Guild Wars 2

You probably used the word lute. The final ‘s’ in “Acan’s” combined with the first three letters of “lute” form a word the filter doesn’t like. Silly filter.

Why does Lege armor have to be tied to Raids?

I am certain that I am in a very small minority, but I would not care if legendary armor were tied to raids or any kind of content even if it eliminated the possibility of its acquisition if it had no functional difference. If it were only a skin and nothing else, who cares? That is Fashion Wars. Skins as prestige is a long-time design feature of GW2 even going back to GW1. But if legendary armor has stat-swapping like legendary weapons, that makes its functionality different and better and, as with legendary weapons, it should then be widely available just like legendary weapons are. If they change ascended armor to allow stat-swapping when legendary armor is released, then they can make legendary armor available only to a single winner of a PvP tournament for all I care. Other “casuals” may see it differently.

Ghost Thief Gameplay - Tier 1

in WvW

Jim Hunter.6821:
Lol what exactly do you find skillful about his play?
Drop 2 traps on a semi afk player, run away to stack stealth, rinse and repeat until they die, edit out all the footage where it doesn’t work.

The only thing I’ll give him props on is running sylvari so he can use the elite to counter reveal.

It’s not that I find his play skillful, but more that there are a lot of really bad players in WvW. Of course he is doing this in T1, but still…look at how those players reacted to him. Or rather how they did not react.

Ghost Thief Gameplay - Tier 1

in WvW

I consider myself a pretty terrible WvW player. Anybody decent player watching me play would laugh. Despite this, I have no major concerns about this ghost thief build. I bet half the people who play WvW could not roll a thief and play the build skillfully enough to be effective and kill many people with it, certainly not as well as the OP uses it in these videos. On top of this, even bad WvW players like me should be able to at least clear condis and get away from a ghost thief. I only recall being killed by one of these on one occasion and that was in a 2-on-2 with the ghost thief laying on condis while his partner (a condi druid, IIRC) also attacked. I haven’t played as much WvW lately so maybe these thieves are all over the place right now. If so, maybe I’d change my mind, but I have not experienced that. Yes, the build is trolly and annoying, but people really should not be raising such a ruckus over it. Even if I got killed by one of these on occasion, so what? I get killed in WvW all the time. :-)

Easiest PVE HOT Necro?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhZ6kZTodTsbTwyGg9GskLYUlh1QzKeKuFHjQBgGwKA-TRiBABBu/gVK/mU9n70DoxRAAgTAgCHCgyUCGxDAgQAj3CA-e

Anchoku.8142:
Other options for a power build are..
Drop staff for axe-focus
Drop Blood Magic for Soul Reaping and trait shouts, Cv, and BB while slotting power/might duration runes.
Run a power MM

There are several playable builds for roaming Hot.

This is similar to what I do. I think my current build is something like this:

I pretty much always run Soul Reaping just because I like being in shroud with 100%+ crit pumping up might and Spite for the damage bonus traits and vuln and might. I don’t bother with better runes because in PvE it just doesn’t seem to matter. Same for food. I just run something cheap. YAAW is for the stun break. If I need condi removal I run Suffer instead. CttB is fine too. Traits can be swapped as needed. Reaper is very survivable and usually mindless fun, even in HoT, no matter what one runs. I use ascended equipment, but exotic should be fine. Maybe swap in death magic instead of Spite if survival is an issue. Trinkets mostly come from WvW with tokens and laurels. Cheap is good. :-)

Update on the Economy

If hoarding is undesirable, then adding some sort of decay would discourage it, right? Moths and rust? If (for example) 1% of all of the materials in storage disappeared every month, wouldn’t that cut into the potential profits of long term hoarding of huge amounts of materials and push a lot of that material onto the TP? This is not advocacy of this approach, just trying to think along different lines than the usual “problems” and “solutions” that get discussed.

Perplexity Thief Nerf

in Thief

Does it trigger on mesmer mantra of healing? Is there a cooldown? If not…

Trapper thief is a joke

in WvW

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s0AJgsdeZY

This guy seems to be able to fight trap thieves.

Edge of the mists Unbalanced

in WvW

Thanks for bumping this. The subject line made me laugh. :-)

Cooldown thoughts

in Mesmer

If Arcane Thievery were AoE around its target, would people use it then?

Hearts & Mind Still Broken

Andrithir.6142:
I attempted this mission solo as a Ranger at least 7 times so far, and no attempts were successful. First time I fell off and died. Second time, a glitch in the updraft mechanics had be falling off the edge, and the other subsequent times I was just overwhelmed.
This level is mind numbingly frustrating, especially since everything just resets when you die.
Would it be easier to jump in a group and kill Mordremoth that way?

For me this instance is best done solo. I consider myself a pretty terrible player, clicking some skills and being fairly oblivious to mechanics and what exactly is going on in fights, but I have managed to complete this on every single class at least once and a few times on duplicate classes. Only one time have I done it with a buddy. It was on my mesmer and he was playing herald. It didn’t seem any easier than solo and I did it later solo with another (condi) mesmer.

I have not yet gotten all the achievements for it though, since in all the times (12+) doing it I managed to be hit at least once by a flying rock. So no flights of fancy yet. I tried choosing Caithe a couple of times and also wasn’t able to beat the blighted pale tree so I haven’t gotten dream warrior yet either and did all of them picking Canach and Braham. I’m sure there is some mechanic related to the blighted pale tree that I am not doing correctly. I came closest to killing her with a zerk ele, so I am guessing lots of aoe damage to kill her summons may be the key? I have never even tried migraine. Hardly anybody seems to be doing it now and I always seemed to have something else going on or wasn’t online when guildies have done it. I will do it sometime.

Biggest issue for most folks seems to be the updrafts. I have never glitched when just running through them without jumping or hitting the interact key, but others seem to have had issues. Maybe lag or bugs are involved? The other biggest issue is patience. Mordy (and pretty much the enemies he summons as well) hits like a creampuff. If you circle strafe him in melee, he won’t knock you down and will eventually die while you won’t. More damage is obviously better, especially since he hits so soft and defense is not really needed. Reflects can help with the weird missile attack he sometimes does but I haven’t noticed them to be necessary. Just stay moving always. But the most important need for patience is when/if you do die from the rocks or something. Just try it again. Although it seems like forever, the whole fight against him is probably only ten minutes or so. If you die and have to restart, it really isn’t as long as it seems to start over. Aside from lag and possible bugs, I believe practically every player can solo this on any class. It is annoying but doable.

(edited 2016-06-09 16:58:45 by William Bradley Knight.2609)

Sure-Shot Sheamus (Manor P1) is Impossible

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

http://gw2dungeons.net/CM1

Here is a guide…

Hybrid WvW build - hard counters or bad play?

in Mesmer

Fay.2357:
Chrono has nothing to do with full dire and perplexity runes. Taking chrono gives you a 25% move speed passive, access to alacrity through shatters, a higher shatter cadence from illusionary reversion and chronophantasma that doesn’t force you to burn increasingly scarce dodges, and access to slow on interrupt.

You can also choose to take shield over torch. Obviously torch works will PU better, but shield is a powerful offhand with strong defense (block), offensive utility (slow, quickness), and hard cc (infinite target stun wall). A potential option, especially since you’re so hybrid, is sc/torch + sw/sh. You’ll make good use of sword power coefficients, so it’s not a huge waste like it would be on a rabid/dire build. You’ll also get access to the leap/swap, which is really nice offensive utility.

I’d also recommend getting rid of arcane thievery. It’s just really bad, even when traited. Long cooldown, easy to miss, underwhelming effect. If you can’t live without that condie cleanse, take the cleanse mantra instead.

