Guild Wars 2

Well if that’s the case, then we should be given the choice of where that overflow XP should go. Maybe have a “Primary” and “Secondary” mastery track if it’s that kind of mechanic. If it’s not going to go into the current track for the reason you describe, I’d much rather see it go toward Legendary crafting than into Fractals.

That completely misses the point. The method or speed of getting XP isn’t the issue, the mastery item which gets auto-selected after completion of the currently selected item is the issue. What you suggest has nothing do with the game’s automatic mastery selection behavior described above.

(Edited to add: maybe this should be moved to the “bugs” forum?)

This seems to apply mainly to Central Tyria masteries, but I’m not sure I understand why overflow XP doesn’t simply get assigned into the next mastery item on the same line/tree. By “overflow XP” I mean experience that is earned after gaining enough to assign mastery points but before actually doing so. If you’re in the middle of an event chain or something else that requires your active attention, sometimes you don’t have the time to stop everything and assign mastery points, then manually pick the next one you want to train.

I’ve been working on Pact Commander, and it seems that as soon as I hit enough XP to spend the mastery points, any overflow XP gets automatically assigned to Fractal Attunement I instead of simply moving down to the next item in the Pact Commander list. Due to this auto-selection, I’m about halfway done with Fractal Attunement I, which I have never actively chosen to train and am simply not focused on yet.

I was wondering why it was taking so long to finish anything, but now I know that the instant I can train a mastery I had better drop everything and assign points, then manually select the next mastery to train in order for those points to go where I want them (which is idiotic). Why doesn’t overflow XP simply get assigned to the same tree you’re currently focused on, and only auto-change mastery trees when you have fully completed the selected one?

Also, Wings of the Sunless.

The height of the window is not affected. Logging in or zoning seems to be the most common trigger, but not always. It doesn’t matter how wide I set it to or how often I do it, the panel will randomly reset itself to 4 cells wide, guaranteed. It started right around the last BWE I think. Wasn’t this bug fixed at least once already? Why is it back?

Running reasonably well on Win10 so far…I’ve noticed some lag issues with keyboard commands (might be a Logitech wireless thing), and when rezoning the screen starts off dim then comes up to normal brightness (almost certainly related to the NVidia issue). Other than those two minor annoyances, it runs just fine.

I suppose I can understand some of the complaints about this issue since GWAMM is definitely a huge grind to get, but some of the “fix” suggestions I’ve seen in this thread are just way over the top.

I occasionally create new toons just to farm transmute charges (100% city exploration gives you a charge for minimal time & effort with no risk). I had no idea this bug was even a thing until I did a few transmute-farming runs and suddenly I had some AP I didn’t have before (I was between AP chests so it didn’t give me enough for the next level). Then I discovered the title bug here in forums, looked and sure enough I had GWAMM in the available options. Since I already had 36 HoM points, the only things the bug gifted me was maybe a week’s worth of AP and an unearned title I don’t care about anyway.

Should I be banned or have all of the rewards which I did earn removed? Of course not, but some of the revert suggestions here would amount to that. If the title and AP get pulled, no great loss because once I had earned the tangible benefits I didn’t care enough to keep grinding for the title. The ranger pets are just skins since none of them have unique mechanics and a week’s worth of AP isn’t even worth worrying about IMO, but yes I understand that some people got much more than that due to AP reward levels. As long as the AP reward chests are once-per-account, leaving them alone and just reverting the total AP count seems to be the most reasonable fix.

I can totally sympathize with the people who are complaining about not being able to get their legitimate rewards, though. The free-to-apply heritage skins are nice to have while you’re leveling a toon so you don’t look like a scrub until Lv80, and the Fiery Dragon Sword is ‘the brightest light source in the game for the wielder’ (plus it’s the only one a warrior or thief can use).

tl;dr — By all means revert the unearned title and AP and re-enable the HoM, but going beyond that seems like curing the disease by killing the patient.

I would buy that if the lag affected the mouse interface too. Thing is, when I notice it I can mouse-click on the appropriate “interact” option in the UI and it processes as normal. It’s only keyboard commands that are affected, and only since the patch. Very strange, and bloody annoying.

