Guild Wars 2

My biggest issue with the circle is its opacity. Makes my herald the only toon that I have trouble with on jumping puzzles. If the circle didn’t blot out the terrain entirely, I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with it.

Blah I am at 9000 KB downloaded moving at 2KB/sec. Looks like tonight is a Fallout 4 night.

Just confirmed that charging the “Oiled Orichalcum Shield Boss” works at the “Abyssal Depths [Hero Challenge]” in Verdant Brink. I previously tried charging the item at a mastery point location and it did not work. My guess is it only works at Hero Challenges that you commune with.

Thanks for the clarification Sina. Hope this gets resolved soon.

I noticed today that my spirits and pet count toward the 5-target cap for my spirit’s pulsing auras. So with 4 spirits summoned (Water spirit, Sun spirit, Stone spirit, Frost spirit) only my pet and spirits are benefiting from the spirit auras. Why are ranger spirits and pets prioritized higher than players to receive spirit auras? I can’t even benefit from my Nature’s Vengeance boons in the crowded open world environment.

This makes it entirely pointless to stack multiple spirits. I really hope this isn’t intended.

Defense: The possibilities are many. Double blink. Double decoy and Mirror Images. Pop shatters for condi cleanse (Inspiration line), and reset them with F5.

Offense: Double elite skill (I drop Time Warp twice in PvE). Tides of Time (shield skill 5) twice for great aoe control/damage/quickness and be sure to touch both returning waves for -20sec to the recharge.

If I’m aiming to maximize the use for F5, I aim to pop all of my instant casts (clone generators and shatters) and use one cast ability (like Time Warp) during the allotted time.

@Mash Hog: As stated before, Heat Sync is working for me in Verdant Brink (the first PvE zone in HoT). I have not tried it in any other zone, SPvP, or WvW.

They must have hotfixed this ability today because it is working and sharing all boons once again (not just might and fury).

I’m having a lot of success with S/W using celestial ascended gear. I’m stacking boon duration in my build and playing supportively in group events. Gotta keep those fragile zerkers alive.

The only part of the build that seems underwhelming right now is the water attunement overload. It just doesn’t do very much imo. Maybe my opinion of it will change once I unlock the rest of the tempest traits.

I did check my bank and I’m familiar with the changes to the costume/outfit system. What I’m missing are pretty much my five 20-slot boxes, all musical instruments, and various gem store toy items. I’ve already changed my password. I’ll get on the authentication today. Thanks for the advice!

I just returned from a long break from the game to find that several items are missing from my characters. I can’t seem to find the five 20-slot boxes I once used on my characters. Also missing are a number of gem store items including musical instruments, gathering tools, and the unlimited airship pass. Any help locating these items would be much appreciated.

Aster.8190:

Echoing this. I can load the home page of the gem store, and the trading post, and can pick up my items that I bough off the TP, but pages relative to the Gem Store are not loading for me at all, period. I did a bug report, but given this is apparently a month+ old issue, I’m immediately pessimistic and only just started playing again. ^^;; PLEASE fix this issue… pretty please.

Same issue for me after this most recent update (March 4). I regularly spent gems without a problem before this patch, but now I can’t load any page of the Gem Store except the home page (and even that’s unreliable). Hope this is patched soon so I can take advantage of the March sales.

I had objections to Grenth’s one-hit KOs because my success depended on how good the player next to me was (and vice-versa). I don’t feel so bad about having insanely difficult fights like this in the gauntlet because it is entirely solo. I love that I’m having to swap utilities, elites, and traits to adapt to each fight. It makes me feel like I’ve grown to learn my class well enough to adapt to difficult fights on the fly. I have yet to see anyone walk by me with the Liadri minipet, but if I do see him I’ll be sure to give him a /cheer. That player is GOOD.

I’m 0/23 on Liadri attempts. That kitten is going down!

I use sword 2 and greatsword 3 as leap finishers, usually in my own water field for the extra healing. This already feels like enough finishers to keep the melee ranger skill-based without feeling overpowered.

