Guild Wars 2

This is absolutely fantastic! Thank you so much engineers!
With the 32x client, I was getting 6-10 FPS in HoT areas and LA, 11-17 FPS elsewhere. With the 64x client, using the same graphics settings, I’m getting 26-30 FPS in HoT & LA, solid 30 FPS elsewhere. I’m using an Alienware M14x laptop running 64x Win7.

Again, this is amazing! Thank you!

When the “Defend the Engineers While they Rebuild the Trebuchets” event is going in Malchor’s Leap, there is a set of risen trebuchets that spawn near enough to the portal to Cursed Shore that they knock the player back through the portal with their projectiles.

As most of you know, while your computer is loading a zone, your character exists and can be damaged. This is especially apparent if you log into an area that has hostiles in it. Normally, this is not much of a problem, because most characters won’t get downed by one or two regular enemies in the time it takes for their computers to load. However, for people who have slow HDDs or any other similar issue: the loading time is extended and serious things can happen to your character while you are unable to control them.

In this case, my character is able to be targetted by the nearest trebuchet, fired upon, and the projectile can travel all the way to me before the loading screen finishes, knocking back my character and forcing me to return to the Cursed Shore. I know I could just use a waypoint, but I’ve been running everywhere in order to save money. Eventually, after around a dozen tries, I simply WP’d. Also, unfortunately, most players don’t really see much purpose in doing events in Orr outside of The Zerg (at least on Crystal Desert) so this event hasn’t been completed for awhile.

Now, I thought I had a pretty good computer. I have an Alienware M14xR2 that I bought new earlier this year. It’s a laptop, so it’s not like I can just head over to a computer store and get a faster HDD, CPU, motherboard, or anything like that. I’m wondering, if I have a new and (what I though was) good computer and I’m still having these issues, how many other people are also having this problem?

TL;DR to clarify: The bug is that the risen trebuchets from the event “Defend the Engineers While they Rebuild the Trebuchets” in Malchor’s Leap knock players back through the zone transition portal into Cursed Shore while they are still in the loading screen, making them unable to go from Cursed Shore to Malchor’s Leap except via WP.

Time Warp is the only elite I use outside of PvP. Even then, I have a hard time taking Moa Morph unless I know I’m going to have a hard time with a specific enemy player.

Mass Invisibility can be amazing, but your group has to be incredibly coordinated to use it properly. The best use I’ve ever made of it was in WvW: We had a caravan assassination team running around a corner toward two of their caravans, and there was a large group composed primarily of Rangers and Eles blocking the way, so I popped MI and we ran right up to them and were able to get away with only a few casualties against a group that was almost twice as large as ours, because we were able to get in their faces without taking damage. That kind of situation rarely comes up in PvE, though. And when it does, Veil is usually better because it doesn’t occupy the elite slot,

I agree with above posters in that Phantasmal Warden and Feedback are amazing, if not critical, in most dungeons. In non-dungeon PvE you can usually run whatever you want and eventually be K with it. But in dungeons, the ranged enemies are deadly. Other utility skills that are very good are Phantasmal Defender, (Sic it on a ranged enemy, and it will either save your teammates by distracting that enemy, or save you by absorbing damage) Signet of Inspiration, (Both the active and the passive are ridiculous in coordinated teams) Null Field, (My friend actually calls it Hax Field haha) Decoy and Blink. (Both are stun breakers that will easily get you out of sticky situations)

Part of playing the Mesmer correctly in dungeons is being incredibly flexible in your utility skills. There’s only a single Mesmer utility skill that deals direct, unconditional damage. (That’d be Mantra of Pain, and the two Phantasms don’t count for obvious reasons) That means that each of your utility skills all serve a very specific purpose and knowing when and which ones to use in various circumstances is a hallmark of a good Mesmer. Switch utility skills often and don’t be afraid to experiment. Stay back from the fight for a couple extra seconds if it means getting your utility skills right. (that’s probably true for all classes, but w/e)

Just remember to charge mantras before you use them, that always gets me in trouble.

I have a bit of coding experience, so I’d like add my two cents to this topic.

Coding things by yourself can be frustrating. Unless you’re constrained by time, most people naturally assume that any code they write is either A) perfect, or only requiring minor changes, or B) only a temporary placeholder, getting what it needs to get done in an unelegant fashion, waiting for other parts to be fixed/completed. All programs have bugs when they’re first written. Heck, for my first semester Java final project in college it took me ~39 hours to iron out enough bugs that it was consistently stable & usable.