This has only been a problem since the update dropped, and I’ve been waiting to see a fix in the patch notes but nothing so far. It’s not the standard skill lag we’ve all seen with the pulsing skill icon, it’s just nothing. Press F to talk, pick up, whatever, nothing happens. Press a skill key, nothing happens. Press Enter to open the chat, nothing happens. Then anywhere from 10 seconds to a full minute later, it suddenly catches up and dumps everything into the buffer all at once. This only happens in GW2 and only since the patch, no other program does it or I’d suspect my wireless keyboard’s battery power. Is there a fix in the pipeline for this?

FPS dropped by about a third with this patch. Not just an AMD or Mac issue either, I run an NVidia GTX580 on Win7 Pro (x64).

Nothing much to add but another “me too.” Skills don’t work about 75% of the time in PvP but movement, chat and everything else is fine. Either skills behave like the key wasn’t even pressed or they go on full CD without actually launching the skill. Occasionally I’ll get the pulsing skill icon bug too, where a skill looks like it’s trying to do something but actually does nothing.

This is game-breaking, Anet. If you want PvP to ever be an esport, maybe you should make sure the game works right first. I won’t even consider buying HoT unless you start a major (and public) seek-and-destroy Bug Hunt in the core game first, and I doubt I’m the only one.

It would be nice to once again have a way to track where you are personally in the login reward rotation, since there’s no longer a set schedule like “today everyone completing dailies gets X.” That way we would have a personalized list to know how many logins remain until obtaining a desired reward.

Maybe ANet could re-add the dropdown arrow to the Hero > Achievements panel under the Dailies, where the old Monthlies list was? Not sure why that got removed rather than just reworked to fit the new system, tbh.

Bump, still borked. Also doesn’t seem to matter if it’s the necro’s own skill that applies swiftness to the necro or an ally’s class skill that does it. Example: in borderlands at Bay, a ranger or war uses their warhorn IMR skill, you get swiftness and jump into the water to swim across. Swim over to the dock and jump out maybe 3 seconds later, no more swiftness. Same with Locust Swarm on land (whether Banshee’s Wail is traited or not) or Spectral Walk used either while underwater or on land. Swiftness persists when you enter the water, but vanishes when you exit the water. And of course if it’s your skill, it’s on full CD while you get no benefit from it because reasons.

Apparently a long-standing bug, why is this not fixed yet?

How about instead of trading in the unpacked tools, let’s have an option to trade in 3 of the green toolboxes for 1 yellow toolbox?

This way either you take whatever RNGesus gives you from a green, or simply trade in 3 RNG chances for the guarantee of getting the exact gathering tool you want from a yellow.

My necro main’s current pseudo-steampunk look is mostly Asura light T1 with some other stuff mixed in. My charr warrior doesn’t have any two pieces from the same set. The look isn’t current because I’ve changed her armor and just haven’t bothered to reskin it yet, but she looked amazing in it and will again.

GW2 consists of more than PvE, and PvE consists of more than dungeons. It is ridiculous to paint broad swaths of the playerbase with the “bad players” brush, when you’re really only talking about rapidly completing very tiny slices of highly scripted, instanced content in a game that is far, far larger than that. So you’ve got a specific recipe for beating less than 5% of the game in the fastest, most efficient manner possible. Congratulations, I guess?

If the claim is that people are “bad dungeon runners” for not running berserker gear stats, that’s highly debatable but at least a legitimate debate can be had. OTOH generically painting all non-berserkers as “bad players,” which has been consistently happening in this thread, is so far out of bounds that it qualifies as flat-out trolling.

I’ll also go out on a limb here and suggest that many if not most people don’t give a skritt’s backside about efficiency or optimization when it comes to their choices in entertainment content: “Gabriel Iglesias delivers a higher average ratio of laughs per minute than Chris Rock, so to maximize comedic efficiency nobody should listen to Chris Rock. Those who do are bad at consuming entertainment content.”

And none of this has anything to do with a DPS meter.

I don’t play thieves at all (don’t care for the playstyle) and even I could tell that Caithe’s bar has both op and lolwut? skills on it. But as a lot of people have pointed out, this is basically a GW1 Bonus Pack type instance so you have to play the skill bar you’re given. Fine.

Then please give us Caithe’s trait point allocations as well as her skill bar, instead of jamming us into her skillset with our trait lineup, which may or may not work.

My necro had a terrible time with this, because his trait point allocations did not complement Caithe’s required skills at all. If you’re going to force an NPC’s skillset on us temporarily, you could at least have the courtesy of also temporarily giving us that NPC’s trait points, so we can actually be effective without needing to respec for a completely unfamiliar build and/or profession.