Air overload hurts, but the main painful part is the persistent aoe it lays down. It’s easy to interrupt overloads so that’s the best option, but if they finish the overload…just walk out of the aoe. You’re playing WvW not PvP, so there’s no obligation for you to stand there and take it.

Sword revenants do a lot of damage. You counter them with hard burst, preferably followed by a quick escape into stealth.

Condie reapers should not be beatable by your build unless they’re bad. That being said, the majority of people in WvW are awful, so you can probably kill most reapers. Just keep in mind that a good one will rip you apart without a lot more condition removal than what you’re running.

Thanks, Fay. This is helpful. I have definitely noticed what you say about players in WvW being bad. Anybody I am killing is not good and I have killed quite a few reapers. I will give chrono a try. Switching from staff to sw/sh is something I would like to try as well because I don’t use the staff often or well anyway. I hadn’t really thought about sword as an option. Blurred frenzy could help with folks popping me in melee and add some damage as well. Thanks.

Hybrid WvW build - hard counters or bad play?

in Mesmer

Thanks, Fay. Sounds like I can anticipate just bypassing good scrappers but should be able to beat diamond skin tempests by playing better unless they are tanky. What about druids? Ignore them too?

When you suggest trying chrono, you mean dropping dueling for chrono and going pure condi with full dire gear and perplexity runes like on metabattle? I have not tried that build but I generally suck at chrono, maybe just because I am not used to it. I don’t have very good timing for the continuum split. Also, not that I necessarily care about the salt, but don’t people consider dire gear with perplexity runes as cheesy?

I guess the build I am running is glassy but I had not really thought of it that way. I actually don’t seem to take as much damage as with some other builds I have tried. Maybe because the master of manipulation really helps prevent a lot of ranged damage? Between that and the stealth and blindness and the block on scepter (and other scrubs like me getting confused by the clones) I seem to get by okay. Or at least I don’t die nearly as much or as easily as I would expect. The goofy rune of speed usually tend to result in a minute or more of swiftness so I can move around better than some enemies seem to expect from mesmer. At least i can usually run away and not lose my corruption stacks. When folks get close it does hurt quite a bit though. That tempest’s air overload hit me very hard. Without blink or the F4 invuln, I would have been toast after a few pulses. A couple of sword heralds have gotten all over me before as well and were really hard to shake. Condi reapers are also tough without arcane thievery charged or when I time it wrong.

Hybrid WvW build - hard counters or bad play?

in Mesmer

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNArfWlsnhG1YbawMNwtGLvGUZC6d0QDQOPi5KG+IA-TF0CQBbUJBCOBAGRJGK0E8P1fyjGins/AFOEA3THgBMx4AlgA4BBIATQtTLgzUO4tjAQAgDA2d5fDhAmsGA-w

I usually run a reaper/necro or ele in the zerg in WvW, but lately have been running a condi/hybrid mesmer build for roaming and generally having a lot of success with it (for me) considering that I am basically a scrub. It is something close to this:

Yes, it is pretty cheesy and probably suboptimal too, but it was cheap to put together and at least it isn’t full dire with perplexity runes, eh? Aside from a sustain druid I’ve been able to kill at least some of most classes of enemies and even won a couple of 1 vs 2 battles. But yesterday in SoS borderlands I encountered a couple that I simply could not kill. One was a Tempest that I assume was running diamond skin and fresh air. I could not stay engaged because he kept closing on me and channeling air overload and forcing me to blink away or F4 or stealth to briefly disengage. We fought for maybe five minutes neither could kill the other and he just moved on. I had stacks up and was running at about 2K power and 2K condi damage, but he was clearing all the conditions and even 2K power just wasn’t enough with all the running I was having to do. Is diamond skin a hard counter for any mesmer condi build or was I just playing it wrong?

The other build was a scrapper. The difficulty may have been mainly because the guy was really good (or at least a lot better than me.) A lot of enemies just eat a whole confusing images, but he never let me get a full one on him even when I did it from stealth. He also used reflects to keep me from spamming scepter 1 at him and stealthed himself at really appropriate times. He also did like the tempest and tried to stay closely engaged and forced me to run a lot. I never got him below half and he almost killed me several times before I ran away. I encountered him twice more and he chased me so he could tell he had an advantage. One of the times was while I was taking a camp with another 3-man guild roaming group. The scrapper engaged us all and couldn’t get a kill, but was able to get away from the group and we all had to give up and move on. Any idea what he might have been running? He was running a hammer and a couple of kits. No flamethrower. In spite of his being a good player, I wondered if there was a scrapper build that was a counter to condi builds in general and even hybrids like this or if he was good and it didn’t matter.

Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated. Especially any suggestions for dealing with enemies that stay close? I am not a very good player so even simple stuff would probably be helpful.

Nerf Conditions

in WvW

This is quite possibly a stupid thought but I will throw it out anyway. What if protection affected condition damage? Assuming a condition nerf is needed, would that be too much? Not enough? Imbalanced across classes? Unworkable? Be gentle… grin

Unplayable Solo

BlueEyesWhiteDragon.6951:
But this content is not being played! I have swapped maps several times in a small space of time and still lost events, because the maps are empty!
Do I feel like this expansion should be able to be played solo? Yes, I do!

So do I. ANet advertised this game as possible to mostly solo, especially open world PvE. HoT should stay with that general design. I think it mostly does that if people are willing to adjust their play just a bit.

Do we not remember that Anet changed Zhaitan so it could be done solo?! If your argument is ‘This is end game content, you’re supposed to be grouped up’ why did they change it? Because MANY of us would at least like that option to be able to do it alone. Why didn’t Anet learn that some people don’t have guilds or want to use LFG tool.
And as for ‘many of us have soloed HoT and didn’t have a problem’ honestly, I’m happy for you, but this post was about the many of us who don’t feel the same way, and that’s not balanced.

I consider myself to be a mediocre player at best. At best. I am an old-ish player with a bum left hand. I am pretty oblivious to the nuances of what enemies are doing and have poor reaction time. I am clumsy. Yet I have done the personal story (which unlike some players I actually like quite a bit) on over a dozen toons. I did all of them solo except for one Zhaitan fight on one of my mesmers which I did with a buddy who was running his herald. Some of the toons weren’t geared very well, though all were in at least exotic armor with at least rare weapons. I feel confident that almost any player, certainly the vast majority no matter how limited in ability, can do this content. It is absolutely possible to spam/click skills and still get through it. In the Mordremoth fight in particular, dodging is not even very important. ANet’s event/mob scaling is deserving of some criticism as it seems like they could do a better job on it in a lot of areas, but it just doesn’t seem reasonable to expect them to design all content around the ability of 10-15% of the player base that might struggle with it. Especially since those players do have the option to group up. Aiming at the vast majority is about as balanced as they can get it. Like you, I prefer to do most content solo without using the LFG tool. But even so, I understand that in an MMO it is reasonable to expect that some content might require grouping. For me, that often means just not doing some content, or not doing it often. I don’t do dungeons or fractals often because I don’t like grouping up for long periods of time with people depending on me, even if they are guildies.

