Guild Wars 2

I agree! Thanks to everyone who contributes (here and elsewhere). You guys rock!

I was also somewhat astonished at how little theory crafting seems to be going on for the other classes… half the threads are nearly as old as the game itself (which for many classes means that the guides/resources are totally worthless because of so many buffs/nerfs in the past year). Perhaps most of the decent players have quit or simply re-rolled a Guardian? ;-)

Just a shame that Anet can’t implement a proper search engine on the forums or even create a proper build-repository (like intothemists.com) or simply a forum subsection for theory crafting for each class. It took Blizzard about 6 years to get that together (Armory) so it will probably take Anet about 3 to 4 decades (same as with the non-existent group finder and utterly atrocious auction house).

AzernakO.9627:

Why Shelter over Signet of Resolve?

Shelter will instantly make you (virtually) invulnerable for 2 seconds, by which time the heal will have gone through.

All other heals first require a cast time (during which you are vulnerable) and then apply their heal.

I guess it’s a matter of taste but if you have enough condition removal (so you don’t need the extra passive condition removal from the signet) then running the signet is fairly pointless. In those cases I’d use the human racial healing skill “Prayer of Lyssa” (I think that’s what it’s called) or Shelter. The Prayer of Lyssa has the advantage that it only has a 30 seconds CD (10 seconds shorter then an untraited signet) but heals a good deal more then Shelter (but obviously without any blocking).

Basically, if you’re running a very squishy build (full zerker) then you won’t survive a hit in any difficult content anyway – in those cases Shelter is great because it allows you to ignore an otherwise lethal hit even if you don’t have the energy for a dodge or a blind/block at the ready. And in the rare cases where you don’t get one-shot you still can use Shelter for it’s healing if you really have to.

The same goes for PVP: if you’re in a situation where you need your heal to prevent a death then you likely won’t have 1 second to cast it but instead will be interrupted or killed before the heal goes off. Shelter on the other hand will save you every time.

There’s just something insanely satisfying about charging into a huge hoard of enemies, busting a few heads and then being able to Shelter your way out again. No other heal will do that for you.

I’d say:

In PVP and PVE with a glass canon build -> Shelter
In PVE where conditions are manageable -> Prayer of Lyssa
In PVE where conditions are a problem -> Signet
In PVE when you have the trait to reduce signet CDs -> Signet

Just give each a try and see what you prefer for you gear/traits/playstyle.

Edit: you can also combine Shelter very well with Renewed Focus (the Elite skill that refreshed the CD on all your virtues and grants 2 or 3 seconds of invulnerability, depending on traits). Then you can “virtue bomb” people: charge in there, pop all 3 virtues (this will heal you and give you a new aegis), fire off Renewed Focus, pop all 3 virtues again (for more healing and a new aegis) and then follow up with Shelter if needed. This will grant you 4-5 seconds of virtual immortality and heal you for a crazy amount (and perhaps even blind your enemies, grant you stability, remove conditions etc. depending on your traits). It’s pretty insane… try it! ;-)

PokerTuna.6170:

imho staff is well..boring and a bad choice in PvE even though you get to spam staff 3 for swiftness.

I totally agree. I’m no big fan of the staff but if you’re just running around the map to discover areas, vistas and POI then it’s worth it. You can always switch back to something else once you actually plan on fighting. At least, that’s what I do. ;-)

Hello mate,

In general there is much sound advice in this thread already – I think you should be OK with that.

Concerning your damage: I really wouldn’t worry about your damage all that much at the moment. While leveling you’d have to be updating your gear every few levels to really maximize your DPS – something I don’t think is worth it (unless you’ve got gold to waste of course). Follow the advice here and update your gear (especially weapons) every 10 levels if you can afford it. It usually only costs a few silver and having an up-to-date weapon can make quite a difference. Aside from that I wouldn’t worry about damage output yet – you can worry about that when you reach level 80 and start looking into what playstyle, gear and traits you are going to settle on for your first end-game content.

Concerning your utility skills: I’d use the leveling experience as a testing bed for all your utilities. Try them all out and stay flexible – simply choosing 3 utilities and sticking with them from 0 to 80 will probably work but won’t teach you a lot about the class you’re playing.

