Guild Wars 2

TJV.6239:

I like to call my sylvan hound Salad Fingers.

Aware

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

Troponin.4081:

Jay.3284:

No we don’t need new pets, we need them fixed first. Then we can worry about broadening the pet choices

I agree with this.

Someone in another thread recommended “If you want to see how worthless your pet is with damage, send them in and see how long it takes for them to kill something”. After 3 mins on a reg enemy, I finally got tired of waiting. Every time the pet hit, I could barely see the health bar even budge.

Anyone who invests and wastes points in to the pet to “get more damage and bring up a weak point” is an idiot. It will be weak, even with full point investment.

It’s on 80 lvl? Because on 45 my pet deal 3 times more damage than me.. i feel useless, my cat just killing everybody.

and it stays alive in high level dungeons? I am pretty sure I read that in high level fractals etc, the pets won’t stay alive.

Someone here was thinking like I do. I have a character or pet in every game I play named Moogly, a spin off of Mogley, and it’s usually a bear or a toon that has something to do with animals (druid on WoW etc).

Jay.3284:

No we don’t need new pets, we need them fixed first. Then we can worry about broadening the pet choices

I agree with this.

Someone in another thread recommended “If you want to see how worthless your pet is with damage, send them in and see how long it takes for them to kill something”. After 3 mins on a reg enemy, I finally got tired of waiting. Every time the pet hit, I could barely see the health bar even budge.

Anyone who invests and wastes points in to the pet to “get more damage and bring up a weak point” is an idiot. It will be weak, even with full point investment.

How do you all pull sword off so well? I can’t dodge for crap when using sword due to the chain and it gets me in a heap of trouble.

Solandri.9640:

Durzlla.6295:

Don’t listen to sweet lily, they know not what they say.

Shortbow is better at close range, longbow is better at long range, at long range just pressing the 1 skill pumps out as much damage as the shortbow can WITH its bleed

When was this? I picked up the game over Thanksgiving and had the same question. So in December I went to the test golems in the Mists with both PvP bows and a stopwatch. SB was hands down better.

Ok, I just went to the Mists again and retested on a heavy golem. Using vanilla LB and SB at max range with 30/30/10/0/0 build, and 20% faster bow skill recharge:

LB auto-attack only: 20 sec (18-21 sec variance)
SB auto-attack only: 19 sec (18-20 sec variance)

LB #3, #2, then #1: 19 sec (18-21 sec variance)
LB #2, #2, #1, #3, #1: 17 sec (16-19 sec variance)
SB w/ bleed: 12 sec (11-12 sec variance)

The animation delays pretty much cancel out most of the benefit of using the LB #2 and #3 skills (though #3 is still useful in a group).

Also note that due to the bug of auto-attack not working at extreme range even though the weapon is in range, the distance where LB does max damage but will still auto-attack is rather narrow. You pretty much have to get the increased LB range trait to make it viable.

So:
worst-case LB is worse than worst-case SB
best-case LB is barely better than worst-case SB
best-case LB is far worse than best-case SB
And SB is easier to use (just leave it on auto-attack)

Two other things to add and consider. In those short time spans, you won’t see the full potential of the SB either, because it takes time to ramp up the bleeds and over a longer fight, the SB will pull ahead even more. The downside is, if you are doing a world event, many times I see the bleed maxed out at 25 stacks, making your contribution as a SB ranger, completely useless to the group’s damage.

The sword’s chain attacks are absolutely horrible to deal with, it’s even worse than the thief’s dagger chain, which I thought was bad. With the thief, you can at least evade, even if you don’t roll anywhere, but with the sword on ranger, you can’t even evade. It was getting me killed A LOT.

It’s a shame, because the damage capability of the sword is actually pretty good, higher than the SB, at least.

What I hate is the fact that so many pets have all of the attack stats close to a bear, but not bear the survivability. It’s really hard for me to get away from the bear type pets in PvE. The bear has almost twice the vit that many other pets have with the same toughness and attacks stats. It also seems like toughness for pets doesn’t have the same stat “weight” as vit either, so a ton of toughness and lower vit doesn’t seem to keep the pet alive as well as high vit and lower toughness.

Haven’t done enough PvP to really make much of a conclusion on that aspect.

I tried axe/mace recently, and I like it. You get a knockdown with it, and a ranged snare.