We can make Undead slaying potions (Zhaitan), Icebrood slaying potions (Jormag) and Destroyer slaying potions (Primordus), so why not for the other dragon minions? Setting the lack of a potion for Kralkatorrik’s Branded minions aside for the moment, how about something like this for Mordrem:

Powerful Potion of Mordrem Slaying

Nourishment (1h): +10% damage vs. Mordrem
-10% damage from Mordrem
+10% experience from kills
Self Poison: 10 s (840 damage)

• 1 Jug of Water
• 1 Pile of Crystalline Dust
• 250 Bloodstone Dust
• 25 Nopales

Make the recipe cost 400 Bandit Crests, just like the other recipes offered in the Silverwastes. The recipe (makes 5 potions) should be account-bound on acquire but the end-result potions should be sellable on the TP. BS dust is account-bound but that doesn’t necessarily mean something made with it has to be: see also Damask, Deldrimor Steel and Elonian Leather which are sellable despite containing account-bound mats.

Powerful-level only because for the most part Mordrem are Lv80 content anyway. The water and crystalline dust are common to all powerful slaying potions. A full stack of BS dust because it drops all over Tyria so why not put in a better sink than Mawdrey II for the blasted stuff? The nopales because they’re an ingredient with very few other uses which can only be found in Mordrem-infested areas, and since they have thorns they kind of fit the thorned-vine theme of Mordremoth.

The self-poison (similar to a corruption but as strong as Signet of Spite) should be there because as the Priory’s Chef Robertus pointed out, no good can come from feeding BS dust to living beings. That Norn from the story instance can be the recipe vendor, with some tale about trying to make food with BS dust but since it all turned out to be poisonous, selling this recipe to adventurers was the best he could do.

I just want “report” to also auto-block. When reporting gold sellers, a second step to block their spam from the chat window really shouldn’t be necessary.

Blue is labeled Indigo and vice versa. Talk to any scout near Camp Resolve to see it.

Pristine Toxic Spore Sample gathering node for the home instance, please. Preferably not nerfed; I mean a cluster of 3 plants, with 1-3 usable samples per harvest, exactly like the nodes in the wild worked during Season 1.

Thanks for that, it worked pretty well. I don’t have any condi gear though, so the fight went longer than yours. I used scepter/sword with shatters for the little guys’ attacks since the blocks on scepter #2 and sword #4 generate extra clones, then swapped to the staff and clone-bombed the big one like you showed (with some added damage from mantra of pain). It wasn’t as quick as your kill since I wasn’t spec’d for condition damage at all, but it worked just fine. Thanks again.

One of these, maybe?

http://www.oguraflute.com/video_gallery

The Silverwastes events also drop a lot of items which salvage to cloth. My Lv80 using the Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic tends to get mostly silk.

Nope. I have multiple chat tabs set, with “Game Messages” off for all but one. These bright yellow messages show up on every tab, regardless of the checkbox setting.

This was only a minor annoyance during the LS1 Scarlet attacks as it was infrequent, but in the new area every single stage of every single event throws a big yellow notification both in the middle of the screen and in chat. Since the events in Silverwastes are near-constant, the end result is an unending stream of event spam with only occasional short breaks, no matter how you have your chat settings.

These notifications can and should easily be handled via the existing Dynamic Event message system, with the orange notifiers on the side of the window and no corresponding chat intrusion. Is it really necessary for these particular event messages to have exactly the same notification priority as “a new build is available,” and if so can we please at least have the option to uncheck a box somewhere so they don’t fill the chat window with event spam? I would rather keep track of guild/whispers/map/say chat than be flooded with event messages that could easily be handled with the existing event notification system.

Candy corn is also used in several chef recipes. The price won’t be very high since the event is over, but there should always be at least some demand for it.

Sola, I thought it was impossible for a solo necro the first few times I tried with my usual power build. It was really easy as a Minion Master though, so maybe give that a try.

Traits 4-0-6-4-0:
?? – IX / III – X – XI / ?? – II
Utilities:
Bone Minions
Bone Fiend
Shadow Fiend
Elite:
Flesh Golem

Minions won’t work for the next Facet, but for this one they’re great. Once you’ve beaten it, you can switch your specs for the next fight to whatever you like.