To answer your question: if the sword 1 chain attack had a leap finisher, then the finishers would feel like much less of an accomplishment. The attack chain is pretty fast, so activating an automatic leap finisher every few seconds would give us tons of benefit in whatever field we stand in (ethereal fields would give us tons of chaos armor, water fields would give us tons of healing) without us doing much work.

This is purely speculation on my part, but I think the designers wanted leap finishers to remain attached to cooldowns so that the player would be challenged to use them at the most opportune moment instead of spamming them whenever possible.

Wanderer.5471:

Quickness doesn’t reduce DPS during quickness by the amount it reduces speed, and doesn’t reduce overall DPS by finding out how often you have quickness up.

This logic assumes every shot is a guaranteed hit. Maybe that is the correct math to use for PvE logic, in PvP it really isn’t. So many people seem unable to grasp this concept I thought it was deserving of it’s own thread.

The quickness nerf hits so hard in PvP because it means animations are much slower and are therefore much more easily blocked or evaded. If you’re using 10 attacks, hitting a dumb PvE mob 50% slower with quickness, that’s 50% less DPS during quickness, 6% less overall or whatever it was worked out to be for most people.

In PvP if 7 of those 10 attacks are blocked, evaded or otherwise negated (anyone who plays PvP well knows this is totally reasonable to assume) then your DPS is massively lowered both during quickness, and overall as you’ve burned your high-damage skills/condition-stacking skills during quickness like any good player would, and have to wait for their CDs so you’re basically just auto-attacking most of the time, with probably one more skill rotation until zephyr’s speed is up again.

As any good PvP player will tell you, this decimates the effectiveness of any build that relies on ranger weapon skills for a main source of damage – berserker builds, condition builds, hybrids etc. I am not commenting on whether this was good for balance or not, but it was a huge nerf to rangers (and others – let’s have a moment of silence for warriors) in PvP.

Your example of PvE quickness isn’t a correct representation of how the math works. I’ll give an example:

Without quickness, you are attacking at 100% speed. This is your baseline speed.
With quickness, you attack at 150% speed. That’s a 50% dps increase during quickness.
The old quickness gave us 200% speed. That was a 100% dps increase during quickness.

The nerf brought quickness down from 200% dps to 150% dps. That’s a 25% decrease, not the 50% decrease you claimed.

Not sure if you understood this and accidentally mixed up the numbers, but I thought this deserved some clarity anyway.

Some studios take rum donations. ANet takes butterfly cookies.

This thread is full of win.

Well I found the lvl 80 exotic vendor now, but he was on the opposite side of the camp from the other three armor vendors. Wish the change had been more obvious before I threw away all of my remaining badges on useless lvl 70 gear.

Not sure about ANet’s policy on armor refunds, but I went ahead and opened a ticket anyway. Now I’ll just hope and pray…

I really don’t think I’m confusing the vendors. Could you check to see if the Armor Master [Armorsmith] vendor sells level 80 exotics for you? A few of us have already checked and we only see lvl 70 exotic invader armor that can be bought with WvW badges.

Thanks much!

I saw three vendors in wvw: the karma armor and weapon vendor, the badge exotic weapon vendor, and the badge exotic armor vendor. Is there a fourth that I’m not aware of? I’m pretty sure I’ve purchased lvl 80 exotics from this same vendor when I was gearing up my warrior and thief. If this npc has not changed, then what he is selling HAS changed. He used to sell exotic armor that scaled to whatever level you were at the time of purchase, but now the gear stops scaling past 70.

I’m wondering if this is a bug or not, because I just wasted nearly 2k wvw badges on lvl 70 exotic gear. The WvW badge gear vendor sells lvl 70 exotic invader’s gear even when I’m on my lvl 80 ranger. I hit 80 last night and rushed out to one of the enemy’s borderlands to purchase weapons and gear and didn’t realize they weren’t lvl 80 until I compared them to dungeon gear.

Totally didn’t see this change explained in the patch notes anywhere, so I didn’t even think to check twice that the gear was indeed lvl 80 exotic. Can anyone let me know if this is a bug or not? Also will I be able to undo the transaction and get my badges back?