Coding things with other people in a sometimes stressful work environment where you are constrained by time can be very difficult. You have to be absolutely, completely organized, giving massive, in-depth descriptions of what every single piece of code you write does; so that someone else can pick it up and work with it on their section of the large project you’re all making. You have to be aware of what everyone else is doing (Or, at the very least, the senior programmers have to) or you may end up repeating work they’ve already done.

As far as finding bugs go, it is sometimes (read: not-that-often) a simple matter of realizing that one thing doesn’t do exactly what you expected it to and changing a few numbers here and there and that bug’s fixed. Other times, it’s a major headache and you have to re-write entire sections of code. This can happen because an output isn’t formatted in the way you need, it doesn’t process inputs in an elegant/efficient way, or any number of reasons.

Other times, it can be futile even trying to find the part of your program that’s buggy. The larger the program gets, the more people work on it, the less code each individual person writes, the more likely it will be that no one will quickly know exactly what part of the code is causing X problem in Y circumstance. So, you have to search through the code; and even with modern, sophisticated searching tools, that takes a long time.

When you’re going off of the bug report of a user who doesn’t know how the program works and likely is wrong about the cause, it can be even more difficult to find that bug, especially if the person does not give any detail at all. (Sidenote: give all the detail you can in bug reports, it really helps)

Once a bug is located, programmers have to do one of two things: A) implement a quick, sometimes dirty, fix that they are pretty sure will work, or B) figure out how to rewrite that section of code correctly, and then do it. After they do that, they have to internally test that part of the program to see if the new code plays nice with everything else. Then, they have to test it internally, which means launching a group of dedicated testers whose sole job is to mess with things that they’re told to mess with and inform the programmer(s) if anything goes wrong.

After it’s been internally tested, that change must be formatted so that the updating program correctly includes and installs the update to everyone, and this means testing the patch of hundreds of computers used specifically for this purpose to make sure that it all installs smoothly.

The change is then noted in the patch notes (although there are thousands of minor, usually unnoticeable changes that never make it into patch notes) and published to the public. After that, a whole new slew of bug reports come in, and some of them may be about the bug that was just ‘fixed.’

As you can see, fixing a bug within a large program is often no easy task, and can frequently be frustrating and very much trial-and-error. I hope you’ve learned something by reading this, and that’s my two cents.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with you.

I thought that the Asura area wasn’t really that much more difficult than other areas. Each area has its enemies that are downright annoying or deadly or both. Each starter area is supposed to be difficult in a different way, but in a way that teaches you how to play the game.

In the Plains of Ashford (Charr) the most annoying/difficult enemies come in the form of the melee & mage ghosts, as well as the Embers scattered throughout. The melee ghosts have a blocking move that inflicts burning on their attacker. The player must learn to avoid attacking them during that time. The mage ghosts and the embers create AoE DoTs that can inflict large amounts of damage if you let yourself stay within them.

In Queensdale, (Human) the two main enemies are the Centaurs and Bandits. The deadliest bandit is the Cutpurse from about levels 8+, which has a whirl finisher that deals tons of damage if you stay next to them, and all of the centaurs have knockdowns. The player must constantly be alert for these threats, and must learn to dodge them in order to succeed.

I will agree that Wayfarer Foothills (Norn) seems to be the easiest starter area. The enemies that require the most tactics are the Wurms (Particularly in that cave with the skill challenge) which have a cripple and bleed that hit you if you are near them when they finish burrowing, which can get an inattentive player killed very easily.

In Caledon Forest (Sylvari) the Krait/Risen and Nightmare Court are of greatest danger. The Krait in CF don’t have anywhere near the number of tricks of their sleeves as they do in later areas, but they do have conditions that must be avoided in underwater combat. Similarly, the main threat of the Risen is their numbers, and the damage buff they give themselves. Because of the clear tooltip on their buff, players can quickly learn to avoid those undead. The Nightmare Court, however, are tricky. Their rangers must be interrupted while they are channeling, their higher-level melee combatants can dodge and poison, and they sometimes have turrets. Players must always be on their toes against the NC.

In Metrica Province, however, the main threat is the Inquest, bar none. Even though there is a great number of Hylek, they do not require enough tactics to defeat to make them a serious threat. The inquest’s tools of destruction come in delayed AoE, tank/AoE golems, frustrating melee Asura; and they have others that can chill or buff their allies. It would take too long to explain how Players learn to cope with the Inquest, so I’ll just leave it there.

Yes, Metrica Province may be the most difficult starter area, but I don’t think it is really as hard as you make it seem.

