Guild Wars 2

One of my RAM sticks recently failed when I accidentally hit my PC, so I went from 4GB to 2GB. On a different PC I’m playing at 8GB. GW2 usually uses 1.5 – 2GB of RAM.

2GB is horrible. The game will constantly try to write to the swap file, bringing the game to a crawl.
4GB is a good gameplay experience, if you don’t teleport around much and don’t have tons of background programs.
8GB is perfect.

Given the prices of RAM right now, you can easily go with 8GB.

@Ceallach:
Upgrading from 32 to 64bit is only legal on full retail versions of Windows. OEM versions that came with PCs or were bought seperate (which most people have) only hold the license for either 32 or 64bit

Also, given his setup, I’d advise to consider upgrades in the order of RAM, GPU, CPU, with CPU essentially meaning a new PC.

I’ve been going through the whole thread, and here’s my verdict. I added in notes for the devs at some points, so they know which quests or area I may be referring to, and try to keep them spoiler free.

Skill is a factor, but that factor becomes negligible in Dungeons, certain story quests and 70+ areas.

I have been able to properly solo the game, except for those points. Dungeons encounter design is absolutely horrible – the trashmobs are (by far) harder than the bosses. I was in the level 78 Dungeon two days ago and the first room with trashmobs took us longer than all bosses taken together, which I could mostly faceroll through. There were mobs that one-shotted me. Especially gun-based mobs killed me 100% of the time if they took aim, since evasive manoeuvres can only deflect parts of their barrages, and some of their attacks even one-shotted me. The best designed dungeon so far was Caudecus’ Mansion.

Story Quests become pretty horrible after level 40 and have obviously not been through that many QA sessions. Some story quests I could just avoid the enemies for the most part (Lions Arch, Vigil, Invasion), others I had to do in groups (hint: lv48, skritt, queen - lv71, tonn, wife - lv??, lions arch, underwater), and some were just outright bugged (the one in the sewers - enemies just bugged behind walls). There are situations where you can’t help but have 3 enemies attack you, and for any Ele, that’s just deadly.

And then, there are Level 70+ Areas. These are, frankly, simply not ready at all. Enemies aggro over ridiculous distances. It’s almost impossible in many areas to avoid fighting more than one enemy. The majority seems to have a pullback ability, during which the player usually crosses the aggro range of at least one more enemy. Positioning is horrible. Kharma quests are not implemented. With my level 80 char in a 75 area, I need to fight every normal enemy as if it’s a veteran enemy and have to wait after each fight to have my abilities available again. The only other class that, in this area, at least remotely has similar problems are Mesmers, and they have their mirror image.

My final verdict:
Most of the game, the Elementalist is easily soloable.

The rest of the game simply shouldn’t have been released in this state and makes me wonder what happened to the “We will not release the game before it’s ready” statement. It’s more of a balancing and encounter design issue than a class problem, really.