Thanks, I’ll consider buying the cards then. It’s not that I don’t use my credit card on the net, it’s that I can only use it for my account, and then all gems become account bound. I’m just trying to do this without giving my card info to too many people.

RainbowSyrup.4130:

I’ve used 3 makeover kits on my elementalist now, but I think I finally nailed it :P

Awesome look! I like how an ordinary staff can look so legendary on sylvari. Inspiring stuff!

I’m wondering if there is a way to pay for a couple of server transfers for my friends without us exchanging credit card info or account login information. I wanted to send gems to them to purchase the transfer, but I don’t believe that is currently possible. I suppose I could buy gems, convert it to gold, mail them the gold, and let them purchase the necessary gems, but we would be losing out on 30% value due to the gold to gem exchange tax.

Any advice is welcome.

Based on Habib’s comment in that interview, it seems like the new WvW specializations will be character based by necessity, not artificial game length via addition of grind per character.

What will make the difference to me is how deep the specialization goes. If it is just a buch of minor % resists and there is no consequence to choosing one spec over another, then farming this “world exp” on multiple characters will feel like a real grind because they are all similar anyway. I’m hoping that each character’s spec will feel sufficiently unique so that large groups can begin to assign sub-roles beyond the character’s profession.

Just to give an example of what I’m thinking: strike teams will want to specialize in abilities to combat guards and transport supply, while zerg players will specialize in supply capacity and combat vs. siege on walls. What I’m afraid will happen is that characters will have access to all of these perks/abilities despite the ones you actively slot, creating an identical grind for every single character.

The following is the complete error code:

Attempt to reset the display driver and recover from timeout failed.

STOP: 0×00000116 (0xFFFFFA800738A010, 0xFFFFF8800F38EAC4, 0×0000000000000000, 0×0000000000000002)

nv1ddmkm.sys – Address FFFFF8800F38EAC4 base at FFFFF8800F245000, DateStamp 4fece178

zerk.9701:

Start in safe mode, uninstall video driver, reinstall video driver from disc then update it.
If the error code looks like this.
STOP – 0×00000116
(0×86739008, 0×8d0d2a80, 0×00000000, 0×00000002)
NV1DDMKM.SYS
If not post the rest of the error code.

Uninstalled the graphic driver in safe mode and reinstalled it from the disc. The error code on the BSOD is the same as the one you posted, except for the memory addresses.

A fresh install of windows is what I’m trying to avoid, as I don’t have my music files backed up. I’d like to exhaust every solution before reinstalling.

I’ll try to get the error code from the BSOD.

Edit: Error code is 0×00000116

Just had a crash this morning and thought I’d post here looking for pointers.

Programs running before crash: Mozilla firefox, iTunes, Guild Wars 2, GameBooster

Crash description: Quickly minimized/maximized gw2, graphics slowed to a halt, both monitors lost signal, BSOD and memory dump

Current Situation: Restarting computer results in windows 7 trying to load, but locking up before the user login screen and going straight to BSOD and memory dump

Things I’ve Tried:
-automatic startup repair from hard drive, attempts to repair but does not succeed
-repair feature from windows 7 disc, attempts to repair but does not succeed
-command prompt from windows 7 disc, FixMbr and FixBoot completed successfully but did not resolve the issue

I actually like the difficulty for lvl 80s in dungeons. At low levels, dungeons are a challenge to even survive, so I don’t bother doing them until max level. I wish ANet could somehow buff the survivability of lowbies while preserving the current difficulty for lvl 80s.

I’ve seen posts by ANet devs claiming that they don’t feel dungeons are harder for low 80s. I have personally experienced the exact opposite of this. Dungeons as a lowbie are a struggle to stay alive to deal what little damage you can to bosses before inevitably going down. This contrasts with lvl 80 gameplay being borderline faceroll with a well-geared and properly traited group.