In the case you mentioned, two players spending over two hours on Hearts and Minds should be an indicator that changes need to be made not to game design, but to player gear, builds, or play. Or all three. It should take 30-45 minutes to do that instance. Here are some general thoughts that may be of help with this fight and in general, if not to you personally then maybe to somebody:

1) Movement – This cannot be stressed enough, not only for this instance, but for the game in general. This game’s combat is designed to be active. Players should be moving constantly. This can be a hard adjustment for some of us who played GW1 where you could not move and use skills simultaneously, but it is an important adjustment. Specifically in Hearts and Minds, it is important to move so you stay out of the worst of the enemy attacks. It is probably the most important thing a player can do in this instance. When facing Eir, you only have to move enough to stay off the orange streaks from her bow while you kill Garm. When she is dazed and vulnerable after Garm dies you should use a stun or knockdown or other interrupt/crowd control skill to break her bar (which isn’t necessarily visible if I recall correctly) and then can just stand still and blast her with as much damage as possible. But when she is active and you are killing Garm, you have to move to stay off the orange streaks. When she does her big attack, just run until she finishes it. Hitting the speed boost mushrooms is a huge help too. Similar for facing Canach. You should use ranged attacks against him and just strafe at a distance while moving through the speed boost mushrooms to go faster. You’ll just need stun/knockdown/crowd control skills to break his blue bar. The Caithe fight can be hard. I would avoid her. Mordy is actually easier than the others. It can be slower, but he can be beaten by doing nothing more than circle strafing and auto attacks. Constantly circling around him while attacking keeps him from hitting with the knockdown and other bad stuff. When he goes invulnerable, just kill the adds like any veteran mobs in the game and go back to circle strafing him. The flight part can be difficult. Some players have encountered bugs in getting off the ground. Try not to jump when running through the updrafts. If that doesn’t work, try hitting the function (F) key. Some say that works. If you die and get sent back to the beginning of the Mordy fight, don’t despair. Try again. I have died a few times on the third flight portion. It is annoying, but really doesn’t take long to get him back down and try the flight part again, because…

2) Damage – Many players when struggling with content try more defense oriented gear. This seems intuitive, but the opposite actually can be the case. It is often better to have less defense and more damage because enemies die before they get a chance to do bad things to the player. At the very least, players need to be able to do enough damage. For a direct damage build, this generally requires gear with at least power as the primary characteristic. Even soldier’s gear with power, vitality, and toughness will result in more damage than using something without power. Ideally, try to add as much gear as possible with precision and ferocity too. Everything should be at least exotic level 80 for HoT content. If cost is an issue, you can get exotic soldier armor for karma from vendors in Orr. You want at least exotic with power as a primary stat. For weapons as well. Ascended is obviously better and a goal should be to work toward at least ascended weapons and trinkets, preferably berserker. But even if not ascended, berserker exotic trinkets with soldier armor will work well for the personal story. This assumes power builds. Condition damage builds can work in HoT too, though slower. But with those, you can constantly apply conditions and still be able to do damage while moving and avoiding damage. For condi builds, choose armor with condition damage as primary stat. I think Rabid is available for karma from temple vendors in Orr.

3) Gear – In addition to the armor and trinkets mentioned, every weapon should be at least exotic level 80 and equipped with a sigil, preferably a damage-oriented one. All armor should have runes. For power builds, you will want to use runes with power stats. They don’t have to be expensive either. Something like runes of the privateer are cheap and add a good bit of power. If condition-oriented, there are lots of cheap condition damage runes. Overall, you want your power stat to be as high as possible, at least 2000, preferably 2400 or higher. Crit chance and crit damage are added pluses and make a huge difference in damage.

4) Traits/specializations – This does not necessarily matter as much as it used to when the trait lines also affected stats like power, but is still important. Choose traits that add damage, preferably the ones with damage modifiers like added 10% damage when health below x% or under certain circumstances like enemy has a condition. Alternatively, you can focus your armor, trinkets, runes, and sigils on power/damage, and select trait lines that help with defense or survival. For example, the warrior traits that apply defensive stances as you drop below certain health thresholds can help survivability while still doing decent damage.

5) Food – Players should always use food and utility boosts. Not only can they add a lot of damage but they help with experience gain to get masteries faster. Masteries make a lot of difference in HoT. There are no potions specifically for Mordrem like in HoT, but you can get some of the cheaper sharpening stones as utility boosts. Even a 1% boost of some kind if helpful. Power based food is cheap. If you have a decent crit chance, food that steals life on crit can help keep you alive while attacking.

For specific content like Hearts and Minds it might be worth watching a few youtube videos. It can be hard to tell how players are geared and even what they are doing, but you can see how they move. Check out metabattle.com for some build ideas. Those aren’t a requirement but give ideas for a good starting place and can be adapted to suit your play.

Something else many seem to overlook in open world PvE is just plain old land speed. I pretty much never go anywhere in PvE without either skills that permanently give swiftness or a utility skill equipped that gives a full time 25% speed boost. With no speed boost, everywhere you go in the game, enemies will attack you and slow you down or even kill you. With speed boosts, you can run by practically anything and everything in the game to get to what you specifically want to do. A sigil of speed on a weapon should not be dismissed either. With one of those, after killing 2-3 enemies you will have a minute or so of swiftness to quickly get to the next enemy. A big fight can result in over 3 minutes of swiftness.

Lastly, if you need someone to group with to help with content and don’t want to use LFG, feel free to message me. I don’t do a lot of chat because I type poorly. I am definitely no great player so no guarantee of success, but I do not mind repeating content or helping. The journey is as important as the goal in most things. Sometimes even failure can be fun. Lots of people in game find repeating content with other people to be fun or just like helping folks. Obviously having done Hearts and Minds a dozen or more times means I sure don’t mind doing that. Aside from that, asking for just about anything in map chat results in help. There are always a few jerks in any human endeavor, but despite what some people say here, the GW2 community is pretty good.

MAY THE STARS GUIDE YOU gag

I am not ashamed to admit that I like all of this sort of dialogue. It adds flavor to the game, even though some of it occurs all too frequently. All of you folks complaining just need to stop letting fear poison your hearts in this forsaken wasteland. grin

Survivable open world builds

in Players Helping Players

TheSwede.9512:
Generally speaking, oftentimes it can be enough to simply swap Traitlines around.

For Warrior, for instance, just swapping Tactics to Defense will be a HUGE buff to your survivability as you’ll get Dogged March, Endure Pain Auto-proc and Cleansing Ire/Last Stand along with Adrenal Healing, making you extremely tanky. Simply slot in a few stances and you’re good to go even in Zerker.

As for gear, I tend to mix in either Knight or Soldier gear with Zerker for Direct Damage fighters, or if you don’t wanna lose too much effective power then you can merely go full Marauders (Crafting it can be expensive though).

For each profession I’d suggest the following:

Warrior – Change to Strength/Defense/Berserker (or Discipline if you don’t have the elite spec unlocked) while keeping the Zerker Armor. Load stances such as Balanced Stance, Berserker’s Stance and Endure Pain onto your tray and use Headbutt for max Adrenaline at the start of a fight. Should work with Full Zerker in Open World this way.

Guardian – Keep the Meta build (Zeal/Honor/Dragonhunter) but swap in Defender’s Dogma as your DH GM trait. Swap in LB as a ranged weapon. If this isn’t enough, consider equipping some Soldier gear, or go full Marauder’s.

Thief – Deadly Arts/Trickery/Daredevil all the way. Mug+Sleight of Hand will help sustain you this way, and Dash as your DD dodge will make moving about and running away a breeze. Use Staff as your weapon of choice, prioritize the use of Vault and Weakening Charge to maintain good DPS while also keeping enemies in check. Swap in some Soldier gear if you’re still having issues.

Necromancer – Spite/Soul Reaping/Reaper with Shouts and Signets, or Blood Magic and Wells if you don’t have Reaper. Use GS/Staff, or D+Wh/Staff. Use Valkyrie or Cavalier, as Deathly Perception/Decimate Defenses will be all the Critting you need.
For Condition Builds, use Viper (Or if you can’t get that, Sinister or Carrion) and run with Curses/Soul Reaping/Reaper or Curses/Death Magic/Reaper if using Minions.

This is good advice, though I would suggest swapping in some Valkyrie instead of soldier on Thief. You can use other methods to get your crit chance up and the extra health helps a lot on thief while still keeping damage up. Even in HoT areas, killing stuff quickly is still one of the best ways to survive.