Switched to bow recently too, and I am kind of digging that. Arcing Arrow hits like a dang truck, but not sure how well it scales, because I am only around level 40. Although the Bow pulls ahead on in AoE, it’s still strong single target, and it’s far less boring then rifle.

Doing any challenging even or taking on more than one or two additional enemies, I can’t keep anything other than a bear alive. They are just too good to give up. The Brown bear also offers condition removal, which frees up an additional utiilty slot.

Carrion is the only gear, which you get at level 55, that will give you an option of having power and condition on the same piece. If you’re a condition thief, check out the runes of undead. It gives Toughness and condition.

You can also mix up your trinkets to make up for toughness losses.

Actually, I have been playing ele a lot lately, and I recently jumped back on my Engineer, and here is my feedback.

I like the IDEA if kits etc. It gives the class a ton of versatility. The problem is, it just doesn’t seem to flow like the ele changing up their attunements. I don’t want the Engineer to become similar to the ele, that’s not what I am saying. What I am saying is, it felt like I was clicking like a madman and not really making much happen. I think one great change that would help with this is to allow grenades to be thrown at your target without targeting the ground, at least, let it be an option in the menu.

Second, the playstyle of one type of build is all over the place. For instance, the grenade/bomb build seems popular, yet one gets laid at your feet, while the other is thrown. I feel like these two things don’t do together, yet are blended in to the same build.

Sooooo…I have this trait skill, and nothing happens when I dodge. Is this broken?

Edit* NVM, it only works while in combat. :/

So if this is only viable in limited circumstances, then what is the current group oriented build?

Power increases crit damage too, doesn’t it? So why would power/crit not be worth it, you’re still increasing the damage done by crits.

I jumped in to some WvW as a level 66 condition build thief. I had on all carrion gear, with superior runes of Undead for added toughness and condition damage, then knight trinkets. I am specced 10 in to shadow arts too, rest is acrobatics and uhhh, forget the other name atm.

I got picked on a couple times, but with the toughness, the ability to evade two different ways (DB and dodging), and all stealthing utility spells, I did pretty dang well. I played the “Get in, get out” kind of playstyle where I would lay down caltrops, do some DB attacks, and get out and use the SB for a few attacks etc. It was fun and felt that the scaling helps you out tremendously. I had just shy of 17,000 health when I got scaled up.

Wow, I didn’t even notice this. From getting might with Fire attunement etc, it kind of meshed the stacks together and hiding the fact that switching didn’t give it more than every 9 seconds.

Does this change things then? Is there something better? I usually run Bloodlust or Corruption and Battle. I am not sure how worth it BL and Corruption are in PvP though, because you lose stacks on down and takes some time to build up unless you’re AoEing.

iNtEnTiOnS.9562:

Frenk.5917:

Nice video. You may want to try out blinding powder, it really helps if you are using 30 points in shadow arts. Moreover, since your trget are often crippled, you won’t need the +25% speed signet.

Yeah i got 30 points traited in SR, Build: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-c33V;1Rw-a0S5FOkd0;9;6TJJ;434A59-46-a-17;9-1n

Bad link

So I just learned today, that if you use gems, AKA, real cash, to unlock the last bag slot, it doesn’t occur account wide. If you unlock it for ever alt, it’s something like $25-30, making this way too expensive to justify. I can tell you that I, as well as a majority of others, will never spend money to unlock only one bag slot if it’s not account wide. Up the cost a bit if you like, but $30 is incredibly expensive for something so small.

Second, Sticky targeting really needs to be implemented. With everything going on in this game as far as movement goes, especially dodging, we are constantly having to click around the screen to readjust, look, move etc, and it’s just an accident that happens way more often than one would like. It’s especially annoying when you blow a CD, like Steal, and it does nothing because you didn’t have a target, which brings me too…

Cancelling spells. Why can we not cancel a spell without the consequence of wasting the CD? Things happen so fast in PvP, that there are times that a skilled player MUST cancel an ability in order to survive.

Is there a way to turn an option like this on?? This is HIGHLY irritating, because I am frequently clicking around on my screen to turn, look around etc, and constantly clicking off my my target. the ONLY way I want to unselect my target is by clicking Esc.

You could potentially have one thief set up to blind and the other to deal a little more damage. That would be my first suggestion without much though on the subject.