I understand that people get more skilled with their class on their way to 80, and the ANet devs believe it is this skill that accounts for the disparity in performance between a lowbie and an 80 in a dungeon. I just feel that the dungeons shouldn’t be quite so harsh at low levels. If I could change the dungeon scaling system, I would give lowbies bonus toughness/vitality at lower levels to match or surpass the survivability of a well-geared lvl 80. This bonus would diminish and eventually disappear as you approached 80. I feel this would create a more level playing field and encourage groups to bring more lowbies along.

TLDR: I prefer level playing fields. Just my 2 copper.

Tried this build and it is easily the best hammer warrior build I’ve ever used in organized WvW raids. The immobilize alone makes it fantastic, but the utilities you chose really make this build feel like a juggernaut.

My gear choices for this build:
PTV armor (slotted with emerald orbs)
PTV hammer and greatsword (sigil of bloodlust on hammer, sigil undecided on greatsword)
PTV back and jewelry (slotted with emerald orbs)

Thanks for the advice, Xiv!

Looks interesting, I’ll give this a try. Bookmarked.

Blackgate just opened grenth at 12:26 CST.

Make one change and this fight will be one of the most fun in the game: fatal fall damage sends you into the downed state, not defeated. Even if this only takes effect in the temple of grenth, this change would make this fight worth farming again.

It’s pretty common knowledge that grenth is easiest with a handful of people. The problem is, ANet’s manifesto claims that “players should welcome the addition of other players to the fight” in the open world. This is FAR from what happens at grenth. On any given night, there are a dedicated 5-8 people that know grenth’s strat solidly and could take him down if they were the only ones there. The problem occurs when pugs show up. Random players that may not know the strat, or are in magic find gear, or maybe have latency issues that prevent them from dodging grenth’s mechanics. They scale up the difficulty so far that the few of us alive get overwhelmed by shades and eventually caught in a gravity well without endurance.

Grenth is probably not that hard of a boss for former WoW raiders and the like, but when you drop it in the open world, you include the possibility of random pugs strolling in, scaling up the difficulty, and lying dead on the floor the entire fight. This is what makes grenth so difficult for us.

Going straight to defeated due to fall damage makes grenth the most frustrating boss currently in the game. Seems like the best chance to defeat grenth is solo, or with a couple of pro dodgers with 1500 range and a pro melee to tank him in the back. As it stands, I dread seeing large numbers of players approaching grenth. Chances are they’re not all pro (myself included) and inevitably we will have to carry the weight of the newer people.

Battles of this difficulty have no business being in the open world, where the caliber of player fighting beside you is beyond your control. Leave hard fights for instances so small groups can strategize over voice chat.

Been trying all day and all night on Blackgate, and still no luck. Seems the latest strategy is to waypoint rush when you die. I wish I could say this fight was challenging and engaging, but several of us are exhausted and quitting for the night. Feels like wiping all night to the same WoW raid boss all over again. You’re killing my drive to play this game, ANet.

The new grenth.

Just.

Awful.

I’m wondering about this fight with so many shades one-shotting people. Shades use their vampiric touch for ~1.7k damage on my engi (with 18k health), and I go down in 2 hits. Something is not registering in the combat log for shades, or their vampiric touch is doing way more than 1.7k damage.

Gravity drop damage is quite alright, but dying in midair is still not fun. There is no point to having a downed state if the boss is going to kill you with drop damage and send you right into the defeated state. With over 3 deaths per fight, hardly any mob loot, and only greens from the chest, this encounter is looking more and more pointless.

Excellent patch so far, with the Orr revamp being the crown jewel. Orr is now much friendlier to solo players, but there are more than enough players to farm most of the group events.

I have yet to test out the lower levels to see how the scaling has changed, but I’m hoping the difficulty will be higher than before.

It may be early, but I found that a small team works best with the current difficulty. With just a few players, his aoe does less damage and won’t 1 shot you. Take a few 1500 range dps to stay on grenth, and a couple melee to handle shades. Should have him down in no time.

Just noticed in Frostgorge today that dredge are blinded by my engineer’s flash grenade. I recall these mobs being immune to my thief’s blinding powder, so I wonder if this is a bug specific to the engineer’s grenade kit.