5 hours queues

in WvW

Dawdler.8521:
If you are casual, then why care at all? Join borders or EoTM, queue and lazily play. Problem solved.

This. EB and SoS borderland were both queued for a while last night. I am a casual scrub and played on one account for a while in the borderland and when I switched accounts it was queued. I just went to the other borderland and had a ball. Most fun I have had in WvW in months.

Gotta take the opportunity to plug FA here. Like I said, I am a scrub and don’t even know what I am doing sometimes. Not even rank 200 on either account yet. Never had a problem or seen a problem in WvW on FA. The commanders are friendly and helpful and often funny. Despite being friendly, the overall level of play has historically been good too. Great overall gaming environment. Kudos.

Melee solo class

Sylent.3165:
Kastiel.1947:
Herald FTW , best clkitteners gonna hate though

Well damage is sure better then my ranger in melee, stats much better with perma fury, Crystal hibernation is wonderful when needed….Just wish sword 2 skill wasn’t complete garbage ha.

Unless they nerfed it in this patch, sword 2 seems pretty good as long as you hit 2-3 enemies.

AB Meta: Please nerf the massive Zerk

Ayrilana.1396:
It’s a misconception that the Zerg is detrimental to the AB meta succeeded. What the Zerg typically does is start and east and then rotated counter clockwise doing the mechanics and DPS phases. Yes, there are those that slack and don’t help with the me mechanics but you’ll have those same players regardless as to whether there was a Zerg or not. We had a large number of those players before the Zerg became a thing. After the Zerg finishes up at south, they typically split up to the four quadrants.

The thing is that people would not do the Zerg if it meant that the meta would fail. I have yet to see it fail because of the Zerg. Instead it typically fails because people do not listen and kill their octovine before everyone else is ready.

Other than the time the Zerg takes to make roaring between each quadrant (typically 30 seconds), they are actively contributing to the success of the meta. It’s actually in their best interests to otherwise they wouldn’t really get as good of a reward from the rotation. The really problem, if any, are from those that AFK next to the octovines waiting for the DPS phase.

This was my experience last time I did AB as well. The zerg appeared to make up 90% of all players and was explained in map chat prior to start. I had never tried it in the zerg before, but we started in East and burned off 40% of the vine in one burn there. It went North and burned down maybe 30-35% there, West and burned about 40%, then South and burned maybe 20-25%. Then it went and did another rotation. Most of the zerg stayed at South after the second rotation since it is most difficult but some spread out to the others. It went smooth as silk and succeeded. I have seen the meta fail without the zerg.

The rewards seemed noticeably larger from being in the zerg. It wouldn’t surprise me if ANet nerfed it just because they don’t want people getting good rewards, but there is no reason to complain about the zerg as far as success or failure go. The zerg is not a reason for this meta to fail. Also, even if everybody participates in the zerg, as long as a few people spread out at the end for the final burns, the meta will succeed. I see no problem with it and no reason for people to complain. The zerg appears to be more organized than many of the standard maps without zerg that I have seen.

Rate the elite specs

This is based on my experiences playing though the personal story on all classes, twice for some, the HoT map metas enough for most of the mastery achieves, and a little WvW. I don’t raid.

9. Chronomancer – I feel similar as you about this. I don’t PvP, but when I play mesmer in WvW I haven’t been using chrono but rather plain mesmer. I have used it in PvE and like I like the wells, but I don’t feel as effective as I would like. This is probably because chrono is so supportive and I often run around more solo. I’d like chrono better if I played it better I suppose.

8. Druid – This is sort of like Chronomancer for me. I find myself playing ranger, or with the same style as with ranger even when druid. The new pets are good though. I play as straight pew pew power ranger when doing WvW and just haven’t tried really playing Druid there.

7. Dragonhunter – Not fair to judge this one because I am sort of terrible as a guardian and don’t play it much anyway. Traps are sort of fun. Longbow is fun though mindless. It is an improvement over guard for me. Haven’t tried DH at all in WvW.

6. Berserker – Another one that is probably not fair to judge because I think ANet still just doesn’t have warrior set up properly right now. It’s pretty fun and I’ve played through the personal story twice as a berserker. I do always use the elite spec when playing warrior because it seems more effective. Haven’t really tried it in WvW.

5. Herald – I like it pretty well and it is effective in PvE, but the class isn’t really all that good (for me) without playing Glint. Haven’t tried it in WvW. I like its mobility. Revenant still needs some tweaks overall.

4. Tempest – I like tempest well enough that I miss it when playing ele on an alt account that doesn’t have HoT. Ele still seems to need some work as a class though. I play staff tempest in both PvE and (a little) in WvW, the latter nuking and healing in the zerg or just mindlessly taking camps. I’ve played dagger as well, but am not very good at it.

3. Daredevil – I don’t play it in WvW, but it is fun in PvE. I love the mobility. It seems like a bit of a rip off for people who have always played thief that they sort of took away some of the previous mobility and play from thief and added it back in DD, but it is a lot of fun to play. Staff is a good weapon addition.

2. Scrapper – I sort of hated engineer and it was my least played class prior to HoT. I am terrible with kits and constant swapping and skill spamming but the scrapper has made the class playable and fun for me. Haven’t tried it in WvW, though I know it is effective there. I like the hammer quite a bit.

1. Reaper – Part of the reason this ranks here is that I like necro. It was my favorite class back in GW1. The reaper spec is just such a big improvement to necro that it changes the whole class. Greatsword is cool even if I still find myself playing dagger more. The class is quite playable in WvW as both condi and power and is a blast in PvE. Reaper seems to have made necro the attrition class that people expected it to be. Some seem to think it is OP in PvP. I wouldn’t know. I just hope it doesn’t get a nerf overall due to PvP. grin

(edited 2016-04-15 21:15:45 by William Bradley Knight.2609)

Mordremoth Final Fight Is Frustrating.

Jayden Ennok.3687:
William Bradley Knight.2609:
I must suck at gliding because I have yet to get the Flights of Fancy achievement. Somehow I always get hit, although there a couple of times that I never noticed getting hit and still didn’t get it, so maybe there is a bug.

if you got hit during updrafts and then died, the death doesn’t reset the flights of fancy achiev.

Yeah, I have been getting hit but not actually dying. Every time it happened I would tell myself I should just go ahead and die to reset the achiev eligibility, but would inevitably be too impatient to re-fight Mordy and would instead just go ahead and finish him off.

Haven’t had a chance yet to try helix’s suggestion for avoiding the rocks.

Mordremoth Final Fight Is Frustrating.

Healix.5819:
William Bradley Knight.2609:
Flights of Fancy achievement

Like most projectiles, the rocks can be easily avoided by simply strafing back and forth. Pick the farthest away updraft and hover over it while rapidly strafing – for example, hold Q, while tapping E to stay in the same spot.

Thanks for the tip. I will try this. Having done this story with 13 different toons now, it seems like I would have gotten the achievement by luck alone by now. I haven’t been dying, just somehow getting hit.

Won't be getting Legendary armor!

Vayne.8563:
If this was only about skins or minis, I’d have no problem with it.

This is the crux of the issue. Gate titles, skins, and other cosmetic items you like behind whatever content you like. But when actual functionality or power is involved, it goes against the original vision of the game. ANet has a right to do that. They own the game. But they sold it under a different vision. Players are not wrong who consider it a “bait and switch” or even a betrayal.

Ashen.2907:
I am not saying that it is about greed or entitlement. I dont think that either apply. There is nothing entitled or greedy about wanting something, or even expressing that want.

What I am saying is that things that players want have been gated behind content that players don’t like since the game launched. This phenomenon is not new. That this would be the case was not a secret.