Personally what I find the biggest boost to leveling (and not getting bored) is if you have access to permanent or near-permanent swiftness (increases movement speed by 33%). Much of the time spent leveling is not actually fighting and killing things but actually getting from one mob to the next, moving to the next vista, changing area when you run out of quests etc. This makes swiftness a huge deal while leveling.

Think of it like this: if you can get from one place to the next 33% faster then it doesn’t matter if you kill 5% slower – you’ll still be faster then the baseline (obviously if you can both kill fast and have swiftness then that’s even better but getting swiftness is generally a lot easier then updating gear, optimizing traits, buying sigils and runes for your gear etc.)

So how do you easily maintain a high up-time on swiftness? By equipping a Staff as one of your two weapons and by picking the utility skills “Save Yourselves!” and “Retreat!”. What you do then is use the Staff #3 skill (creates a symbol on the ground that grants 8 seconds of swiftness), run through the symbol and once you have swiftness from the symbol use both Retreat and Save Yourselves at the same time. Depending on your gear and traits this should give you about 30ish seconds of swiftness which equals about 50% swiftness up-time (or even closer to 75% if you pick the trait “Superior Aria” (trait II in the Honor line) which reduces the cooldown of your shouts by 20%). Gear, traits and runes that increase Boon Duration (such as Major Runes of the Water – starting at level 39 – will grant you 10% extra boon duration for example and only cost a few silver each) will further increase your swiftness up-time (not to mention all other boons to boot).

Please note: the swiftness granted by the Staff (Symbol of Swiftness) is somewhat strange: you only get the full 8 seconds of swiftness from the symbol if you do not yet have any swiftness. If you already have a swiftness buff then the symbol will only grant you 1 seconds of additional swiftness. So you only use the Staff #3 at the very beginning of the Swiftness-rotation (or when your swiftness falls off completely and you have to re-stack it again).

Be warned though: once you get used to having swiftness it’s virtually impossible to play anymore without it… you’ll feel like you have glue on your boots and might go mad. ;-)

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
- Morthur

Permanent Swiftness – it’s easy to get permanent swiftness as a D/D Ele: just put 10 trait points into air and take the major trait Zephyr’s Boon (grants fury and swiftness when applying an aura – Air Major trait 1). You’ll likely want that trait anyway.

Additionally, you’ll want to bind the “About Face” key to something convenient (Q or V or whatever you like). Pressing this key will turn your camera around 180° which can be very powerful (allows you to look behind you very quickly and useful to stack swiftness with Updraft – see below).

To stack swiftness while travelling around use the following rotation:

Start attuned to Air -> Ride the Lightning (Air #4) (doesn’t grant swiftness but moves you forward kitten fast) -> GoEH (the healing glyph that grants swiftness when used in air) -> Shocking Aura (Air #3) -> while running forward with auto-walk (!!) press the “about face” key and instantly cast Updraft (Air #5) and then press “about face” a second time (this grants swiftness and moves you backwards – that’s why you use “about face” to turn before and after casting) -> Attune to Water -> Frost Aura -> Attune to Air -> rinse and repeat.

Important: “about face” only works as described above if you’re moving forward with auto-walk. Pressing [W] and using “about face” does not work because it will only turn your camera around but your character will still be facing in the same direction. But you get used to that fairly quickly (and this rotation is only intended for travelling anyway).

This should grant you permanent swiftness (or for very low levels near-permanent swiftness at the very least) and allows you to use Ride the Lighting virtually on cool down. Combined this makes you one fast mofo. Great for levelling!

Dear Anet,

Can I please get a confirmation, that the use of programmable gaming hardware such as the G19 keyboard and g600 mouse will not get me banned under any circumstances?

Since GW2 supports the G19 natively I assume it won’t be a problem. However, I’d still like to make sure that I won’t be banned for using any and all features that the official Logitech driver (and tools) allow.

This may also include complex automated sequences of key presses performed in speeds much greater then a normal human could ever achieve (but obviously not true automation – all macros still require user interaction and they don’t “play the game for me” – but they do perform actions much faster then a human ever could).

