Minecraft, in which case the game gives you enough tools and goals inherent within its design to dictate what that direction is without the need of a guide. GW2 is a TERRIBLE sandbox, and its not even marketed as one. Think about it. If you took all the heart quests out of the game, what would you do? Where would you go? How would you level? Stand in one place grinding the same NPCs/events over and over to get any where? Yep, which is precisely why there are so many complaints about HoT right now. They did exactly that.

Case in point, Orr. No one goes there to do anything except farm the temple events, or to do the jumping puzzles for the first time, which are located in very small corners of the map. The rest of the areas on the maps are pointless, and no one ever goes there save for these two reasons. Well, that and story mode stuff I suppose. Yeah, that too I guess, but even then the story modes still occupy even a fraction of the maps actual space.

The vast majority of the expansion maps are meaningless because people are being corralled into one or two specific locations where the events are just to grind in order to progress.

Unloveableone.6082:

Kravick.4906:

CureForLiving.5360:

Ok that’s not true at all. I think you’ve either not played enough or somehow overestimate just how much content was in a living story. I’m not done yet and I can already say there’s at least as much content as in S2.

Well I disagree entirely, and found what was actually there to be quite lacking. Most of the maps are empty of anything actually meaningful. No heart quests, no exploration achievements. You’re guided to where you are by little green dots, and very few of that map space is actually used for anything beyond that. I’ve just found a whole lot of nothing. Yes, NPC enemies and stuff are there, but to what point? Without a reason to be there, its just like Orr. When was the last time you went to Orr for anything other than the Temple events?

Most of the hero points are blocked by useless gating, so even if you do get there, you can’t get them. Just very, very poorly designed.

Full of kitten

OP do not listen to this guy. Both of his posts are pretty misleading.

How are they misleading? This is exactly what I’ve experienced.

Cormac.3871:

Xoei.1597:

Had I known that after purchasing HoT you wouldn’t even get the full experience due to locks on mastery skills and what have you, I would have never purchased it.

I wonder if anyone ever writes on WoW forums that they wouldn’t have bought the expansion if they had known they wouldn’t be able to play at the new top level right away.

No, what WoW did is called progression. Quests and an actual sense of you know, progressing. The new elite specs in GW2 do not improve your character in any way as they are balanced to be equal to the rest of the class, and are intended to be an expansion on to an existing platform. Its not the same.

CureForLiving.5360:

Ok that’s not true at all. I think you’ve either not played enough or somehow overestimate just how much content was in a living story. I’m not done yet and I can already say there’s at least as much content as in S2.

Well I disagree entirely, and found what was actually there to be quite lacking. Most of the maps are empty of anything actually meaningful. No heart quests, no exploration achievements. You’re guided to where you are by little green dots, and very few of that map space is actually used for anything beyond that. I’ve just found a whole lot of nothing. Yes, NPC enemies and stuff are there, but to what point? Without a reason to be there, its just like Orr. When was the last time you went to Orr for anything other than the Temple events?

Most of the hero points are blocked by useless gating, so even if you do get there, you can’t get them. Just very, very poorly designed.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Kravick.4906:

As far as LDoN, that really depends. LDoN dungeons were amazing to level in. I loved the procedural randomness to it, and it made leveling characters a lot faster, and finding groups for LDoNs were a lot easier to do. I will agree with you beyond that. The currency system they added to get the gear from it was very meh, and the raid content introduced in LDoN was extremely bad.

It was grindariffic more than people claim HoT is, if you wanted those augments, those shiny, new, min/maxable augments. And it was boring as all kitty kitty . . .

EQ itself was a grind. Thats basically all that game entailed. LDoNs just provided a place to do that grind without having to worry about people taking mobs from your camp, making that grind seem a bit faster, since there was more stuff to actually kill. I am speaking strickly in a leveling sense, however. Once you got max level, LDoN really was pointless, and there were far better places to grind out AAXP (Plane of Fire/Earth) than in LDoNs.

I would have to say no, do not buy it. The content is very sparse, and locked behind a grind to make it feel like theres more to it than there really is. All in all, I’d say its about one living story episode, maybe two, worth of actual content. Rest is you trying to figure out where to go, then finding out you can’t actually go there until you unlock some useless mastery that requires several million exp to get. you’re basically left grinding the same 2-3 events over and over and over again to get any where.

VB was full for me for the first few hours yesterday, but today, the zone is just devoid of anyone. Yeah, I basically can’t do any of the events solo because they’re not designed to be done by one player. So yeah, I dunno whats going on.

Unless Pooka is a whale (http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/03/01/why-its-scary-when-0-15-mobile-gamers-bring-in-50-of-the-revenue/), ANet won’t care. Of course if Pooka IS a whale… Yeah.

Oh, there are class specific ascended weapons? Thats neat. Do you have a picture for it? I’m curious to see what it looks like. Also, how difficult is it to make? Is there a guide for it some where?

Yeah, sorry, I know. To many questions at once :p