Guild Wars 2

dank.3680:

Just wanna say Kain could have likely won this match if they just took smart advantage of the opportunities presented by Ferg controlling a lot of Devona’s BL. Instead they attack us on Devona BL and our own map. Silly

Lol that was me… and about 9 other guys…

We enjoy killing bads with red names floating above their heads. Every once in a while we like to pretend that we are tactical, but the most important thing to me right now is that I got 1150 more badges to farm for another invader set.

The upgrade system is flawed. Many players neglect upgrades altogether due their high price. I’ve seen instances in my home server where a tower sits at 100/100 supply with no upgrades queued. In the lower server brackets, this trivializes supply camps and dolyaks. The high price of upgrades places individual power and server strength in the hands of those willing to foot the bill.

In a game mode where every man should count and every man should have a duty, we need a solution. This is mine:

Allow players to contribute to an “upgrade fund” within their respective tower/keep/castle. That way all players can pitch in with whatever amount they feel inclined to contribute. If I want a Waypoint to Stonemist, but I only have 2c, that’s fine, because I can put 1c in the upgrade fund and feel like I’ve done my server good.

This week is very challenging. It seems as if our guild meets greater resistance and responsiveness from Ferg and DR every day. We’re continuing to do what we do best, but there’s new pressure for us to up our game and communicate effectively with Kaineng at large.

I think I’ve seen more numbers come out this week than any other week. That goes for all 3 sides. I’m excited for a new level of competitiveness, and I’m looking forward to seeing the more influential guilds expand their playerbase and increase the general skill level.

Something has to be done about the rez situation, no doubt.

I run with a 10-15 man group of very skilled players, and we love the challenge of facing larger numbers. However, the rez mechanic is an endless frustration for us. When we surprise attack 40 people, we may down 15-20 immediately, but after that initial hit, we are forced to address a few enemies running about insta-rezzing those we already downed/killed while an ever-increasing number begins to fight back.

It’s a dismal situation, and the advantage is ALWAYS with the numbers.

Man, it’s getting to the point that DR’s sheer population advantage serves as a regenerating outer meat shield for their tower/keep gates. By the time we manage to cut through 200 of the 500 PRO guys defending a keep, 100 have returned from a nearby waypoint. Then a guildmate takes a smoke break, and 60-70 Devona’s Rest dudes don’t get killed for the next three and a half minutes. Our situation is dismal, but we are trying. Personally, I don’t mind – I’m trying to farm enough badges for the full Invader gear set. Keep up the good work.

I really enjoy fighting Envy. It’s like playing whack-a-mole. You never know where they will pop back up after stealthing. I also enjoy fighting PRO. It’s like taking a ride in a $500,000 columbine that’s air conditioned and GPS-guided. You don’t even have to think to reap the harvest.

Yesterday I was fighting in Eternal Battlegrounds, trying to secure the red corner of the map. We held Overlook, but at some point blue managed sneakily and quickly capture Ogrewatch.

I decided I would best be used by setting up a trebuchet at Overlook in order to take down the wall at Ogrewatch. So that’s what I did. For nearly 5 minutes I pound Ogrewatch, and when I finally break the wall, my team pours in for the cap. Now, here’s where I make a mistake. I decide to continue to support with the trebuchet, by shooting poison and AOE at the boss and guards in the capture ring. They die and my team caps Ogrewatch.

Guess what? I didn’t get a single kittening copper or karma. Working as intended?

I put Ruby Orbs in everything. They fit my particular playstyle nicely. I use GS + Sword/Pistol and focus on keeping up heavy damage-dealing phantasms. From what I understand, special bonuses such as the Sigil of Force (5% damage) or Rune of the Scholar (10% when health is above 90%) , DO NOT get applied to phantasms. This is a deal breaker for me! Don’t forget orbs are hella cheap.

But honestly, I’ve not done any testing myself. I really need to go into the mists and do some number crunching, at least before I decide to go full Exquisite Ruby Jewels in my upgrade slots.

I have a dual core AMD 2.8GHz processor, and I get 4-7 fps during large events (Dragons etc.) and WvW sieges and zergs. I’ve been reduced to playing mostly PvE and dungeons, where I can maintain 20+ fps. It’s a shame, really, because I love WvW, but the most I can do is roll with a 5 man group for capturing small objectives, and even then if my group encounters a small invader team, I can hardly be effective in combat.