This is a long-standing problem, affecting pretty much any NPC dialogue that has voiceover regardless of which story segment you’re in. Sometimes you can restore the audio by changing your camera angle (rotating around to find the “sweet spot”), but usually not. Complicating matters, often if you find the right camera angle for one NPC that was affected, suddenly you can’t hear one that you could hear before. It’s really irritating, and IIRC it started right around the same time that this bug got patched. There were never any audio issues before that. Ever since, I’ve had this exact maddening 3D audio positioning issue. Not that I’m all that stoked to hear Trahearne’s dull voice again, but it’s annoying to only hear partial conversations when you know the whole thing is there.

To quote Stephane Lo Presti on a different but related GW1 topic a couple years ago:

Those items have been exclusive for years. If you haven’t gotten enjoyment out of your pumpkin head by now, then it isn’t really the item that you love – it’s the fact that someone else doesn’t have it. A hat is an item that is bound to your character, and the prestige associated relies on standing in an outpost and hoping that someone notices your character. I feel more comfortable offering up items like these than I do offering exclusives that convey tangible benefits, or undermine the spirit in which they were given. Festivals are a reason for players to get together and have fun in the game, and the hat is a nice bonus/reason for being there. With some of our holidays (Halloween, Wintersday), being there for those finales isn’t always possible, and we’ve made a few changes to make some of them more accessible. But there’s been no shortage of people asking to have a way to get hats from years prior.

Emphasis added. (source)

I can understand having limited runs on tonics, minis, cosmetic skins and seasonal materials like snowflakes, nougat etc., but I cannot think of any good reason why crafting recipes (which provide functional and economic benefits) should only be made available during a specific one-off event, and then are never made available again. It’s even worse when some of those limited recipes are account bound on acquire so you can’t even get them on the TP. I’m talking about sigil, rune and food recipes that were only available during LW season 1, but there may be other “retirees” too.

There were recipes made available during several of the LWS1 episodes which are now impossible (or nearly so) to obtain, and this basically gives some players an exclusive market position on functional (as opposed to merely cosmetic) items. As it stands, no functional equivalents exist for the majority of these limited-run items. Some of the recipes are still available on the TP, but once the existing stock of them is sold there will be no more.

• Sigils
  • Bursting
  • Malice
  • Momentum
  • Renewal
• Runes
  • Exuberance
  • Perplexity
  • Resistance
  • Tormenting
• Food
  • Dragon’s Revelry Starcake
  • Marjory’s Experimental Chili
  • Bowl of Garlic Kale Sautee
  • Bowl of Refugee’s Beet Soup
  • Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup
  • Bowl of Zesty Turnip Soup
  • Carrot Soufflé
  • Mushroom Loaf
  • Plate of Frostgorge Clams
  • Plate of Spicy Herbed Chicken
  • Spicy Marinated Mushroom

Cosmetic items like skins and so forth are not relevant to this post, but the recipes for functional items should be made available again. With their continued unavailability, players who were able to obtain these recipes (during very brief windows of access) have effectively been granted permanent patents on those functional products by Anet.

If that’s the case, then either those “trophies” need to be recategorized more sensibly, or the bag’s function needs to be changed to work more like the collections tab. That category scheme may mechanically be the explanation for the bag sorting behavior, but it doesn’t make any sense from the perspective of these items’ primary intended use, which is what should really matter.

The consumable thing makes at least some sense but even if ectos, obby shards and so forth are technically “trophies,” their only actual use is in crafting, so they should automatically go in the friggin’ bag. It’s starting to look like not a bug, but instead sloppy design (shadow.6174 got it right). Besides, hasn’t the point of all the recent changes allegedly been to streamline the interface and make it more intuitive?

Again: If “Deposit All Materials” works on a given material in your inventory, it should always auto-sort into the craftsman’s bag (if there’s enough room in the bag). If the deposit function doesn’t work on that material, it should not auto-sort into that bag type.

I’m unsure whether this is a bug or not, but most materials auto-sort into the craftsman’s bags while certain others don’t. This affects all slot sizes of the craftsman’s bags, seems to be an issue only with specific materials, and there doesn’t seem to be any particular rhyme or reason for the ones affected.

I thought it might have something to do with materials being tiered or untiered (with the untiered ones not auto-sorting into the bags), but after looking at material tiers on the wiki, that doesn’t seem to entirely be the case. Some of the untiered mats auto-sort themselves into the craftsman’s bags and some don’t. It also doesn’t seem to be related to item quality (basic, fine, rare, etc.).

