Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing engineer for a few months now and have been playing around with different builds and play styles. So far all of them have involved 30 points in explosives.

I liked my condition damage build that was 30/30/0/0/10 but didn’t have as much survivability as I would have liked.

‘Big’ crits from a ’zerker build was alright but I died almost instantly.

I’m really liking the survivability I have with my 30/0/20/20/0 soldiers build I have now.

Through it all, though, I miss the condition damage build. I was thinking about going with a 10/25/20/15/0 (http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/engineer/?2.1|a.1h.h5.a.1b.h1b|0.0.0.0.0.0|1b.719.1b.719.1b.719.1b.719.1b.719.1b.719|4x.0.2x.d12.3x.0.2x.e12.3x.0.2w.0|a5.p56.k19.f4.0|45.e|0.0.0.0.0|e) build mostly for WvW.

Would grenades still be useful even though I’m just throwing 2 instead of three? I’ll have almost no power so all of my damage would come from conditions.

Well not having it increase is an indication. Having 260 but it only displaying 250 is an indication. Not seeing new ones add to your bag is an indication. And the FAQ for the SAB said that you couldn’t get more than 250 in your ‘wallet’.

We knew we were losing kit refinement. Did you really expect a 10 point trait to remain that powerful?

That’s great and all but how many guilds or groups of people will transfer if your guild influence has to start over on a new server.

You might get a few stray people transferring but I don’t see much more than that.

Pizz.3698:

Do you like PvDoor that much? Dont give me that ‘’you guys outnumber us’’ b.s. we didnt create any sword while you guys did.

Do you realize why this is a stupid argument? Just because you didn’t create crossed swords and we did doesn’t mean you don’t outnumber us.

This issue, that is often the case, is that SF can have 3 groups of 20 players running around which wont cause swords. So while there may be a fight where we have 25 people and SF has 20 you might be outnumbered but we are often outmanned.

We can fight in one location while you guys fight in three.

Lysico.4906:

Why ban him though? Anet has said 100 times that you must use the trading post. They are not going to police the community if you go outside of this.

As players we were warned and scammed players ADMIT they should not have done it, and yet do it.

You know the risk, so don’t do it. Not up to Anet to police it. Up to us a players to you know, use common sense and the safe tools provide to us.

Like calling the cops because someone did not give you the drugs you paid someone for.

Then why have a “Scamming” option in the report window?

It’s also nothing like calling the cops because someone didn’t give you drugs, drugs are illegal.

It’s more similar to paying a store or person through paypal to send you items that they never send.

Add me to the list of people scammed by him. Reported him in game so hopefully they GMs will finally do something about it.

At least I’m onyl out 6 gold.

Well the issue is I’m looking for something that isn’t that type of game play. With the ranger even if I spec power/precision I still don’t really have much burst damage.

I wouldn’t mind keeping some of the survivability but I’m looking to do a lot more burst damage.

Hey guys,

I just have a ranger main right now and I have decent survivability but I don’t really have good burst damage. I just kill stuff by slowly wearing it down and outlasting it.

I wanted to make an alt and I was thinking about a guardian but I was wondering what their damage is like.

If it ressed them instantly or worked for defeated players instead of just downed maybe I would actually use it.

The issue is it still takes time for them to res, they can easily get interrupted, and it doesn’t work half the time anyway. There’s no real benefit to having my pet res someone. I’d rather res them myself and have my pet attack to keep the mob busy.

How could you get anything done with them? The few times I used spirits, even in PvE they were dead as soon as they got hit once. So if a mob had any sort of AoE the spirits would get hit and die.

If I had the trait so the spirits could move they had the same crappy pet AI and would frequently run way to far to one side if I dodged, would aggro extra mobs, then get hit once and die.

I used it just for kicks during the lost shore finale and it was awful. I went to res someone with it but they died before my pet got there. The stupid pet stood there trying to revive a dead player for 3 minutes until I finally sent him somewhere else.

Turning off the auto attack helps. I find even with it off many times after getting the finishing blow my character will still leap forward, often jumping off ledges or into new mobs.