Gating different functionality or BiS gear behind content that players don’t like is something rather new for Guild Wars. It is different from how ANet sold the game. Well, it could be argued that ascended gear violated the vision ANet originally sold as well, but ascended is still obtainable via any form of game play. Players that do not like to raid, or PvP, or WvW, or adventures, or dungeons, or whatever do not have to do that content to get BiS gear.

Feel free to express your concern. Complain as needed. Tell the company what might be done to make you a happy customer again. Its not entitlement. Its not greedy. Its being a responsive consumer. Other people have been doing it since launch.

Okay, here is a suggestion for happy customers. Add stat-swapping to all ascended gear. Not all complaining would stop as people will complain no matter what, but the vast majority of the complaints regarding legendary armor should go away with that change. People cannot validly complain that they cannot get a skin or title associated with raiding if they are not willing to actually raid. But not being able to obtain BiS gear without raiding is a valid complaint.

Alternatively, ANet could make legendary armor (though with different skins from the raid armor) available through some other means that do not require specific content.

Mordremoth Final Fight Is Frustrating.

An Arctic Fox.6312:
8 times I’ve tried this. It’s easy, well until the little ley lines/updrafts refuse to work and I have to start all over. All.Over. For the love of god at least checkpoint the fght when you beat one of the blighted enemies like Rytlock, and not force me to start what can be a 30 minute fight all over with no chance to repair armor.

This fight really can be frustrating. For me, the updrafts are the most frustrating parts. Fighting Mordy and his spawns is pretty trivial. I have done it now on every character profession and twice on two of them. All were solo except for my mesmer which I did with a friend. I don’t think after the first time though I ever died from anything other than the gliding parts. But I have died several times doing that, usually on the third time Mordy does it. I must suck at gliding because I have yet to get the Flights of Fancy achievement. Somehow I always get hit, although there a couple of times that I never noticed getting hit and still didn’t get it, so maybe there is a bug.

Anyway, dying in that fight became less frustrating for me when I started noting the time I started fighting Mordy and kept up with how long the fight actually takes. Even on the times I died on the 3rd gliding part, I had only been fighting him for a few minutes. Knowing trying again was only a waste of 5-10 minutes made it seem not as bad. Not counting the previous fights with Blighted Canach (or Caithe) and Eir, if the actual fight with him and his spawns is taking 30 minutes, you aren’t doing enough damage. He hits like a cream puff so you can gear for damage and not worry much about dying. Just circle strafing while attacking him takes care of pretty much everything in that fight.

But yeah, the updrafts are annoying. Not sure why ANet decided to make them different from other updrafts and not work when you jump. It might be a good fix if they change it to make them shoot you into the air whether you jump or not. And if they require hitting interact, that has to be a bug. I have never had to do that.

Not worth $50 for vets , suggesting new model

UnitedChaos.8364:
I bought:
Guild Wars 1: Prophecies for $50
Guild Wars 1: Factions for $50
Guild Wars 1: Nightfall for $50
Guild Wars 1: Eye of the North for (whatever the price was… $25?)
Guild Wars 2 for $50
Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns for $50

Ignoring the idea of a discount and objections to the inclusion of the base game, what you list above seems to be the rub for a lot of people. A lot of people seem to think HoT had the smallest amount of content of all of the above. Even if HoT’s content exceeded GWEN, the price was higher. Seems like GWEN was more than $25, but it was available for less than $30 within a couple of weeks of release and within two months ANet was offering it at half price. There was criticism about its price to content ratio when it was released. Even adjusting for inflation, HoT was more expensive. Real or not, the perception that HoT was overpriced is out there and is something ANet has to consider. They almost certainly will do so and make whatever their metrics indicate is the best decision in pricing the next expansion.

How is HoT difficulty?

dubstax.9102:
Yes I do. I need them for my builds, one of which is for WvW. You can use that argument for anything. You don’t need X so stop complaining about Y. Nobody told you how to build your characters so please don’t tell me how to build mine and what I do and do not need.

It seems odd to me for anyone who plays WvW to complain about the difficulty of HoT. I am a total scrub at WvW and get my clock cleaned almost any time I have to go against someone without having them outnumbered. HoT doesn’t seem nearly as difficult. You don’t really have to be any more careful in HoT than when trying to solo a camp in WvW. I.e. if you barge in and facetank it all, you get CCed and rolled, but if you pay attention and be careful it is not terribly hard. Are you really finding HoT anywhere close to the difficulty of WvW?

I am generally pretty oblivious about noticing things enemies are doing in game and even click skills. I would be shocked if my skill level was up to the average GW2 player. It is rare for me to see somebody playing worse than me. But I still managed to complete the elite specs and personal story on every character class and have all masteries unlocked but two. I did all of it either solo or just with whoever happened by or asked in map chat. You can also use proofs of heroics from WvW to avoid having to do all of the hero points. I have accumulated quite a few of those on multiple characters just from doing dailies in WvW. And even if you are having trouble in HoT zones, I have found people to be quite helpful. In Auric Basin there even seem to be HP trains running pretty often where you can just follow the zerg and get the whole map in less than an hour.

Won't be getting Legendary armor!

maddoctor.2738:
I didn’t respond to the actual topic earlier, so here it goes:

When Fractals were released so many years back, they got the latest shinny (Ascended Rings), in a similar manner Raids got the new shinny (Legendary Armor).

I for one believe that allowing players to get Envoy Armor (the name of the Raid legendary armor) outside Raids would hurt the game more than help it. But another named Legendary Armor through other content types wouldn’t be unreasonable at all, in the same way how Fractals and PVP give a different Legendary back item.

Although I can understand why some players are upset about the Legendary Armor acquisitions, may I remind everyone that we don’t know how we will get Legendary Armor yet? We don’t have the full collection yet, and that collection we see now is only the first tier. What will be required for tier 2 and maybe tier 3?

Can the “Add Legendary Armor through other types of content” resume after we get the chance of crafting the first Legendary Armor? Then we can talk about adding it elsewhere. It gets to the point that people want to get things “locked” behind some other content, before that other content awards them.

And the new Ascended Trinket stats that are available only in the Raid would make excellent additions for LS3 achievements, exactly how LS2 worked. I’d urge caution and patience on the subject as we don’t know the full plan yet.

This is a good point. If ANet eventually makes legendary armor available in this way, there is little cause for objection. People cannot really complain with much validity if the argument becomes “but I can’t get it first without raiding.” You can still get it by “playing how you want.”

Won't be getting Legendary armor!

Obtena.7952:
Ashen.2907:
Obtena.7952:
I don’t recall Anet EVER saying you won’t have to raid to get BiS gear.

I don’ recall ever seeing Idaho, which doesn’t change the fact that it exists.

OK let me rephrase then: Anet never said that to players.

This comment from http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/21/guild-wars-2-interview-monetization/ seems applicable:

“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.” – Mike O’Brien, President of Arenanet

Legendary armor allowing stat swapping makes it better than merely ascended. Some might try to argue that it isn’t, but a very large number of players disagree. At the very least it certainly is not “differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone” as stated above. For that matter, ascended itself violated the “no grind – visual appearance differences only” principle. LOTS of people were extremely unhappy when ANet added ascended armor.

Maybe the “solution” is to just allow stat-swapping on all ascended items? “Hard core” or “elite” peeps who want to raid or whatever would still have their exclusive, elite skins to show their skill/work/whatever and those who don’t want to do those activities could still get best gear by playing how they want. This approach to “best gear” is obviously and clearly a part of how they originally sold the game.

Obtena.7952:

Raids are dungeons/dungeons are raids; It’s just a label. You ALWAYS needed to do them to get BiS gear.