For example, if you open trick-or-treat bags, candy corn lands in your regular bags but skulls, nougat and fangs go into the craftsman’s bag as they should. You could look at it as “candy corn is also a consumable so it goes in your main bags (see also Rice in Bulk) plus it’s basic while the others are rare,” but then how do you explain ectos, obby shards or dark matter?

Examples of the ones that don’t auto-sort into the craftsman’s bags (there may be others I’m forgetting):

• Glob of Ectoplasm
• Obsidian Shard
• Glob of Dark Matter
• Candy Corn
• Rice Ball
• Mystic Coin

On a related note, there are things that are only used as crafting materials which do auto-sort into the craftsman’s bags but don’t have corresponding storage slots in the bank (I’m looking at you, Blade Shards), but that missing slot is a separate issue.

tl;dr – If “Deposit All Materials” works on a given material in your inventory, it should always auto-sort into the craftsman’s bag (if there’s enough room in the bag). If the deposit function doesn’t work on that material, it should not auto-sort into that bag type. The craftsman’s bag doesn’t work as described for all materials.

Just to sum up for clarity:

• The sigil and gift recipes are only sourced from a temporary/seasonal vendor, so those recipes must be purchased during the event. Otherwise, you must spend game gold for the recipes on the TP once the event is over.
• Nothing actually gets “disabled,” so if you have the recipes and materials for the gift, sigil and staff, you can craft/forge any or all of them at any time of the year.

Am I understanding all of that correctly? The wording on the wiki is really misleading if that’s the case, and that’s probably where most players are going to look rather than here in the forums. Continued ability to trade in for refined versions of all the holiday mats (or at the very least the Tyria’s Best Nougat Centers needed for the gift recipe) might be another question worth answering.

It would still really be helpful to have some official word on all of this, since it looks like it hasn’t been consistent from year to year.

I got both points of view from people in chat both in and out of my guild, so I went to the wiki. The wiki is where I came up with a big WTF because of this quote: “All three mystic forge recipes related to this weapon are only available during Halloween and are disabled after the festivities conclude.” I was reading that as the gift recipe, the sigil recipe (if the 3 versions are considered as 1 thing), and the weapon recipe itself. Then I came to the forums and found basically the same conflicting info as in game chat. If the staff is in fact craftable outside the Halloween event then that wiki page should probably be edited to specify that only the sigil and gift recipes get disabled.

The seasonal mats are not really a big deal since they drop like rain in the labyrinth this year, but the lodestones are another story. Not to mention that CoE has been more or less abandoned during times I can play because of the holiday events, so even with begging guildies and trying to pug there’s not much chance at getting the necessary quantity of Knowledge Crystals until the event wraps up. If I don’t have enough to make the thing until Thanksgiving or later, that’s fine. I just want to be sure that I won’t have to wait another whole year just to make it, since I already have the sigils and the gift recipe now.

The wiki and forums have conflicting/unclear information on this, so can someone from Anet please clarify?

• Wiki – staff CANNOT be crafted outside the Halloween event: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Crossing
• Forums – staff CANNOT be crafted outside the Halloween event: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/The-Crossing-Staff/2997867
• Forums – staff CAN be crafted outside the Halloween event: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/Can-I-craft-The-Crossing-staff-now/first#post4375901

I know that the recipes for Gift of Souls and the three versions of Superior Sigil of the Night (artificer/huntsman/weaponsmith) are only available during the event, but that’s not what I’m getting at. Those recipes are only seasonally available, that’s clear enough. What’s not clear is whether the staff itself is only seasonally craftable, or whether you can get those seasonal recipes during the event, then craft the staff itself later once you have assembled all the materials. If it’s only craftable during the Halloween event, then you only have two weeks to get all of this (also assumes crafting the sigils):

• 12,000 candy corn
• 10,000 nougat centers
• 500 Knowledge Crystals (from CoE)
• 270 Orichalcum Ingots
• 100 Crystal Lodestones
• 100 Mystic Coins
• 40 Globs of Ectoplasm
• 40 bottles of Elonian Wine
• 20 Onyx/Charged/Glacial Lodestones (artificer/huntsman/weaponsmith)
• 10 piles of Crystalline Dust
• 1 Eldritch Scroll

This isn’t a complaint about the cost (although it’s pretty steep). I want the staff and am completely willing to sink the materials into making it. This is a question about the time allotted to get all of that together. If you already have the recipes for the sigil and the gift, can you make the staff in the Mystic Forge at any time, or do you only have two weeks and if you can’t grind all that out in such a short time (or don’t have the game gold to buy it outright) you’re out of luck?