Is that’ what it’s suppose to do? I always took it to mean the GET healed for more. So if my heal gives me 5000 health, it would give them 5500 or something.

It’s entirely possible I’m wrong. I just thought I remember it happening outside of combat because I would sometimes use it to mine/harvest faster just because I could.

Though I guess it’s possible I was just getting out of combat or in combat when I did it.

Unlike those other skills, this trait doesn’t specifically mention “in combat”

Branwin.4609:

I think if you took away the other players in your space, the challenge would still be there and you wouldn’t be doing the puzzle “one-handed” it would just take away that extra element of frustration. For people like me, who are neither the best nor the worst at jumping puzzles, I already get frustrated with some puzzles, and still feel challenged, when no one is around. When there are five largest possible Norn in your view and you keep messing up and you feel it’s because they are throwing you off, you aren’t just frustrated, you get pissed, livid, fuming, etc. and that is not what playing games is about, man. The OP is not saying “Make a game for ME” and they are not asking to nerf or alter the puzzle itself, just the fact that

IF

you WANT to do the puzzle, you are forced to do it with other people around. And although they could be patient and wait for the excitement (wait. what excitement? this event is kittening boring!) to die down, why should they have to wait their turn like a secondary citizen? That would make it more them playing your game, which isn’t okay either.

What I mean is the Pearl jumping puzzle is so easy I can do it with one hand. There’s no skills involved it’s just jumping over a gap.

Yes removing other players from the picture would make the puzzle easier which is why a lot of us are telling people to just wait a few days until the “new” factor wears off. Go to any of the old jumping puzzles in the game and it will almost always be empty.

There were probably 20-30 people at the puzzle when I first got there. I saw it was too many to work around so I left and went back a few hours later and there were only 10-15. With the clock tower when I was running into trouble with it and getting frustrated I left and did something else.

The issue is everyone feels like THEY need to be able to do everything and they need to be able to do it NOW. And if they can’t, the game needs to change to fit them. There’s nothing forcing you to do the puzzle and there’s nothing stopping you from taking a break if it gets frustrating. OP might not be saying to nerf the puzzle but others are.

The thing is they don’t HAVE to wait like a secondary citizen. They are more than welcome to do the puzzle right now with everyone else, it’s just that they, themselves, are not capable of doing it with others around. Plenty of other people are able to do with puzzle with a crowd of people.

As an example I couldn’t do the Asura story quest where you basically have to do a “simon says” of hitting buttons in a certain order challenging your memory. I just can’t play those times of games. I didn’t come running to the forums to say things like that should be nerfed.

Maybe my memory is going but I thought with the Zepher’s Speed trait any time you switched pets you gained quickness. I thought this use to happen even out of combat but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

Am I just remembering wrong or was this stealth fixed?

I haven’t seen anything anywhere that would indicate they reset each week.

They’re suppose to be a way for the hard core players to constantly be challenged resetting each week would defeat that purpose.

phantomdust.4729:

Fantasma Of Doom.2409:

Maybe it’s just a couple of days because it’s new, wait a couple of days and try again.

While this sounds reasonable, I don’t want to wait to play. I don’t have the leisure of waiting either; I want to play when I can, not at some time that’s dictated by the mechanics of some part of the game.

So the game should be designed specifically for you?

I loved this jumping puzzle. I didn’t find other players being there problematic.

I like difficult and complex puzzles, the one at Pearl didn’t even feel like a puzzle. It was just me jumping toward a chest. There was no skill involved.

I can understand the complaints for tower (even though I thought it was more than fair) since it was a one time puzzle for a limited time only. With the stepping stones puzzle it’s here to stay, you can go back whenever you want when there are less people and have a blast.

I don’t want to be stuck with jumping puzzles I can do one handed because others can’t be bothered to wait for the crowd to die down. I’m all for them adding a mix of easy medium and clock tower-like difficulty puzzles so everyone can get something out of them.

Unless I see a video of you doing well in tPvP I wont believe it. I mean, you’re using a long bow which has always been the worst every time I used it.

Not to mention your pets are squishy and you don’t have QZ.