Thanks for the extra info aaron. I’ve read in another thread that power bonuses are instead healing bonuses. After scanning the Game Bugs forum and reading the 10/7 patch notes, it appears that many runes are not functioning as intended. These issues are being addressed, but I selfishly hope Rune of the Pack is next in line. :P

Superior Rune of the Pack is bugged. The Major version could be bugged as well, but I have not tested it. The (4) effect (5% chance to grant nearby allies might, fury, and swiftness when you attack. (Cooldown: 10s)) is completely broken. The effect visuals activate sometimes when you are hit, but never when you attack. Also, no bonuses are granted.

The (4) effect activates incorrectly, and even when it does, it grants no bonuses.

I like to farm my own mats too! I like to be self-sufficient and get the whole experience of whatever task I set out to do. That said, the DR does make it painful to get specific mats without buying them.

To answer your question, I have two chars (one 80 one 67). The other day I was progressing through my 67’s story line, and subsequently got A LOT of drops. I decided to let that character “cooldown” and hop on my lvl 80 that I have parked in a spot I like to farm for tier 5 mats. I’ve done this practice many times while leveling my alt, but yesterday I noticed that the drops on my 80 when farming were WAY below what I averaged there in the past.

This leads me to believe that the DR has been changed from “soulbound” to account bound. Much more testing needs to be done to confirm this though. (OR ANET COULD TALK TO US)

I think ANet will get around to it. I mean, NO ONE is investing in healing power, and if they are, it is within the nicheiest of niche build. As others have said, the game is suffering from major playability issues right now, and I doubt there is time for major balance overhauls.

I’ve been hit by this too, albeit for only 420 karma. I meant to preview a piece of armor, and a couple misclicks later it was in my inventory and I was out 420 karma. I weep for you my friend. Option 2 would be easy to implement.

Perhaps they could do the same for, say, cultural armor dealers. The system doesn’t need to be item-specific, but merchant specific. Certain key purchases (that don’t happen frequently) could certainly use a confirmation.

Superior Rune of the Monk. I have 2 of them, and I want 6! They are special to me because I earned them both by opening loots chests within Ascalonian Catacombs. Soon, I plan to level an Elementalist with which I will focus on support/heal in dungeons and WvW. My Superior Rune of the Monk set will augment my build perfectly! Isn’t it nice that rare loot I’ve found works out like that?! There’s one problem though – they are soulbound on acquire, and they are in the name of my Warrior.

I have no problem tolerating the fact that this item is not meant to be in the player market, but that doesn’t mean it has to be useless! And useless is exactly what it is to me, with it being stuck on my Warrior. On second thought, I can use it as Mystic Forge fodder or sell it to a merchant for 2s 16c, but there are items designed for those purposes (Mystic Coins and trophies, respectively). This is a rune we are talking about, and I want to use it as a rune, but I can’t.

Please make looted runes account bound.

Calsie.2501:

This thread makes me sad. I don’t enjoy the economic side of MMO’s. I want to have fun. Worrying about money is for real life.

Currently at level 56, I’m watching every penny and hoping things improve at 80. If I have to turn my gameplay focus towards how I can earn gold, I can’t see how I’ll enjoy playing long-term. I won’t buy gold. It feels like cheating.

Other MMO’s have gold-sinks but I’ve never felt as poor and limited as I do in this game.

Wow, really? I have maxed two crafting professions and have nearly all exotic gear. I’ve spent MAYBE 4g on the TP. With a bit of ingenuity, you can do everything in this game with little-to-no spending involved. I think this game is really refreshing in that regard. I don’t have to have certain gear(wealth) to do this activity etc.

On a side note, I think GW2’s approach with money sinks can be summarized with this:

Earning money is rewarded. Having money is not rewarded. If you have money, you will lose money, unless you earn more. This is important, because if simply having money was rewarded, new players would be perpetually behind the economic curve.

Silver Chopper.4506:

Sir Blazin.9365:

I play GW2 “honestly,” and I make frequent use of waypoints. Sure, I’ll run here and there from time to time, or I’ll use Asura Gates, but I still end up using waypoints a couple of times during my sessions. However, I’m consistently bringing in more money than I spend on waypoints.

Please understand the purpose of waypoints fees. They are a money sink. Even someone like myself who spends little to no money through the TP or NPC merchants must spend in some silver at some point. There’s purpose in that. It reduces the liquidity (overall volume) of money in the game, which is important to maintaining a healthy in-game economy.