Due to the conflicting and unclear information cited above, an official answer from Anet would be appreciated.

We can’t dye weapons and that’s probably not going to change, but for those of us who want a color-coordinated look, it would be nice to know which colors those weapons actually use. For example, the Viridian weapons (toughness) don’t appear to actually use Viridian Dye, there is no such thing as Citrine dye to compare to the Citrine weapons (precision), the Crimson weapons (power) don’t match the crazy expensive Crimson dye etc.

Any ideas on which armor dyes are the closest visual matches for Ascended weapons? I know Lt/Med/Hvy armors all show colors differently because of the different materials, but there has to be some way to at least get close.

I like the elites, but you may have missed an opportunity with the Elementalist. How about a fire-based skill named “Hot Wings?”

How about giving us some new gem store options to customize the mostly pointless home instance, because why not? Consider these for starters:

Useful NPC’s

• Golem banker
• Standard merchant
• Black Lion Trader
• Guild NPC’s
• etc.

More gathering nodes

• Pristine Toxic Spore Sample
• Iron/Platinum/Mithril 3-pack
• etc., but see below

Feedback – Basic Ore Node Pack
Guild/consumable/banner/etc gathering bonuses apply to the yield from every gathering node in the game except these three.

I realize it said right on the description 3 ore, but all mining nodes have a minimum of 3 output regardless of type or tool quality. Mining a node means you swing a pick 3 times, resulting in no less than 1 item per strike, usable or not. I figured that was a guaranteed minimum instead of an output cap and that they would work like any other node of their type, but they don’t.

Was it the intention to make these noticeably inferior to literally all other nodes in the game, especially the others in the home instance? If so, please disregard the above node suggestions because if hard-capped at minimum output like these are, they’re not worth buying.

So how about those who had work schedules and/or real-life commitments during LS segments? kitten them, they should have blown all that off to get those meta-grinds done, is that it?

If any staff members are reading this, there are a couple things I’d like clarified:

(Four Winds) Will the home instance quartz mining node be obtainable?

(Queen’s Pavilion) Will the exclusive crafting recipes be available from the racial city representatives?

I run high-level toons with the QD train fairly often, but I do wish it was elsewhere. It’s not a matter of the spectacular loot (mostly blues/greens with the very occasional yellow) or the karma/XP (meh), and the money is a joke. I run it because the drops can be salvaged for the base mats, which are almost always worth more than the items themselves: for the most part you get whatever level your salvage kit is capable of. It’s just less time consuming than trying to figure out where the gathering nodes got moved to each day. As others have mentioned, it’s also a good way to get certain dailies & monthlies knocked out quickly. I love the idea of bringing back the pavilion and if that happened I would abandon QD and not look back, but for now there are a lot of reasons why it persists:

• The FGS train isn’t quite as stable and predictable as it used to be since the order was switched around.
• World boss runs and EotM can be hard for lower-spec PC’s to handle even at minimum settings.
• Many players either aren’t in Orr yet or dislike it for other reasons.
• LFG dungeon runs can be really particular if you’re not running one of the “approved” classes/builds.

Yes the QD train is dull and the rewards aren’t great, but there’s a low bar to entry and depending on what you’re after, the rewards are reliable and roughly proportional to the effort. Yes there are a few jerks who will get abusive in map chat if their precious rotation gets broken, but they are definitely a minority and usually someone will tell them to chill out. That said, people who deliberately mess with the rotation are kidding themselves if they think they’re accomplishing anything other than being minor annoyances for a short time. The economic incentives of the train guarantee that it will continue as soon as they move on, as if they had never been there in the first place.

tl;dr: ANet’s staff economist needs to look more at the overall incentives. This isn’t a dev or even a player problem, it’s just the natural result of the economy that they’ve deployed.

Ticket 558779 (opened Apr 20) needs review please.

On Kaineng yesterday, [DD] and [RaW] ran it as a two-guild mission, 1200 no problem. Not sure about non-organized runs for our server, but I’m sure it’s happened more than just that once.