For example, my fingers are starting to hurt me because of having to spam grenades with the “1” key. I assume I won’t be banned for making a macro that spams the “1” key every 50 milliseconds, will I? How about if I add further skills to the sequence such as spaming “1”, “2” and “F3” every 50 milliseconds? This allows me to spam my damaging grenades every time the cooldown is up (with much less lag time between the end of the cooldown and the skill activation then a normal human could ever achieve). Is this sort of thing forbidden?

So I guess what I’m asking is this: where exactly does Anet draw the line between making life easier on the owners of said hardware (which is the reason people buy these peripherals) and going too far by giving people with these peripherals a unacceptable advantage?

What is the official Anet policy? You officially support the Logitech G-series keyboards so I assume you also have to have some policy for dealing with the automation options that these keyboards bring? (again: I’m talking about using out-of-the-box drivers and tools – not some third party driver that allows way more functionality that could conceivably come very close to true automation)

Or to ask it in a more simple way: as long as I’m actively playing my character (and thus sitting at my computer), do I have to worry when using the full array of features offered by my programmable peripherals?

Thanks for the response.

It’s also very strange how selective these highway bandits operate: they manage to intercept all the mail that the BLTC is sending to me but they seemingly let the courier pass who is carrying my gold to the BLTC.

I think someone at the BLTC must be in cahoots with these bandits – what other explanation is there?!

There is no class that is “Too hard to learn to play”
I mean, is this what people are seriously saying? “Omg, it is too hard, it isnt fair! Make it easier!?” Are you serious? And this is taken into serious consideration by the player base? Really? Do you know how completely ignorant that sounds? No, do not make the players (or anyone for that matter) learn anything new, no, lets force everyone else down. How is “too hard to play” not laughed out of any game forums?

I agree that being “too difficult” is no good reason to change anything about the class. However, I do honestly feel that the more difficult classes should also yield better results when played well. And I feel that this is the area where the Ele is failing. You can play your Ele really well but your damage is still very mediocre compared to many of the other classes.

It should be like this:
- Warrior played by a bad player: mediocre results
- Ele played by a bad player: absolutely dismal results, worse off then the warrior (because, hey, it’s a difficult class to play)

- Warrior played by a decent player: good results
- Ele played by a decent player: good results (roughly on-par with Warrior in PvP and PvE such as being able to kill/farm mobs at the same speed and be able to run dungeons competitively)

- Warrior played by a great player: good results (a bit better then the decent player but not hugely so)
- Ele played by a great player: absolutely out-standing results (way better then a well played warrior in most areas of the game)

As it currently stands an Ele played by a “great” player is about on par with a Warrior played by a “decent” player – and this is unfair.

Complicated classes: yes please. But complicated classes that can’t seriously out-perform the easy ones even when played well: that’s simply unbalanced.

My suggestion: either balance all classes around average (decent) players or balance them around great players but don’t mix the two.

I agree that the N word cannot be “non-offensive”. It’s clearly offensive to use this word no matter what.

However, who cares?

I find this Soccer Mom crap soooo laughable… you release a game that is comprised of nothing except war and killing things (called “PvP” normally) but then you go ban people for being bad boys and using “big boy language”. It’s the hight of hypocrisy if you ask me.

This game already has a language filter and that should be enough to protect the oh-so-sensitive kiddies that play this game.

If that isn’t enough for you then add 18+ servers (only accessible after verifying your age).

Alternatively make two separate language policies: one for the USA (strict) and a second one for the rest of the world (liberal/relaxed). In general only the Americans have this powerful “Soccer Mom lobby” that forces game companies to enforce these laughable censorship rules on their players. Everywhere else it’s acceptable to use bad language (at least here in Europe). (OT: it’s the same with showing naked skin: full frontal nudity is a total no-no in the USA but here in Europe it’s acceptable in certain (non-pornopraphic) contexts – even during prime time TV shows).

Or simply don’t apply for an ESRB rating in the first place and sell the product via online distribution only (then you also don’t need to care about large supermarket chains like WalMart not selling your un-rated or X-rated game). It’s not like this game has an offline mode so all customers have an internet connection anyway.

Normally, things are allowed until they are forbidden, not the other way around. If you disagree then please show me the white-list of things that are not considered an exploit.

If the devs think this kind of use of portals is “evil” or “haxxploitz” or “unfair” or whatever then they can change it. If they don’t change it then they have no problem with it.

Valid tactic. Cry moar.