Ashen.2907:

This is a falsehood. A complete fabrication. It would be accurate if you exchanged the word ALWAYS with NEVER. I really hope that claim represents ignorance of the facts on your part rather than intentional dishonesty.

Oh I get it … you’re one of those people that argue the details and miss the meaning. OK, that’s fair enough. You get BiS gear from doing ‘activities’, regardless of what you want to call them and Anet never gave anyone the impression you shouldn’t have to do these ‘activities’ to get BiS gear either. I could be more vague, but then you would just troll me because I’m being to vague /sigh.

I have never even bothered to do all dungeons but had BiS gear on all characters back when exotic was BiS. Now I have ascended weapons on most and ascended armor on a few. ANet very much gave everybody the impression that you could “play how you want” and get BiS gear. Not only did they give that impression but they trumpeted it as a selling point of the game. Then they actually released the game that way. You could get BiS gear, which was exotic, from practically any kind of play. Playing open world and doing events or even just running around killing stuff would get you BiS gear. Karma exotic gear was and is easy.

Then they released ascended. Very different story. But even after that it was still largely the case that you could get ascended gear by playing how you want. It took a lot longer and a lot more gold, but it was still true that you could play how you want and eventually get it. Even when they changed legendary weapons to allow stat-swapping it was still true. Play how you want for long enough and you get any legendary you want. Now with legendary armor, it is no longer the case. It isn’t just a skin. If you want the best armor in the game, you must raid. Or pay someone to raid for you. This seems to be why some people are upset. Even if not that much of a difference (and it isn’t) the direction of the game is bothering people.

Doesn’t matter much to me. I played many hours of GW from before the release of Factions and I have played a lot of hours since the pre-release of GW2, but am definitely way more casual than hard core. As mentioned above, I never even did all the dungeons. It doesn’t bother me not to have a bunch of “bling” and I usually have more gold than stuff I really want to spend it on. There is all sorts of stuff to do in the game that I just haven’t gotten around to doing. But it is a little annoying that there is BiS gear out there that PHIW will not get me if I ever did decide I wanted it. I really, really like HoT. The maps are amazing and the challenge level is fine and, unlike some, I even enjoyed the personal story. It is quite entertaining. But if ANet keeps moving in the direction they appear headed, I will hesitate to buy the next expansion. It is hard to put a finger on it, but maybe it is sort of a trust thing. I understand wanting to include raid type content to appeal to a subset of their player base or even to attract new players, but there seems to be a disconnect or misdirection of focus. There were a lot of people to whom they sold this game via the kind of vision O’Brien cast in the quote above. ANet needs to do everything possible to stick closely to that vision if they want to keep those people. Obviously money is the primary factor that guides their decision-making and they need to do whatever they think makes them the most money. Maybe their metrics show they don’t want those players to whom they originally sold that vision? Or maybe they think those folks won’t leave no matter what they do? I doubt that. But regardless, the game has changed a lot and not always for the better for those casual players who play GW2 because it is (was) casual-oriented.

(edited 2016-03-18 17:20:50 by William Bradley Knight.2609)

Solo Reaper Build Help

Totalkill.8014:
Hi All,

I have recently got Reaper (66% unlocked) and I am looking for a good build for soloing the open world (including HoT maps). I love Greatsword so I want to keep that. Second weapon set I have is a swap between Staff and D/WH. I am currently running basic Zerker Gear (a mix of Masterwork and Rare) and I don’t have alot of gold to swap it out at the moment.

If anybody can help, I would be grateful.

Leinhart is right. You can do everything in full zerker as a reaper. I would only suggest upgrading to exotic zerker gear rather than the masterwork and rare if possible. If you have the karma you can use temple armor from karma vendors in Orr. Laurels can be used to get some ascended jewelry pieces for no gold as well. If you don’t have karma or laurels, at least try and upgrade all masterwork pieces to rare if possible and start adding pieces of exotic as able. Since reaper has good trait options to increase crit chance, you could use valkyrie armor instead of zerk to help with survivability. Or soldier. Or whatever you like that is cheap if having to use rare. I haven’t tired HoT with a less than exotic-geared toon, but reaper is extremely survivable even when set up for max damage. Going with death magic and some minions and using Rise makes one nearly indestructible. Face-tanking some champs in HoT is possible in exotic zerk gear so rare should work with some caution.

Some build advice please

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAR3dnM0AN1gdbCO2As3gFqBLuDeCbhUlgawlSKAMAGWA-TBSBAB5o+zCHEAzUCCwVAA69HwT3wVK/o4BA8NIAYRCYVlQACGDA-e

You may find zerker armor to be more acceptable to you as you play more, but necros have some options for traits in Soul Reaping (Death Perception) and Reaper (Decimate Defenses) that add a lot of crit chance, so if you feel squishy, you could try valkyrie armor. Necro has a high health pool anyway and the added vitality of valkyrie will make you more survivable. Having power instead of toughness as the prime modifier means valkyrie should do a lot more damage than knight’s. You can slowly add ascended zerker jewelry over time as well for even more damage. With the shroud and high health pool Necro is so naturally survivable that over time you will want to focus almost everything toward damage. Try death magic, soul reaping, and reaper with valk/zerker armor for plenty of survivability plus a bit more damage Maybe something like this is decent…?

If cost is a factor, swap out the runes for something cheaper and power-based like ogre or vampirism. Ultimately aim toward something more like this for damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAR3dnMbCt0gtbCO2As3glaBjaMMHqWxbxx4aEKBEAmBA-ThRBAB59QAwT3wV7PK/MTJIlq/AwVAIAwBwv/mv9N48zP/8zPvf/93f/93CBIYMA-e

Other may have better suggestions. It is hard to go wrong with reaper and just picking the most damaging skills, traits, and gear.

Stopped playing shortly after release

The Colon of Jack.2158:
I couldn’t get past the Challenge of Strength in City of Hope. Tried grouping with friends and group finder, but every attempt was a wipe. On top of that, most events in the new areas ended in wiping. Has anything changed since? Better survivability builds?

Were you by chance playing ele? I’ve done the personal story on several characters now, all solo at least until Hearts and Minds, and only had trouble with this on an ele. With reaper, herald, ranger, mesmer, and even thief, in zerk gear or near zerk, it went smoothly with no real problems. But with ele I seem to recall dying twice before switching up my build to something that worked for me. If you are playing ele, it might be worth adding both of the glyphs of elementals to the bar for providing some assistance in damaging enemies and keeping them occupied while you avoid the traps. I honestly don’t know why ele was really any more difficult but it was. Ele is squishy, but so is thief and it was no problem. Maybe it is because ele typically relies heavily on self-healing for sustain/survival?

Either way, if you want some help message in game. I’d be glad to try and assist.

Flameburst bug

in Elementalist

MyPuppy.8970:
Working as intended. It was hotfixed with hot if i remember correctly. I find it annoying too though; i was used to see my ele turning to cast it, now you have to use proper positioning. Especially at close range.

Really? This is intentional? Was it listed on one of the updates? If intentional, it isn’t merely a nerf to an already weak skill, but an annoying one. What would be the intended purpose for such a change?

Flameburst bug

in Elementalist

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Flame-Burst-No-line-of-site/5827655

Okay, this bug has been reported…

But it is so annoying that I feel it merits special attention. Flameburst isn’t even a great skill in the first place. A bug that makes it almost worthless is nearly enough to make me want to drop staff. Anybody else feel similarly? Is there a trick to avoiding it? Seems less likely to happen the more I move when casting it, but I haven’t found anything specific to get around it. Not sure what broke it, but…ANet, please fix this.

I've killed all three of the raid bosses

Labjax.2465:
Kal Spiro.9745:
Is it ruining your play experience having a single line of text on your screen that can be easily ignored? It will probably stay up there for a while. What does it matter?