I could just as easily throw a crap build into a calculator and say “OMG you guys are total newbs I pwn everyone. You need to learn how to play.” Just because you say it works doesn’t mean it works. Provide proof.

There’s no silecne. JP was in here the day of the patch saying not all the changes they wanted made it in. They have two people working on character balance.

Yes you would think that one of the classes that needs the most work would get the most focus., but it doesn’t always work that way.

To say they completely ignored us and haven’t addressed it is just wrong.

Sang.3641:

This is a fairly dumb idea and will never happen but I thought I would share.

Instead of Ranger pets having a physical presence instead make them animal spirits.
The pet itself still has a visible representation just like our utility spirits do now and like our utility spirits they don’t attack or do dmg themselves, instead the spirit of the animal provides use with bonuses based on the animal we have supporting us.
As an example:
Bears give toughness/vitality
Canines give power/vitality
Birds give speed/precision
Cats give precision/power
On top of this they can still provide a unique F2 ability based on pet. For example if you have a raven spirit when you hit F2 the raven shoots forward and blinds your target etc.
Keep pet switching as is allowing us to change between two spirits but with the same cooldown on switching.
Then just fold in the lost pet dps directly into the ranger.

This would accomplish a few things that the ranger pet system currently has problems with.
1. Pet survivability would no longer be a problem
2. The problem with pets unable to hit moving targets would become a non issue
3. Dumb pathing and pets being an aggro magnet would also vanish

I’ve suggested something similar and it should at least be an option.

I love having my pet in PvE sometimes, othertimes it’s a pain.

For example I just did one of the dungeons and I was handicapped because I had two melee pets that couldn’t attack the boss standing on a platform.

I’ve also fought bosses that one shot my pet, I switch pets and it gets two shot. That means I could spend anywhere from 20-60 seconds waiting to switch off of a dead pet.

My player DPS is lower than other classes because the pet is suppose to provide part of my damage. How would other classes feel if, for 30 seconds his damage was just cut in half?

The pets are great in very basic situations but they still need a lot of work. Some people like the idea of the ranger but not the pets. I think both types of play styles should be viable.

It doesn’t matter if they get rid of gold, if they don’t something else will come up in place of gold.

The issue with bartering is it doesn’t always work. I might want your exotic Dusk and in exchange you want three mini pets. But I might not have those mini pets.

So I’d have to go through a million different hoops trying to trade with people (hoping not to get ripped off) just to maybe get the three mini pets you want so I can get your Dusk. By the time I do all that you might have sold it to someone else.

I just came here to create a somewhat related thread.

I finally have enough karma to get some of the Cathedral/temple armor but I can’t actually buy any of them because my server is low pop so we never actually have the cathedrals open.

Now that the game has been out for a while there don’t seem to be as many players in the Orr zones.

Because of this it seems like a number of the cathedrals remain contested.

Is there anything you can do solo or with one other to get the cathedral armor vendors back? Does the event auto complete after a certain amount of time?

I would love it if the spirits became a player based AoE buff instead of these weak summons like they are now.

They could lower the buff duration by default. They could have traits to increase the length, maybe the area of affect, chance to proc the buff on others.

The spirits are just too weak now. Even with the traits to increase their health and make them move doesn’t help. They take to long to start following you, like pets they’ll run forward when you stop moving and they constantly die to even basic AoE.

Probably not for PvE but I think I’d like to at least try something else in WvW at least.

If I could also change and keep my gear I’d probably consider it.

Ebs.6280:

Saying you like the Ranger but not the pet is like saying you don’t like the Ranger. Pets are part of the class so my advice to you would be to not play a Ranger.

No. Saying you like the ranger but not the pets is like saying you like the elementalist but you don’t like fire spells, or you like the thief but don’t like stealth.

Pets are just one aspect of ranger gameplay. Maybe I like the ranger because of all his ranged abilities, his spirits (which are also weak), or his traps. It is entirely valid to like most of a given profession without liking their entire profession.

I’m fine with keeping the pets but they need to be seriously reworked for them to be viable in PvP and especially WvW.

Hell do something simple, the longer I have my pet on passive standing next to me the higher a mutual buff we get.