I am sure there are builds that would build a ton of synergy though, boosting each others weaknesses.

Eles have so many ways to remove conditions, it just seems to be that generosity would be a waste. I can see this with many other classes though.

IMO, Force or Battle are the two best OH sigils. With 30 points in Arcana and switching every three seconds, you can manage up to something like 7-8 stacks of might. I am not sure how this compares to a static 5% damage increase though.

Rhinzual.7861:

Caltrops isn’t meant for damage,

Oh, so why not just remove the damage from them, if they werent meant to do damage? Seems fair, based on your reply. You’re right, I don’t use any other attack at all. I just lay down caltrops, wait for the CD to be up, then lay them down again, as I stand there taking a beating from the enemy(ies). /sarcasm

WakkaJabba.3910:

try a condition build with d/d, signet of malice, caldrop and death blossom spamming, easy 18 stacks ofbleeding on mobs, waaaaaayy faster than p/d single target bleeding against mobs. each death blossom heals multiple times, tons of rally cuz mobs always bleed to death, and more loot than p/d. p/d is for 1v1.

The other day I was testing out how powerful caltrops were. I went to a nest of raptors, pulled about 8-10 of them, dropped caltrops as they chased me in circles, then spammed DB just a few times and then sat back and watched every single one of them drop dead at my feet.

The only thing to remember is, if an enemy is ranged, you will need to either LoS them with your caltrops down, or just drop them under their feet, which is usually what I do. I love that the enemy doesn’t need to even move a foot to get the bleeds stacked.

People need to realize that every class in this game can bring something very good to the table. They are under the impression that only a Water ele can heal, only a Guardian can tank etc. Lets take for example the Ranger. People have no idea that a ranger can actually heal as much as a water Ele. In fact, it’s been shown in theory crafting that a Ranger can out heal a water ele. Even a thief can heal and tank in this game!!

It frustrates me that everyone wanted a game that was soooo different than every other MMO out there, but yet they play it like every other MMO but say “oh man, this is so cool because it’s different than such-and-such game…” but don’t show it when they play.

Condition works great in leveling. I have tried crit builds for leveling, and two issues I have. One is, you depend on stealth for certain things, and I have issues with mobs resetting if I am solo. One way to prevent a mob from resetting and regenning health back is to put a condition on them before stealthing, which is sometimes a pain. The second issue I have is, AoE is lacking a bit with a crit/power build, unless you’re sword, but honestly, it gets pretty mind numbing as a sword build in solo stuff. I prefer to be active, move around etc.

Once you get in to more PvP oriented situations, you will find you prefer one or the other.

This is the build I am using currently and have no issues at all. Use signet of Malice, and spamming DB, you heal a ton. Get Vit/tough/condition gear, then carrion armor at level 55. Trinkets should all have toughness, and you can put toughness in your armor slots if you need more.

Throw down caltrops when you need extra damage or AoE damage and the bleeds get pretty amazing.
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.7.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.497.505.0.513.517.0.0.0.10.20.20

Good luck with that. The entire non-thief community is complaining that stealth is OP, which is funny, because it’s one of the few games that the thief class doesn’t have perma stealth. So why would they bother fixing another stealth ability right now? That would just make the rest of the community complain even more.

So what about the couple of thief abilities that summons thieves? They can summon up to 3 total, I think. Does that do the same? If not, then I would suspect this was overlooked and should be fixed.

A lot of classes in GW2 are two button wonders in PvE. Get used to it. Ele and Mes are the only classes that will keep you awake, unfortunately. Warrior has to be the worst though. I literally fell asleep playing a warrior during a champ encounter.

I think, in this case, the devs took a step backwards in progression from GW. Some classes and weapons force you to have abilities on your bar that you will never touch. Seems silly to limit the amount of skills you can use, then also limit what you can have on your bar on top of that.

Bunkers have so much condition removal, toughness and healing, as stated above, you would have to take him out in your first rotation.

Honestly though, Eles can have a hybrid set up and do well at everything, so why bother? :/

I had trouble staying alive at first, so I started dumping points in to Earth, and geared for some healing, vit and a little power. By level 25, when gear was starting to get somewhat manageable and lots were now available (variety of trinkets etc), From there, I respecced and went to water and stacked toughness through gear instead. As you level, you need less and less actual healing gear, and don’t need any toughness traits, but, you will get the feel of it as you level and base it on how much damage you’re taking on average.