At first I assumed it was simply a UI bug that showed blindness when there actually was none, but I noticed the dredge were indeed missing attacks as a result of the blindness.

This might sound silly, but have you checked on the headset to see if there is a switch to change the audio setting from stereo to surround? I just got my G930 headset and it has a manual switch just below the power button that turns on surround.

Hope this helps, and best of luck with your headset!

This thread has pretty much echoed my thoughts exactly. GW2 needs much better placement of its music on its maps. If I could make a single change, I would lower the battle music threshold to encounters with one or two mobs. It really is sad when you and 20 other people are fighting a champion at the end of a long DE chain and the music that is playing is the ambient exploration tune.

TLDR: You have great music in GW2. Let it play more frequently and strategically!

I’m surprised to see someone complain that “ANet is too greedy” and only wants to sell stuff in their gem store. Have you been online for the free monthly updates? They are the most impressive patches of free content I’ve seen in any MMO, even rivaling subscription-based games. All that we’ve seen from ANet so far points to the fact that they are the LEAST greedy MMO on the market.

I’ve been of the opinion that they aren’t trying to sell enough stuff in the gem store. I’m not looking for 25-dollar sparkle ponies, but I’d like to see more permanent upgrades instead of one-time services. The addition of makeover kits was nice—I hope even more permanent items/effects hit the store this year.

The key to these mobs is never to let them hit anyone. They won’t stack frenzy and will be slow and easy to kite. I would advise melee to try a ranged weapon on these mobs unless you are really proficient at dodging.

1v1 they are easycakes, even as melee

1 v zerg they become a wipefest

It’s clear pretty frequently on Gate of Madness. I’m not in Cursed Shore every night, but when I am we have groups doing temples. Best of luck.

I think hammer skin preference really depends on your choice of armor and armor dye. I wanted a rugged look with a solid hammer that looked physically top-heavy.

Here is what I went with:

Weapon: Dredge Pulverizer (weaponsmithing)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Dredge_Pulverizer.jpg

Armor: Plated set from Iron Marches Karma Vendors
http://www.gw2armor.com/human/male/k6/heavy/display_looks.php

Hope this helps you in your search!

If there are any melee in your group, this exploit will only slow you down. Stairs might be easier, but remind your group that fighting legitimately on the ground is almost always quicker.

Theres a bunch of sad players on Gate of Madness right now thanks to this bug that drops morale by 50% after the second or third wave of mobs. Even throughout the event, the pact morale seems to take sudden dives for no apparent reason. The NPCs seem to tank mobs quite well, but sometimes pact morale just inexplicably drops by 20% or more. It is quite frustrating that our server is having a hard time reaching balthazar without 40+ people zerging this pact morale event.

Things I love about GW2:

Combat is fun and engaging. I’ve played six different professions to 40+ and each one feels distinct. I find it difficult to stick with a single profession because I’ve experienced how fun each one can be.

Dynamic events make the world feel like an RTS. There are some zones where this is more true than others, but one of my favorites is Harathi Hinterlands. The war with the centaurs is amazing fun and it’s no wonder there are zergs of people there throughout the day.

Level and loot scaling make low level content more challenging and relevant. This is really what I’ve been looking for in previous MMOs. I hate seeing an entire zone become a waste of time to visit simply because I’ve progressed past its level. Level scaling ensures that I can revisit places and enjoy fun combat while loot scaling ensures I’m not wasting my time there. I would imagine the zone designers have a great satisfaction knowing that the product of their hard work and creativity can still be meaningfully enjoyed years from now.

Class archetypes aren’t all that specialized. You don’t simply specialize into dps, control, or support to the exclusion of all else. The best groups have individuals doing a combination of all three of these.

The painterly aesthetics of the world. Sometimes GW2 feels like a painting come to life.

Cross-server groups make dungeon groups much easier to form. There may not be any LFG system in-game yet, but thanks to GW2LFG.com, players can quickly form dungeon groups.