Speaking for myself…

Ruining? No. Talk about hyperbole.

An ongoing nuisance and reminder of how garbage the UI customization is in this game? Absolutely.

+1

Confirmed: Toxicity in Gw2 equals wasteland

IllegalChocolate.6938:
Those of you blaming HoT for turning the GW2 community into a cesspool clearly didn’t play GW2 pre-HoT.

The amount of bile in dragon stand has nothing on the trolling in WvW, the smack talk in sPvP, or booting people last minute out of a dungeon run.

This seems odd to me. I have yet to see any bile in DS or WvW. I am on FA and I have never had anything bad directed at me in WvW despite the fact that I am a mediocre player at best. The only negative thing I have ever seen in WvW map chat was several months ago when a player wanted to be validated on TS and was suspected of being a spy for another server. And from what I saw of that convo, those suspicions may well have been correct. -grin- Most of the time map chat seems downright friendly on FA.

I don’t do DS very often, but for any organized map, my experiences have been pretty positive as well. Maybe I have been lucky?

On the value of "luxury" rewards

Wanze.8410:
Can you maybe write down those profit control suggestions you are talking about in a standalone post without replies to other posts? Because the only suggestion i can think of that you made here is taxing players that pick up more gold than a certain daily threshold from the tp. And that wouldnt be profit control, that would just be limiting trading volume in general, nothing more.
It would also have a kinds of side effects for the general price equilibrium and volatility.
Maybe i missed some other suggestions that you made because i only skim your posts for replies you made to my personal points.

I have a profit control suggestion. Here it is:

“More people should learn to barter.”

Many of the in-game merchants seem to agree since they offer this suggestion whenever someone speaks to them. The “problem” of flippers can be easily solved by more flippers, right? Given enough flippers, at some point there are essentially no more profit margins. This is already the case for many goods like ectos. With enough flippers, all of these “evil” profits get spread out among all the players instead of accumulating into the bank of a select few. Players like Ohoni who object to all of this TP profiteering should start flipping themselves for the greater good. A good start is to make all purchases via buy orders and all sales via sell orders. Don’t curse the darkness. Light a candle and make Tyria a better world for all.

Honest Discussion: HoT

Eirdyne.9843:
The keep point here is something that anyone who has ever taken a drivers test ought to immediately recall being told about: the human reaction time is around 2.0 seconds to 2.6 seconds.

These estimates of human reaction time are off by an order of magnitude, right? HRT is actually something like 0.25 seconds, isn’kitten

Economy Fail: price to high, gold too rare

Rauderi.8706:
Aomine.5012:
The majority of player-base are angry and suffering under the new economy. Only some dedicated farmers or exploiters of TP are profiting under the current system.

I’m neither mega-farmer or TP-exploiter, but I’m doing relatively okay for the investment of play time.

I’d be doing a lot better if ANet would stop screwing me over with “salvage this thing for rare materials, OOPS YOU DIDN’T GET IT HAHA TRY AGAIN” but now I just sell rares instead of gambling for ecto.

I’d also be doing a lot better if ANet would review their drop rates on certain rare items (specifically, named exotics), so they’re actually available for reasonable sums. And no, I don’t care about kitten from TP barons who have to pay fees to relist exploited items at lower prices.

Selling rares instead of “gambling for ecto” is generally a bad idea, right? For example, it makes sense to sell a rare sword for 61s or a rare staff for 58s instead of salvaging, but it is better to salvage rare leggings that are selling for 32s on the TP or a rare spear going for 28s. Or maybe I am doing it all wrong?

Anet, please reduce the grind in GW2 [Merged]

Deathpunkin.5261:
When something’s been available for 3 years..
and you’re STILL trying to get it…

That’s a bit ridiculous, no?

What have you been trying to get for three years that you haven’t been able to get? I cannot think of a single thing in the game that fits that category. If you have done nothing but map completion doing every event in each map for the last three years while stopping to gather at every single node, you could have anything in this game, right?

And FWIW, I am definitely not one of those “lucky” accounts. I’ve never had a precursor drop and have very rarely gotten exotic drops. But I have bought a precursor, without grinding. I have never done dungeon runs, never even completed all the dungeons in story mode. But just playing, even just open world stuff, produces quite a bit of gold in this game over time. Maybe some would regard playing Silverwastes as grinding, but it is playing the game. Just doing that once a day can provide plenty of gold. And gold can buy pretty much anything in the game, even gemstore stuff. Of course nobody gets everything they want as quickly as they want. If they did, all the players would quit the game and ANet would move onto another game.

On the value of "luxury" rewards

Astralporing.1957:
Nike.2631:
The Trading Post is economic PvP. There are minds on the other end of every transaction. Make an effort not to get fleeced. It’s good practice for everyone.

Yeah, it’s PvP, but unlike WvW or sPvP this one is forced – an equivalent to open world PvP in a game where most players are strictly pve ones. This is the main reason why it’s so succesful.

But the not getting fleeced part is easy. It is also valuable and beneficial to all of the players. A lot of players seem to buy at the ask and sell at the bid. This is extremely foolish. It is pretty much the only way to guarantee you do get fleeced.

I am not a TP flipper. Nor am I rich. I am pretty sure I have never had more than 400 gold, though I tend to have a lot of mats just from being a pack rat. I have dabbled on the TP just a tiny bit, like one time I bought a bunch of bags and opened them all and sold the mats. I made a profit, but it was very tedious. Anybody who makes gold like that deserves it. I also speculated once and bought stacks of quartz. I did that simply because they were really cheap and I thought the price would go up. It did. I still have 10-15 of those stacks so if I sold them now I would make a profit. Should I feel like I took advantage of whoever listed them when I bought them? I see no reason to think so. Whoever sold them obviously wanted to get rid of them that cheaply.

I sometimes buy at the ask, especially if I want the item right now. But I very, very rarely sell at the bid. When i do it is only because there is such a small spread that it doesn’t matter. And even if the spread is 1 copper, I still usually list the item. Why not? If the spread is that small, the item probably sells a lot. I should probably list it above the ask. Traders probably do that very often. Obviously listing items means I don’t get the gold right now. But I get it usually pretty quickly. I may log in the next day and have 5 or even 10 gold waiting for me at the TP depending on what I did the previous day. TP barons laugh at that number because they have hundreds waiting for them each day. But I am not trading. This is just selling loot for me.

Here are a couple of examples of real TP transactions I made recently. I was about to log off last night and realized I had not crafted silk weaving thread. It is (annoyingly) time gated, so I wanted to do it before logging off in case I didn’t get back on before reset tonight. But when I went to craft it, I only had 91 bolts of silk. Now I could have gone and farmed that or I could have switched characters to find one that had some Silverwastes bags in inventory and opened them up to get silk, but I was ready to log off. So I just right-clicked to buy more at the TP and ordered 9 bolts at the ask price. I got my bolts, crafted the thread and logged off. Nothing wrong with that, right? But when I do that, I am paying somebody for that convenience, either a flipper or just somebody like me who usually lists at or near the ask.

Day before this, I was opening a bunch of bags on my Reaper and noticed that my inventory had only 15-slot bags instead of 20. I was filling it up quickly opening bags so I decided it would be good to buy a couple of Halloween pails for more space. So I went to the TP to buy candy corn or candy corn cobs. Of course I wanted it right then, but those cobs were trading at around 2g90s bid and 3g40s ask. I didn’t want to pay “full price” for them but didn’t want to wait for days if I only offered the bid. So I decided to offer somewhere in between and see what happened. I put in an order for 6 of them at 3g4s and went on with opening bags and such. In just a few minutes I saw the TP notification that my order had filled. Wonderful, right? Somebody wanted to sell them at 3g40s. I didn’t want to pay that and wanted them cheaper. Somebody else wanted to buy them at 2g90s. And one other person (or people) was willing to sell them to me at 3g4s. Probably wasn’t a flipper, but if it was I don’t care. I got what I wanted at the price I was willing to pay. Best I can tell, everybody involved in that market is getting what they want. It is awesome that we can all play how we want and swap the stuff we get while doing that for other stuff that others get by doing something we don’t want to do. Win-win for everybody. If somebody is getting rich off of it, good for them as long as there is a free market so I can trade my stuff for other stuff I want at the prices I am willing to pay.

tl;dr – I love the trading post/economy. It is one of the best aspects of GW2.