Funny you should say that. Because reading the trading forum, the devs acknowledge that the scarcity of gold drives prices on everything down. Everything sells for dirt cheap because people don’t want to spend hard earned gold. Demand is very low. As an example, just yesterday I purchased 500 cookies (player crafted items) for 5 silver.

So no, low liquidity doesn’t create healthy economy. I’m not an expert, I might be wrong, but that’s what I see now.

You’re right, it does affect the economy in a way that “drives everything down,” but this effect actively counters inflation. ANet wants stability in their economy, but this (more importantly) translates into accessibility. The people who are hitting 80 now are able to afford many different things. They have access to many goods, whether that be crafting materials or that one exotic weapon etc. However, will the players who first hit 80 in a year or two have the same access to goods? They won’t if prices on everything is constantly increasing due to the lose of value of gold decreasing due to an overall saturated volume of gold in the economy. I hope this makes sense lol.

The WP fee is not the only goldsink in the game, but it is one of the most universal goldsinks along with repair fees and skill book fees.

You can enter the Heart of the Mists and use PvP gear and damage dummies to test out the real effect of stats on your damage output and damage mitigation. No one can tell you what’s the best. Test it for yourself. It’s a time consuming process, but in the end you’ll be more sure of what you need and how you should invest your gold in the PvE realm.

I play GW2 “honestly,” and I make frequent use of waypoints. Sure, I’ll run here and there from time to time, or I’ll use Asura Gates, but I still end up using waypoints a couple of times during my sessions. However, I’m consistently bringing in more money than I spend on waypoints.

Please understand the purpose of waypoints fees. They are a money sink. Even someone like myself who spends little to no money through the TP or NPC merchants must spend in some silver at some point. There’s purpose in that. It reduces the liquidity (overall volume) of money in the game, which is important to maintaining a healthy in-game economy.

If there were no bleed cap (or any other condition cap), boss mobs would lose health at an ever increasing rate. At 10% health a mob would be dying exponentially faster than at 90% health. Or, take poison for instance, which stacks by duration. A boss mob could potentially be poisoned for hours. A capless condition system presents many, many problems, and I ask that you address these problems in your thread.

The tooltips in this game are bad. The summaries for skills, traits and items are often inaccurate or ambiguous. Take one of the engineer’s traits for example: its tooltip reads “explosives cause bleeding.” Cool, but how many things explode when using the engineer? Lots. How many things cause bleeding when they explode (after picking aforementioned trait)? Not lots. I wish I could be more specific, but by the very nature of this issue, that’s the best I can do.

I think ANet would do good to have ONE person that hand-tests all content, formulating new and improved summaries. One person, that way the summary style of GW2 tooltips are uniform, predictable and (above all) accurate.

You really have to know what you want to do and how you will go about doing it to be an effective engineer. Engis are a sort of jack-of-all-trades class. That being said, a few things you might decide you want to do will simply be ineffective no matter how you go about doing it (e.g. flamethrower or toolkit) because they are broken or underpowered.

If you thought necro was “bad” you will probably think engis are “bad.” I personally suggest a Warrior. I have a level 20 warrior that is hitting as hard as my level 80 engi, and I feel “good.”

I like the “conal” effect when using Coated Bullets (pistol shots pierce). I admit its damage is not much greater than autoattacking, but it hits faster, allowing for quicker application of “on crit” abilities. Also, I find that I miss only 0-2 shots if I run towards my target while firing.

A lot of issues are making the engineer more difficult and clumsy to play than it should be, but pistol #2 is not one of those issues.

Condition builds are great. As an engineer in a group setting, you will probably benefit your teammates more by running a condition build, since engis have such a diverse array of conditions and ability to spread them easily.

PvE:

I use pistol/shield. Pistol/pistol is nice for the burning, but I never have a problem applying burning through the use of that trait. Rocket turret is great for burning too (it’s really the only viable damage turret.) I also like using the “50% chance on crit to inflict vulnerability” trait. Elixir Gun is my kit of choice, and aforementioned trait combined with EG’s #3 allows me to reliably stack 6-7 vulnerabilities. Stacking vuln is really important when not soloing, as it effectively increases all teammate dps. An important final tier trait I take is the one in Firepower that causes pistol shots to pierce (just like the Rifle.) Simply line the mobs up – if you’ve ever used the rifle, this is second nature. With pistol it’s even more amazing. Everything in a line is hit and bleeds with a chance to burn and become vulnerable. Your skill #2 essentially becomes “rapidly shoot and apply poison to all target in a cone.”