I tried S/D at first because many articles on leveling the ele recommended it, but honestly, I think Scepter is terrible. You will find that your biggest attack with scepter (that goofy fiery tooth) missing so many times because of enemies moving around. You are def better off with D/D or staff, trust me. Th idea of d/d to a new ele seems like suicide because it’s such a short range, but with some toughness, vit, and the enormous amounts of healing and defensive abilities/traits you get, it’s actually a very tanky set up. Unless I am up against more than 2 enemies at a time or a champ, I don’t even bother dodging anything. lol

By level 40,if you have all toughness in your trinkets, and a couple pieces of armor, then go all power, condition, vit, you will be pretty solid. Make sure you have at least 20 points in to water for some regen abilities and condition removal, and from there, you can play around with other point distributions.

That is the most confusingly simplified description ever written on a tooltip.

I have yet to see it work on my SB at all. :/

Tulisin.6945:

Troponin.4081:

The other great thing is, caltrops has no limit on the amount of enemies it will bleed either. So, you can pull 100 enemies over your caltrops and each one of them will end up with 9-12 stacks of bleeds.

Pretty sure caltrops has a 5 target limit like every other AE. If you could perfectly cycle 5 targets for all 14 seconds I guess you could technically apply a bleed stack to 70 separate targets, but it’d just be one bleed stack, not 9-12.

Your build has potential, but I don’t understand Vigor-on-Heal over Might-on-Dodge if you’re going for a dodge-heavy condition build with Signet of Malice, seems counter-intuitive for your synergy set. Also you’ve got 20 unspent trait points. Is this a build for a level 60?

I had read here on the forums that info on Caltrops, and when I started using it, it really does appear to be hitting more than 5 enemies. I will test it furhter though, but I was pulling 10+ enemies at one point and I am sure they were all bleeding from my caltrops alone.

My build was simply a base build. You can play with the trait skills to find what you like, but you’re right, I overlooked that and I think that might be better. This build doesn’t go to 80 because it was simply something to shoot for while leveling, and, I consider this the bare minimum if looking for a condition build at higher levels to be effective at the play style I am recommending. I’ll edit the build above to reflect that might on dodge. Just remember that when doing certain story quests, vigor can be a life or death decision because of the amount of evading you need to do.

One other thing to keep in mind is, as stated above, I change up my trait skills based on if I am in a story line quest or playing with others.

I had a ton of issues my first go round too. I actually deleted the toon. One reason why was because the human story line was absolutely horrid. I got destroyed on every one of them. Second, Even with all of the dodging in the world, I Just coulnd’t figure out how people did enough damage in a short period of time without getting slaughtered in the process.

I am now a firm believer in a condition based set up for leveling. You can bleed up the enemy, throw down caltrops, and kite all day long. I ended up doing dd, then run in, start casting caltrops (timing it so that it is done by the time I get to the enemy, since it’s a long cast), then spam DB, then kite, then rinse and repeat. Caltrops and DB do a TON of bleed damage together. The other great thing is, caltrops has no limit on the amount of enemies it will bleed either. So, you can pull 100 enemies over your caltrops and each one of them will end up with 9-12 stacks of bleeds. It’s a wrecking machine for the undead story line quests, where you have 5+ enemies on you non-stop. Even if you are out of endurance, DB also acts as an evade! A win-win.

This is my “baseline” for a solo condition based build. You can take out 5 points out of Trickery if you want, but I like those. This gives you a lot of regen through stealing (remember mobs reset when you stealth, so be cautious when you use them, unless you’re with NPCs or other players). The last utility skill I change out a lot based on what I am doing. It’s either signet of agility when I know I will need to get rid of conditions, Shadow when I am traveling, or blinding powder when I want a stealth ability. For story quests, I tend to use Hide in Shadows heal too, which gets mobs off me when I am being overwhelmed, heals me and removes conditions too. Caltrops NEVER leave my bar, they are just too powerful for a condition solo build, IMO.