Unplayable Solo

Star Ace.5207:
IndigoSundown.5419:
The whole “group events” for Hero Challenges sounds like a mistake. HC’s are “one-and-done” content, unlike repeatable content fueled by random desirable drops or incremental rewards. Once the initial burst of players have their HC’s done, what happens to the late adopters, the people working on their 3rd alt, and those who took their time for whatever reason? One-and-done content that gates mechanics needs to be accessible throughout its lifespan.

I’ll tell you: they devised a new system where re-doing event hero points grants loot, XP, and Karma. I ALWAYS offer to help on the coztic Itzel champion on VB (for instance) even when I no longer need that HP. Same with other “once per game” events-I love re-doing them for fun and to help random players, so avoid judging every player by such a measure.

I still feel that these maps aren’t too hard for casual play, and that they positively encourage team play, which doesn’t even need you being close friends with people you team up with in map (I am a strong introvert, so I do relate with solo and “loner” players.)

Logged in to +1 this.

I am a pretty casual player. I have played quite a lot of hours since the original GW2 pre weekend but as an old-ish guy with a troublesome left hand due to a prior injury I am not a particularly good player. Not very good at the twitchy stuff. I still even click skills quite a bit. I also don’t like having to party up or even bother guildies to help me with stuff so I just do a lot of it solo. Despite the above, I have maxed elite specs for every class except revenant and engineer. I lack only the 25 point elite skill to max herald and am halfway to scrapper. I did all the personal story completely solo (albeit on a reaper) and am halfway through it on several other toons. I did all of those without joining parties or actively seeking help in map chat.

And it was not very hard. Completing HoT HPs is not a big deal. They take a little time, but are worth 10 points compared to Tyrian HPs. Just getting to ten of those takes longer. A lot of them are also soloable, even those requiring fighting champs. Obviously if you are determined to do them all in order in a particular zone at a particular time, you will encounter problems as some do require help and people aren’t always doing them. But if you are willing to hop maps and just pay attention to map chat, you can do many without even asking for help. For example, at least three different times when no one was around I kicked off the security console HP and started fighting the golem and was joined by other people before getting the golem halfway down even without asking for help in map chat. On most maps people are asking for help and other people are joining in. In Auric Basin it is common to see messages in map chat like “anybody else for Balthazar HP?” People will also usually put it in map chat when they have finished that HP to let everyone know that it is open. So not only do you not have to ask for help but you don’t even have to fight that boss. A LOT of the HP are like that.

Like Star Ace, I tend to be an introvert and prefer solo-ish play, but I find it quite enjoyable how folks just sort of organically come together in open world and complete tasks as a team. I did the DS meta for the first time yesterday by looking in LFG and joining a DS taxi and then leaving the party. I just went to the nearest tag and followed it. The commander asked people doing the meta to join his squad so I did. I just followed the very few simple, basic, helpful commands (like “if you need to kill the boss for the HP, please move your icon to squad channel 3”) and had a blast killing stuff and beating the meta.

I don’t really care for the direction ANet is moving with the raids and such, but the game is certainly not unplayable solo. It is still as solo playable as the original GW was with heroes, which is how I generally liked to play GW. Some content requires much more organized grouping and interaction, but that is to be expected, right? Some people want and like that kind of play. As long as ANet doesn’t start putting the majority of its development resources towards that and as long as items or materials that affect how much a player can achieve in game (like ascended armor, etc.) is not obtainable only through that kind of play, I am okay with it. This game stills seems pretty casual friendly. I hope it stays that way.

Btw, as a side note for those who are like me and struggle sometimes with playing well enough to beat certain stuff, let me recommend playing a little bit of WvW or even PvP. Not everybody likes WvW. I am not a huge fan of it as PvP play is not my bag, but I started hopping up into the borderlands a long while back to do simple dailies when I didn’t like the PvE choices. Stuff like Master of Ruins, Land Claimer, or Caravan Disruptor are usually extremely easy and quick. Run to a spot and stand on it for a few secs. Kill a veteran NPC and stand on a spot. Kill a dolyak and maybe a guard. I could often hop up there and do the daily in less than 10 minutes and go back to doing what I wanted.

Usually. Sometime I would get ambushed by another player. But that is how playing WvW helps with playing better. Getting ambushed helped me learn to pay attention and watch my surroundings to keep some roamer from ganking me. I learned how to kite and run by getting ambushed in WvW. That helps with PvE play. I am still truly terrible at WvW but learned to pay more attention to what enemies are doing and what is going on around me and how to use skills by dying there. I started noticing myself having less trouble in PvE. After doing a few of the simple dailies in WvW, I also found myself following the zerg and participating in taking towers or keeps. Eventually I actually even became mildly useful with my necro or ele or warrior. Like with PvE, I typically don’t join a squad or party. But I sometimes get an invite and follow someone around. Yes, in “PvP” play, there are going to be some obnoxious people. But most of the folks in WvW try to be helpful. They are patient with noobs and try to help them improve. It benefits the server. And some of the map chat can be pretty amusing. I am still not even a good PvE player, much less good at WvW, but I have been getting less bad and some of that is from playing a bit of WvW. And I enjoyed a lot of the time doing it. Suggesting WvW play may not be very timely right now as the HoT changes to the borderlands seem to have been unpopular and it isn’t being played as much. But most of the above still applies. Folks should try it and see what they think. It is really a glorified, more dynamic PvE to some degree.

Sorry for the rambling. This is a lot longer post than I intended.

(edited 2015-11-30 19:55:15 by William Bradley Knight.2609)

AFK raiders ruining Verdant Brink meta

RustyMech.9876:
Require T4 to open the raid, problem solved.

I logged in specifically to +1 this. Awesome idea.

Best Damages?

Sigfodr.9576:
Above 50% hp, for 1 or 2 targets, dagger/warhorn is sligtly better. vs. 3 targets gs sligtly win.
below 50% gravedigger gravedigger gravedigger dead

So for champs, it would be near ideal to open with dagger and then swap to GS below 50%? Unfortunately I cannot give up staff as a secondary because sometimes you just gotta have some range.

Best Damages?

How does a dagger build compare to greatsword for damage? I am running full zerk and was using GS to start out in HoT but eventually switched over to dagger/WH. Still running blood/SR/Reaper and it just “feels right.” I am trying to decide if the damage is actually comparable or if I am just more comfortable with dagger because the GS is still unfamiliar. Gaining LF seems to go very well with dagger/WH, seemingly better than with GS. But does that matter so much from a damage perspective? Survivability for reaper is pretty amazing for running pure zerk. Most stuff can be all but face-tanked, even several of the HP champs.

The Dhuumfire thread

I posted this in another thread before realizing that there was a dedicated dhuumfire discussion. What about something like having dhuumfire cause all wells to produce fire fields rather than the usual dark or light? Won’t make a whole lot of difference for damage (thus the kind of minor change ANet would be willing to make?) but might make necros more desirable (tolerated?) in dungeons due to not overwriting fire fields and contributing to might stacking. Or maybe this would not be a worthwhile change. I’d also suggest having it cause wells to pulse burning, but that might be a bit OP.

What is happening?