Now, if you’re doing it right, you will be forcing yourself into potentially dangerous positions for the sake of optimizing your damage-everything-in-a-line playstyle. That’s why I run the shield: #4 lets me shake ‘em off if I get swarmed and #5 lets me stop/block dangerous channels. Plus I’m tankier. I’ve already said I use Elixir Gun for stacking vuln, but it’s other uses are invaluable to me. It basically turns me into a kiting machine. I shoot #5 in the direction that I plan to kite, shoot #2, and shoot #4, launching myself into #5’s regen pool. Skill #4 is the deal breaker for this kit. The launch-back is enormous, and the acid pool you leave behind will tick for 700-900. That’s a huge tick, on top of the other conditions that should be ticking on your target.

I totally forgot to mention the confuse and blind on pistol #3. The amount of conditions at an engineer’s disposal at any one time defines the class for me. It’s all about knowing what to apply, when, and how often depending on the encounter. It’s fun and very rewarding.

TL;DR – My way of playing condition damage Engi is the best way.

lorazcyk.8927:

So couldn’t they just buff that status effect to be powerful enough compared to weapons of your level? (with power precision condition damage)

No. Some Engineers may want to build toughness or vitality or healing power. One of my favorite builds for dungeons is moderate condition damage and moderate healing. I take pistol/shield and the Elixir Gun. When I swap to the Elixir Gun, it’s either to cripple, stack vulnerability, leap backwards, or AoE heal. I could care less about offensive stats – I just want to maintain the defense my shield provides. Furthermore, I would like to see my “chance to heal” and “chance to remove boon” sigils work when I use the kit.

A lot of people gripe about kits being underpowered, but the real issue here is a lack of customization.

This can’t be a legitimate issue… Personally, I use the Elixir Gun a lot, and I never have a problem with conditions. ONE slot (not to mention it expands into 4 additional skill) that takes care of all my condition-related worries. So that’s ZERO traits used and ZERO runes/sigil slots used. If, say, the Elixir Gun didn’t solve all your condition problems (like it does for me), you have a wealth of other ways to remove conditions. Maybe you don’t want to use the Elixir Gun? Guess what! You just freed up a skill slot. The possibilities for all the different ways you can cure conditions is huge. I just don’t understand.

I think the OP said it best in his very first sentence of the thread:

Lyuben.2613:

Not sure the best way to describe the problem.

MAYBE BECAUSE THERE ISN’T ONE.

Graywolf.6513:

While it is not AS needed in vertical systems, that is only if you are damage focused. If i spec my gear for longevity so i can survive and support with my elixir gun or what evs, i lose my survivability by using a kit. Because the only scaled stats are damage based. It would be OP to give all kits a boost to all stats to cover all possible weapons they could have, so it needs to either take our weapon stats into account, or leave us as damage gremlins.

Thank you Graywolf. Your point makes stat/sigil sharing a legitimate issue. To further elaborate, here’s an example. An engineer might chose to roll a shield for dungeons. Hell, he might even pick up the “+90 Toughness with shield equipped” trait. Perhaps he wants to support with strong AoE healing/regen as well. He uses +Healing Power pistol and shield with a “chance to heal” sigil and (of course) the Elixir Gun kit for its 5 ability and Toolbelt skill. The problem? He will lose all his +Healing Power, +Toughness, and his “chance to heal” with the Elixir Gun out. This is a scenario where the issue really comes to light: when an engineer wants to play in a manner that doesn’t solely focus on damage (as they more than often do).

Engineer is a great class! I have my gripes about it, but I’ve played it since day one. Basically there’s a lot of special-case needs the engineer has that I would like to see addressed. Atm it’s kinda confusing to understand what ANet wants to do with the engineer, and I honestly get the impression that they might be confused themselves. The engineer will really shine though if ANet listens to us and balances them accordingly (not neccesary in accordance to what we say) while talking to the community and explaining the changes. That’s my hope, anyways.

I picked up the trait which gives +90 toughness when a shield is equipped, but I discovered that I lose this bonus when I swap to a kit. Actually, I was trying to work out a build with the Wrench Kit, and, needing a healthy amount of survivability, I thought that might be a good source. Not so