Is there a full list of GW2.EXE run switches somewhere? I only know of a few:

• -repair
• -image
• -mapLoadInfo

There have to be more options than this.

See also this post, which has a screenshot of the exact problem:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Takes-5-minutes-to-load

This is a problem in the game itself, it’s got nothing to do with being run on a Mac.

The OP’s list above is NOT a Mac-only thing, and it’s very likely nothing to do with the client computer at all. I’ve been having basically identical issues on an older Windows 7 Pro 64-bit box. My machine’s configuration hasn’t been changed every two weeks for the last year (excepting Windows Update, it hasn’t really changed much at all). One of the first troubleshooting questions any tech should ask is “has anything been changed on your computer recently, like software installations or updates, new or removed hardware, etc.” At launch, the game was beautiful, ran smoothly and had minimal lag. Then the LS started to happen and functionality went straight to hell. It had been a gradual process of getting worse and worse, but after the two Nightmare Tower releases the bugs have accelerated completely out of control. I’ve had to drop my graphics & audio settings down to the barest minimum just to be able to play the game at all, where before I could comfortably run mid-grade settings with a few extra graphical shinies added.

Now, it’s zone/load times of up to 2 minutes (tested via the -mapLoadInfo command line switch), and then once you have the game back, the ground occasionally doesn’t exist as the OP describes above. This is especially freaky when entering Divinity’s Reach via the Shaemoor entrance, because you have buildings and people basically floating in mid-air all along the ramps in front of you, and when you move (if movement is even possible, sometimes it isn’t) it looks as if you’re running on nothing. The normal stone streets haven’t been drawn yet, so there is NOTHING to represent the ground. At the top by Minister’s waypoint, you can see through where the floor should be all the way down to the crafting stations below. I’ve been standing in the main BLTC store in LA at login, and the same issue, only the ship that it’s made from has no deck, so you can see the water below…then the sewer channels draw…and then finally the BLTC has a visible deck to stand on again. This whole process -- from entering the portal to a new zone up until everything is fully visible and working again — can take up to 7 minutes before the game is playable.

This is recent, it is not a problem with the player’s hardware or OS, it was introduced in the LS and the bugs are now starting to compound on top of each other. At this rate, I expect a complete cascading failure of the game client at some point in early Spring, which will simply prevent it from running at all.

I guess I should have mentioned that this isn’t intended to be a static build, so much as a framework I can hang various utilities on without a full re-spec. The bit where I went nuts with condi removal is thanks to ANet’s habit of often making it into a bad joke: “Oh, you removed (condition name here) did you? Well imma just re-apply another couple stacks of that 1 second later, so you’re still affected but now your (removal skill name here) is on cooldown, lol.” Let’s face it, in PUGS and the larger raids there are always too many L2P one trick ponies (autoattack glass cannons). The idea is to keep them on their feet doing their one trick, but even if we do need their DPS I’m not interested in healing them. If they can’t manage that for themselves, we’re better off with them dead. And don’t get me started on guardians who are too interested in DPSing to assist the rest of the group.

I traited the scepter for increased cast speed only because it’s so ridiculously slow to begin with, and it can provide more shatter ammo over time than any other weapon we have. I really only like the focus for Temporal Curtain, because I’ve never been impressed with Phantasmal Warden and the update hasn’t changed my opinion much. It went from doing great damage until the target moved 2 inches, to spending more time chasing than attacking. Whatever. I agree on how handy Feedback is, and (depending on the fight) I’ll swap 7 or 8 out for it. Signet of Midnight is the easiest to get rid of, since it’s only there to stretch boons long enough to get a fat stack to share before I burn Signet of Inspiration’s cooldown.

Yeah PVT is meh, but it can soak up a lot more punishment than my preferred gear can. My go-to build emphasizes mobility and versatility, so most of the time soaking up lots of damage isn’t really necessary. The best way to take less damage is to not get hit in the first place. When the issue is basically PEBKAC and there’s no real way to avoid it, you need a workaround. I’m willing to take one for the team and run with specs I’d rather not, if it means the difference between first-assault success or wipe after wipe.