I also highly doubt that ranged bandits in Brisban Wildlands one-shot players for more than half their health. I’ve gone through Brisban Wildlands on a mesmer who was constantly 3-4 levels below the renown hearts I was doing, and I was never, ever hit for more than half of my health on any attack that was not extremely obvious. Brisban Wildlands (excepting Vandal’s Claim that has a very simple renown heart and the skillpoint just south of it) was a pretty easy area for the four characters I have sent through there.

Also, it might help to build/trait additional toughness or vitality. If you’re building nothing but power or precision and are not actively watching for dodging opportunities, yeah, you’re probably going to die more than players who build/trait at least some toughness.

I’ve had some crazy issues with this as well. I haven’t done a lot of WvW, so I can’t attest to that, but this has happened is several PvE DEs. One was during the centaur fortress meta-event chain in Hirathi Hinterlands, where there was (by my probably erroneous estimation) over a hundred players all running to and from event objectives. Neither my friend nor I could ever see any enemies, we could only see players running back and forth for no reason, spamming their AoE. This eventually got so bad that I didn’t get any event credit for the final boss of that chain because it only showed him near me when he was about half dead, and you know how stingy large boss events are with rewards.

I’ve also had this happen at the end of the Sunless event where you fight the dragon in Sparkfly Fen. The dragon loaded just fine, but none of this minions did. I died twice from invisible minion attacks, and when he summons the bone walls to block/split players up, they never loaded on my screen until they were just about dead.

Even more frustrating, this happens in non-crowded areas too. I will be exploring, trying to get map objectives far out of the way of normal players, and I will see a large enemy fighting an invisible something far in the distance. I want to help, so I give myself bunches of swiftness, but when I arrive, the enemy itself has de-loaded and I can only see the player fighting it. Several seconds later, its corpse appears. This happens maybe once every 2 or 3 minutes of running around.

Here’s my specs:
Windows 7 64-bit
Intel Core i5-3210M CPU, 2.5 GH
6 GB of memory
My internet ranges in speed from 133 to 156 Mb per sec, and has enough bandwidth to handle anything I’ve tested it with.

This is extremely frustrating for me and as I’ve read, for bunches of other players as well.

So I looked this up and found several things:

First, monster aggro is primarily based upon proximity. They usually target the closest hostile thing that they can. However, dealing damage to the monster and its allies nearby increase the amount of aggro it has on you.

Certain abilities gain more aggro than others, and it is dependent upon the monster being targeted. AoE-DPS abilities tend to draw more aggro from trash mobs, and likewise single-target-DPS abilities tend to draw more aggro from bosses.

Unfortunately, that’s all I have been able to find, and most of it is pretty mundane. Although, from personal experience I can tell you that the above is nowhere near all of the aggro calculations that go on. For example, my friend and I play two Norn characters together, I’m an Elementalist and he’s a Thief. He’s about two levels above me at the moment.

When we compare stats, he constantly has higher armor & max life, even when I spec for Earth Magic and Water Magic (the two ele trait lines that give toughness and vitality, respectively). Yet, he always seems to have aggro, almost to the point where I don’t dodge in several large encounters and yet don’t take any damage.

Point in case: I was fighting three melee mobs and each was two levels above me, I get them all down to about 1/4 to 1/3 health each, my Norn Thief friend walks near them trying to get loot on the other side, and each of the mobs instantly uses it’s gapcloser and downs him from about half life, even though I was at less than 10% life and was the only person to ever do damage to them.

So even though he has higher effective max health and usually does about the same damage, he almost always gets aggro. So I really don’t know what’s going on with aggro.

I’ve had this happen twice. The first time I was a Human Mesmer, and my friend was an Asuran Engineer, and we were trying to do my personal storyline (I don’t know which one, because I can’t log in right now, but it was the “Save The Queen” one near the end of the first storyline where you meet the Orders and choose Whispers) inside Divinity’s Reach.

We tried both the overflow server and the real one, and all times we tried to enter the instance it would let me in but not my friend. It was just me and my friend in the party. I was level 44ish and he was level 33ish.

The second time, I was a Human Ranger, and my friend was a Sylvari Necro. We tried to enter his storyline, I don’t know which one, but it was at the end of the “Zalisco Extract” storyline where he chose to follow Pellam. The map was Brisban Wildlands, and we again tried both the overflow and the real server. I was level 22, and so was he.

I agree that this game needs some sort of arena PvP. I don’t generally do much PvP, but in GW1 I absolutely loved the Random Arena (randomly chosen teams from a queue of 4v4) and guild 1v1s. I don’t know if guild 1v1s are in this game yet, but it would be awesome to have some PvP besides zerg-fest WvWvW and MKOTH.