Guild Wars 2

I want to clarify something about combo fields.

I understand the concept, and I can get the Line combo fields to work just fine, but the tricky bit is when there’s a circle combo field set up and the enemy is standing inside the circle.

Let’s say I’ve got a teammate trying to shove their mace up a boss’ nostril, and they’ve dropped down a circular combo field around them to buff themselves, or hurt the boss.

I’m standing outside with a longbow plinking away at the boss.

The arrows are a physical projectile combo finisher, and they’re passing through the outside to inside combo field, but they impact the enemy before they pass through the inside to outside field.

If the combo field is working right, I should see a split heart icon spring up with a description of the triggered combo written on it.

The problem is that, during world bosses, there are a ton of melee fighters right up against the boss, with dozens of various auras and combo fields set up around them. I’m usually playing ranged characters these days, so I’m flinging my attacks over, but I’m only seeing the combo notifications very rarely, considering the number of attacks and fields that are in play. (My guardian doesn’t seem to have much in the way of finishers, so they don’t really come into play)

I think that I should either be seeing a lot more combo notifications, or the combo fields aren’t all that useful when the enemy is standing right inside it. Given the fact that I can hardly see what’s going on because of all the player names floating around, I don’t think that there’s some UI function to keep combo notification spam minimized.

I suspect that the only combo notifications I’m seeing are the odd circle placed too far away from a moving boss, or a line field put up by an elementalist or engineer.

So, what’s going on here?

Thanks for the suggestions. I guess I’m lucky that I have a spare character slot that only has a lvl 4 mesmer that hasn’t been played in years.

I think I already got rid of the crude drawing, so that chunk of karma’s gone. Oh well. It’s not like I’m really hurting for karma at the moment.

Where, usually, do they drop? From which enemies?

I’ve been playing for around a week or so and I haven’t seen one drop yet.

I’ve been buying some ugly hats while they’re cheap to prepare for wintersday.

What other ways can I get the Minis? I was only able to get the Golem and the Griffin Minis back in 2012.

The problem with the transmutation stones is that I need 3 of them in order to get a full transmutation charge. I think I had 5 before I saw that the system for transmuting has changed.

I really don’t like how I can’t earn transmutation changes through dailies anymore. I want to keep my guardian’s Visionary’s Helm, which seems like a unique armour skin so far, but it seems like there’s no reliable way to get transmutation charges that don’t require real money, or absurd amounts of gold. (I just got to over 12 gold on my account the other day, and I think that’s a huge accomplishment.)

I’ve got a bunch of inventory items from a while ago, when I was last playing the game semi-regularly.

Now that I’m getting back into it, I kind of want that inventory space back, since I’m feeling the crunch.

My main questions are “How can I best get some use out of these?” and “Is it going to be better to just destroy this old stuff?”

My highest level character is a lvl 50 Guardian.

I have, in list form:

350 Mystical Cogs
2 Ugly Wool Hats
3 Ugly Wool Sweaters
10 Ugly Wool Socks
A Toy Soldier Frame
A Toy Ventari Frame

A Crude Drawing
Wiley Pirate Paper Scraps
3 Dwarven Keys,

… And 2 transmutation stones.

I’ve been away from the game for a while, and I’d like some suggestions about how best to reacquaint myself with Guild Wars 2.

I stopped playing regularly something like a year and a half to two years ago, I think. I tried logging in once in a while just to make sure I got the extra quest content registered to my account, but I found it a bit hard to actually get back into the game. Two of the reasons I stopped playing were that it kind of felt like I hit a wall content-wise, and couldn’t progress smoothly without bringing in other human players to party with, and some performance issues.

Luckily, the new year brought with it a new computer that should run the game better than the old one, even if I’m using a workstation videocard rather than a gaming card. Less luckily, the way my gaming habits go, I’ll get really interested in a game for a couple of weeks, and then I’ll move on to the next thing. Given this pattern, I’m not sure I can commit to really joining an in-game guild unless there’s some kind of guild forum or chatroom to keep me tethered when I’m not actively playing the game.

My characters are: a lvl~45-ish Human Guardian, a lvl 24-ish Sylvari Ranger, a lvl 20 (from the free levelup item) Charr engineer, and a lvl 12-ish Asura elementalist.

I hit a point with the guardian where needing to keep one of every weapon type felt like being forced to be a generalist, even though I know Guardians generally suck at range. She’s been abandoned somewhere in the snowy mountains next to a frozen lake for some kind of Quaggan-related quest like slaying the big scary lake monster for them.

The Elementalist is around the outer edges of one of the starter areas, somewhere a bit past the Asura Bog area with the pyramid-shaped crafting / vending area. Elementalists tend to be fragile, and I was still working on unlocking all of his various skills. Given that I still don’t really understand how to use his skills properly, or how to effectively switch between them depending on the situation, and given how fragile caster classes tend to be, I keep getting destroyed whenever I try to wander and get used to the combat system again.

The Ranger and Engineer have both been stuck at crafting locations for a long time, intended to be quick stops to ferry items between characters.

Another problem is that I have a really hard time convincing myself to use the consumable character items I occasionally get, like a free armour repair, bringing a vender or bank nearby, etc, so those things are starting to clutter up my inventory.

Any tips on what to do to make getting back into these characters and this game setting would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.