I have 3 main PvE builds that I go into town and re-spec for, depending on what I’m getting into (I miss GW1 build templates). This one is pretty new for me, basically focused on ally support during group events like world bosses, zergs etc. The others are far more damage-oriented, and I like to experiment with other builds from time to time too. Basically my job with this build is to keep my allies standing, condition-free and DPSing. I keep them going so it’s easier for them to focus on taking the enemy down. If there’s a Guardian in the group too, even better.

I like how it works so far (very few downed allies for Dwayna temple, FE, Shaman etc) but I feel like there are some tweaks that could make it better; not really looking for a major overhaul. Anyway, I’m throwing it out there to the Great and Gorgeous Mesmer Collective for suggestions.

Human male, lv80
DOM 0
DUEL 0
CHAOS 20 II, X
INSPIR 30 IV, VII, XI
ILLUS 20 III, VII

(All equipment lv80 exotic with superior upgrades unless otherwise noted)
Staff: Dire, sigil of Rage (came with staff, sigil can definitely be changed)
Scepter: Carrion, sigil of Corruption
Focus: Assassin’s, Major sigil of Bursting (superior = $$$$)
Armor: 5x Soldier’s, 1x Rabid, 6x rune of the Pack
Trinkets: 2x Rampager’s, 1x Soldier’s, 1x Carrion, 2x Celestial (one is Ascended ring)

Skill6: Antitoxin Spray
Skill7: Phantasmal Disenchanter
Skill8: Signet of Midnight
Skill9: Signet of Inspiration
Elite: Avatar of Melandru

You can see this build has lots of AOE boons & condi removal, while inflicting conditions with pretty much everything else. The armor is basically PVT with added condition damage, the same trinkets are shared across all my builds. Antitoxin Spray isn’t much of a skill for the 25 SP it cost, but for this kind of build it does what I want it to do. I love Null Field and use it in the other builds, but that’s a single cast and long cooldown — Shattered Conditions gives me 4 instant-cast PBAOE condi removes plus whatever the Antitoxin cleans up. The signets are left passive until I have a good stack of boons, then hit 9 to copy them over to allies. I don’t rely on the illusions because they’re basically just ammo for removing/inflicting conditions (and scepter clones are disposable trash anyway), so I let them get in one or two hits then Fkey as soon as I have 3 of them. The only one that’s really worthwhile is Phantasmal Warden so it’s usually the last cast before switching back to the staff.

I’m not completely sold on the runes of the pack, but the %chance boons that go to nearby party members when I get hit mesh well with the build design overall. The swiftness boost leaves me with only about 4-5 seconds of slow movement rate after Temporal Curtain wears off before I can recast, and the Signet of Inspiration grants swiftness very often as well. Mesmers are insanely slow but I can’t afford Traveler runes on more than one armor set, so this was a compromise.

Playstyle: stay at a distance from the target enemy if possible, but sticking close to allies is much more important. If they’re at melee-range on the enemy, I drop a Chaos Storm on them, run in and transform to Melandru and run thru those skills. When the transform drops, Phase Retreat to get some distance then lather, rinse, repeat. If there are trash adds, toss them around with Into the Void. Heal, shatters & signets pretty much whenever allies are nearby and the skills are ready. It’s kind of hard to describe exactly how it all fits together, but that’s close enough to give you an idea at least.

The DPS is minimal so this build is more or less useless for solo play, but that’s not the idea anyway. For what it’s meant to do, I think it does reasonably well but probably could be better.

It’s pretty easy for me to ignore Scarlet herself — I bypass content she’s involved in because I’m simply not interested in her off-putting character or “story” in the least. That said, I did get the “place of power” but that was the only reason I even bothered with toxic content at all (haven’t entered the tower even once, don’t plan on it). I don’t do fractals because they’re too much time for too little payoff, so the only time she becomes actively intrusive for me is when her minions attack some random zone (apparently by bombing it with big yellow letters). Usually my attitude is “Heh, the Harathi Hinterlands can have her.”

However, it’s impossible to ignore the growing number of bugs that just get piled on top of existing bugs with each release. Stuff that used to work just fine bugs out. Audio that once played normally suddenly gets cut off or doesn’t play at all. Zone changes take 3-4x longer than they did just a month ago, etc etc etc. Story aside, the game’s basic function is being degraded by the LS push. Once load times and GUI behavior reach a certain point of “unplayability,” GW2 will start losing players at a phenomenal rate. Poor storytelling and substandard content can be tolerated if the gameplay and mechanics are interesting and work they way they’re supposed to…oh wait.