Unlikely hunter.

I also didn’t notice a difference at first. When I first tested I used the training dummies in Lions Arch so bleeds weren’t added.

Once testing it in the mists I found the same results everyone else has mentioned. I am getting consistently fewer stacks of bleed than before the patch. This is all done withouth the “bleed on crits” trait.

Joey.3928:

You have to just learn to control your pet better.

I’m okay with this argument except when it relates to WvW.

In WvW you’re almost always fighting in group battles and there is too much AoE for me to control my pet. A lot of classes and burst damage a person down, many from range. As a ranger my pet is a good portion of my DPS and when there’s so much AoE that it dies instantly I am severely disadvantaged.

Then when you factor in defending a tower/keep it’s even worse. If I’m on top of a wall it’s hard to get my pet to go out an attack. If it does start to attack it has to deal with everyone outside AoEing the door so again the pet dies instantly.

If I try and go with one of the few ranged pets it’s still an issue. When defending a wall against any half decent opponent they will be AoEing the walls near the gate. As a player you have to try and pick a few enemies off then run back to heal up. Since the pet AI is so poor I have to run halfway into the tower before the pet starts to get out of the AoE, even when using F3. So my only option is to try and swap pets and then deal with a 20 second cool down.

Yes, controlling your pet is an important skill as a ranger for PvE and sPvP. It seems like no matter how skilled you are at managing your pet it doesn’t matter much in WvW.

How do Sigil of Earth work if you have the “bleeds on crit” trait?

Do you have a chance to occasionally ad 2 bleeds if you crit?

You’re missing the point, the grieving being done is not the pvp in the puzzles its the blocking of choke points with out of range siege weapons.

If this is the issue than I completely agree it needs to be fixed.

However, arrow carts DO have a limited range and a minimum range and can only fire so fast. If you have enough people and you actually run through instead of standing in the AoE trying to attack the arrow carts you should be able to get up to the person firing it.

nefloyd.5689:

It’s not a winning strategy. You know why? Two scenarios.

1. Not everyone who wants to complete the puzzle is an active WWW participant. I go to Eternal, attempt to complete the puzzle, loot the chest, then leave. I do the same thing in Borderlands. If people are wasting their time camping in there, I just leave anyway. This means YOU are costing YOUR team a potential combatant (You could be helping the actual fight above) in order to deny someone who wasn’t going to fight anyway. I don’t really care about the blueprints, I’m just gathering badges from the chest to acquire the 500 badge legendary thingy (plus some orich to sell from Eternal)

2. Mutual destruction vs. Mutual gain. Instead of camping, your team could grab their blueprints and head back to the real fight. What happens when you get camped in return? It’s really a question of “should everyone gain blueprints faster” vs “should everyone gain blueprints slower”.

If people wanting to complete the puzzle aren’t active WvW participants, why are they there? They taking a spot away from people that actually want to play.

By preventing the enemy from getting Badges and blueprints I AM helping the fight above. Every less treb, or ram or ballista the enemy gets is one less treb, ram or balista I have to deal with attacking my territory.

You can easily rotate players in and out of the battlegrounds so once I get my blueprints I defend the area for a bit then someone else can take over. Leaving 5 opr even 10 people behind to defend the area isn’t really hurting your army. Letting your enemy get easy cheap trebs or arrow carts does hurt your army.

If the enemy is in there camping I just leave. Then I come back later with a bunch of friends so we can take back the area. Trickling in a few at a time is pointless but if you can overrun themwe can control the zone. We also get to destroy the siege they may have set up, and make it a lot easier for us to usher our teammates in so more of them get siege blueprints.

I’ve been saying this since people complained about it.

Why would I willingly let enemies complete the jumping puzzles and get free siege blueprints?

If enemies are stupid enough to filter into the jumping puzzles 1-2 at a time like lambs to the slaughter that’s their own fault.

Tzash.5748:

In the inevitable event of being detected ensure you have:
1) a speed boost
2) stability

Sadly stability doesn’t prevent immobilize which seems to be what constantly gets me.