If you ever see me out and about, you might find me pulling an entire area of enemies, and, throwing down caltrops, then just watching them limp their way to me, and finally falling dead at my feet.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.7.1.10.13.0.0.0.0.0.156.173.171.0.177.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.483.0.0.497.505.0.513.515.0.0.0.10.20.20

Events are repeatable, so make sure to try to hit them when they pop up. Remember too, when you explore and get exp for way points etc, it scales with your level. Crafting does too. No matter what level you are, you will get 10 levels for each of the crafting profs that you level up to max, so don’t rely too heavily on crafting early on, use it to get passed sticking points, IMO.

Trust me when i say this, you don’t want to pick an element and stick to it. It will turn completely monotonous like most other classes. Save for the mes, in PvE, all other classes are two button playstyles. Be thankful you get more than two for a 10 mins boss fight. Zzzzzz

radsaq.8269:

This is a bug with specific weapons on multiple classes.

It has been raised a few times on the forums, so hopefully it’s on a list to get fixed sometime soon.

I noticed it happens occasionally on my necro when using daggers. It’s def a mechanic issue with certain animations.

Whats happening is, certain animations cause our characters to actually stop and standing still for a moment. Make a thief and equip daggers. Now, as you run by an enemy, auto attack him and keep running. In most cases, he will stop, attack, then run again. This shouldn’t be happening in a game this advanced. For thieves, the problem is, out of the 4 different auto attacks, I think 2-3 of them cause this. So, in the case of the thief, it’s REALLY bad. In fact, I just fought a really easy vet skill challenge that I died on, because out of the 6 rolls I attempted, only ONE managed to get me distance. I have played all classes up to level 25, and yes, most of them experience some kind of animation issue, but thief is by far the worst with daggers.

Minoru.1237:

assuming that said opponent isn’t a thief using a macro.

We can use macros?

He doesn’t give exact stats in here, but you get the picture. If you follow the general idea of his guide, you will discover what you like best. It appears that a balance of Toughness, vit, power, condition damage, and some healing is optimal for survivability and decent damage. If you don’t expect to be a damage powerhouse, but can survive a ton of assault, then you will like his set ups. When I discovered this guide, I realized just how incredible Eles can be at staying alive.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-12-20-12/first

Anyone else find there to be a large % of times while auto attacking when you attempt to dodge, but don’t go anywhere due to a glitch in the auto attack animation? This mechanic issue has gotten me in trouble many times. It’s really frustrating when I get TWO dodges, back to back attempting to kite, and both fail to gain me distance. For a class that depends a lot on kiting and avoiding damage, they sure to hamper player skill.

Falunel.7645:

Go to the character selection screen. There should be a button in the lower left corner called “World Selection.”

Oh, I thought that was just to start characters on another server, not actually transfer. Thanks!

So the second issue is, how do you transfer? :/ I searched the entire site and cannot find info on it. I have been in to My account and set up etc and it’s no where to be found.

Went through the entire quest and was about 5% away from killing the boss in this quest when he mass feared and caused me to run off the map and bugged the quest. This boss is standing right on the edge of a cliff AND the instance boundary, and I cannot kite him away from it either, due to the NPCs holding him there and him being ranged.

Seems like a bit of a poor set up, but wanted to let the devs know so it could save people a headache in the future.

Is there no server that is high pop without being completely full during peak hours? I would certainly rather play when I want than be on a server that I can’t play. :/

I have been leveling a few alts, and I noticed, once I hit level 40+, I am pretty much on my own on E Bay. I can go all day without seeing anyone, and I am attempting to solo most events (which fails quite miserably often).

What is a good, active server, and also, when one does a transfer, do we have to pay for every single character? That could get expensive when you have 5.

So I am leveling a few alts, and something I noticed that’s really irritating is that there is no gear with a base of Power and condition damage (at least, up to level 52 so far that I see). I don’t want precision on at least two of my alts, yet I can’t avoid it.

Anyone else find this frustrating? Does gear have more flexibility at certain levels to avoid stats you don’t want?

Sword/pistol was great, then pistol whip got nerfed, if I read correctly. Pistol whip still hits pretty hard, but not what it used to. I think sword is still used a lot in tanky builds too, but most people are looking for high damage.

Dee Jay.2460:

If you’re more interested in a well-rounded build that does well in all aspects of the game then go for a Power/Toughness/Vitality main set. Accessories are always easy to switch out and can be adapted.

I am curious how a power based set up works with D/D. I am always confused as to how power and crit work in this game and how you determine which is better. Wouldn’t crit be burstier?