A lot of people have mentioned staying mobile but that seems counter intuitive. If you’re moving around wouldn’t you be more likely to be seen since people are drawn to movement?

In many cases I seem to be okay if I’m standing still, what gives me away is people seeing the nameplate over my head as soon as they get even remotely close.

You can’t really.

I actually tried this build. It’s not bad but you don’t get much power. I mean you get 15% of your two stats as power. So even if you have 3000 Vitality and 3000 Healing (which I don’t even think is possible) you would only get 450 power.

Considering all your other stats would be sacrificed it isn’t really worth it.

As I start to get more involved in WvW and branch out to do things aside from following the zerg. Often times people using siege will need spotters, you may want or need someone doing recon of enemy forces.

Does anyone have any tips for moving around while staying undetected?

It seems like no matter how much you try to hide behind terrain it doesn’t matter because you have a giant name plate over your head as soon as someone is even remotely close to you.

Add to that the player culling and you could think you’re hidden and out of now where a group of 30 people load on top of you and you’re dead.

It would be great if your name plate only showed up if people had LoS on you.

Considering SBI and HoD were just sieging stonemist for the past 2.5 hours, I’m guessing no.

Speaking of 2v1, didn’t ET just defend Stonemist from both servers?

Sureshot.6725:

Secondly your proposal is not the only possible fair solution. In order for matchmaking to work properly it must have time to gather metrics. Heck we just got off daily rotations.

How about having some patience to give the matchmaking system the time it needs before prematurely passing judgement. It will certainly need some tweaking but you need data first in order to make informed decisions on what tweaks are needed.

The problem is for those servers that are getting dominated (most of them) getting dominated for a week straight isn’t fun. Less people queue up, less people will be likely to queue next week, and by not having people queue they’re full skill level might not be seen.

Really they should have gone from 24 hour matches to something like 72 hours. That way for drastic outmatchings they would only last for a week but it’s long enough that you would be able to see which servers work better for more than 24 hours because of off peak playesr.

Mug.9403:

There should be a minimum on it as well.

TheAltarBoy, the queue time increasing is on purpose as part of the design.

The downside to the queue times increasing is it can hurt other servers. Many of the match ups right now have a dominant server and then two less dominant. Maybe one of those servers has mostly a night time population. If they can’t get in because the other two servers are asleep, they don’t even stand a chance.

Rodarin.6058:

Once again this is a failed argument. It takes way too many assumptions into play. Like a team with equal numbers would lose badly enough to get demoralized. That is ust not going to happen

The game as it works now works just like you describe only worse. Is the teams are say 150-80-110 and the cap isnt reached the team with 150 can still move players into WvW and onto a map. I have seen it. I ahve seen HoD blow JQQ right out of a map, so that all that was left was us and them. If I hadnt had seen a few JQQ players out in the middle of no where I would have thought there were ZERO on the map, but there were at least six. We had maybe 30-40 spread around. HoD had probably 150.
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So dont sit there and say some population cap would cause this because it already happens now. if the cap were in place they wouldnt be able to port zergs in on a map like that. While they may hold an advatantage for a short time until the numbers balance out they certainly wouldnt be able to come in like locusts.

Why are people leaving now? At some point numbers are close to equal, usually when matches first start, then when I side starts losing ground, people leave. Even if they don’t leave because of losing, if one of the servers has a large East Coast presence and the other side has a west cost or australian presence is that server not allowed to WvW because the east coast server is alseep and only have 20 people in EB?

Hell competative servers could just grab a bunch of stuff up front and then tell everyone to log out to intentionally block the australian server from getting in.

A population cap would held your example though. If one server gets up to 150 players and the other two are down at 100 unless the game intentionally kicks the players from the larger team they will still be outnumbered. Sure it might keep more of them from joining, but as long as those 150 people stay in WvW they will still have an advantage.

Even if you have 150-100-100 maybe team B has another 50 people that could fight back against team A and give team C some breathing room, but since Team C only has 100 people, Team B is also capped and Team A has a 50 man advantage.

What ANet should do in an ideal world is turn off free server transfers and give incentives for certain guilds to move to smaller servers to balance stuff out. ANet should manually look at which guilds and alliances are causing imbalances and try to help correct it.

As long as servers have people with different play times, and different numbers of WvW players there will always be an issue. If WvW is meant to be one form of endgame and you’re limiting it to 50 players because one of the other servers is asleep it takes away content from a lot more people.

Sadly I don’t think there’s much ANet can do. Especially not quickly and not with any amount of fairness.

I agree completely. When I first saw the outmanned buff in BWE2 I thought it was completely useless. If I have less people me getting more XP and magic items doesn’t help me at all. I need something that will give me a chance against a much large force.

The fact that getting an orb then makes it easier for you to KEEP said orb just seems backwards.

I don’t like this idea at all.

Here is quick example of why.

At the start of a match up you might get 160 people on each side.

Then after Team A lose a few towers players start leaving, now you have 130×160×160.

So now with an extra 30 people Team B and C take more of Team As stuff causing more of Team A to leave. Now you’re down to 90×160×160

Maybe some of Team B and C get disconnected or crash and can’t get back in so you’re at 103×150×134.

Team B is well organized and on Vent and they’re able to hold off Team A causing more to leave, and taking some of Team C. So now Team A and C have a bunch of people leave, Team B has a few more crashes and you’re down to 50×134×92.

Team A gives up and most of them go to bed and there’s only 24 people around. So now instead of being able to let 160 people from each server in, you can only have 24 from each server. Queue times would go from maybe an hour or two up to maybe 6+ hours.

Then what if a server has an Australian population? Are they not allowed to WvW because the other two servers are asleep and only have a few people?

What weapon are you using? Is it possible certain weapons themselves were nerfed?

The only time I use this trait is when I’m defending in WvW and want to toss the traps down in front of the gate. Otherwise it doesn’t seem that useful.

swilkers.5938:

The PVE XP is good but….when the game was being hailed by NCSOFT and ArenaNet, they bragged that PVP XP would put you at 80 without issue and then you get the current rate, that is foul. I get MANY kills with WVW but virtually zero XP. Seriously take a look at kills VS. death and getting gear repaired in regards to money. So you get 35XP per kill for WVW with a ZERO assist XP. So if you don’t get the kill shot (from what I can tell) you get ZERO XP. I play a Ranger and get huge amounts of damage on multiple players but virtually no XP comes from it. I can level in PVE every 30 minutes but it takes hours and hours to get a level in WVW. That seems very wrong to me since they claimed you can get from 1-80 in WVW.

I was getting much faster XP in WvW than I was leveling in the Orr zones.

Like I, and others, have said. The WvW XP isn’t meant to come from killing people, it’s suppose to come from taking towers (~14% of a level) taking keeps (~25%) and other events (sentries, supply camps, dredge, ogres etc.) ~5%+ of a level.

Yes if you just run around with a zerg killing a few players at a time leveling will take forever. The same exact thing is true for PvE, if you just farm mobs leveling will be slow as kitten. If you complete dynamic events you get XP, Karma, and money.

Spend less time killing other players and spend more time completing objectives.

Edit to add: I play a ranger and I went from 54-60 and 74-80 in WvW. I did it a lot faster, easier, and more enjoyable than it would have been killing millions of Risen in Orr.

Based on context I think OP is saying that you should be able to WvW on your sister server because it wouldn’t be in the same bracket/region as their home server. That way if HoD has huge queues you’re still able to get into WvW on your sister server.

I’m not sure what you’re doing in WvW but I think the XP is fine.

Just like PvE the main XP doesn’t come from killing mobs or players. It comes from completing events, like taking keeps, towers, defending territories, taking sentries.

Doing those things I get anywhere fomr 5%-25% of a level. I usually get money for doing those things as well.

I will agree that the gear drops aren’t great. I get a lot of basic white items.

DemonCow, the issue is at least for US there are 4 servers like A, so the top three get matched together, then fourth A type server gets matched against two C servers.

Aside from the completionist aspect of it, you aren’t missing out. The HoM pets are just reskins of other ones. I think the black moa is the same abilities as the white moa. Same for all the other pets.