Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

I’m a returning player, and havent played for nearly 2 years. One of the classes that I retried yesterday is my ele class. I quickly respecced to the meta fire build, but the feeling that I want to spam lightning is already gnawing at me.
For some unexplainable reason, when I play a mage class and I can make a build that use lightning spells, I get all giddy.
I was playing around in http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/ just now but honestly, I’ve been away so long, I have no idea anymore how to evaluate what works anymore in what content. I know the last build I used 2 years ago was a D/D RtL WvW build.

But I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, so most of my time will be spent doing open world, T1 (maybe T2) Fractals, dungeons, and so forth. I want to play with the type of class I like, but only if it’s somewhat viable. I noticed I could barely get stuff killed in fire attunement in Maguuma yesterday, so if there’s no viable air build, that’s fine, I’m not going to struggle through content because of a non-functional playstyle preference.

So is there any good build for Ele (non tempest traits, still have a lot of skill points to earn) that lets you stay in air attunement for the larger part in the easier lvl 80 content?

Saying this game has no trinity hurts the feelings of my Warrior, Engineer and Guardian. You can perfectly well spec into full support roles and be an amazing asset to your group.. in dungeons that require this!

It really really does seem to me that the OP, and some of the people defending the trinity in here, only have experiences in CoF p1 and open world bosses.

Arah, CoE, some HoTW, FoTM.. 20+ even, hell, after the updates, even AC can be brutal. I’m an AC maniac, I just like it a lot. I’ve seen so many people ragequit on the renewed AC bosses. Yet they finally require more than just dodge and spank.
I’m sorry, but if all 5 players in any of these dungeons were just berserker warriors, we would miserably, unless all 5 players were exceptional players.

Person Katie something (sorry if I call you out on it) herself defended GW1 using an argument, yes, but that’s only because the dungeons AI was easy or the hero AI too good. O? But that same argument can’t be valid for GW2? Honestly, the only thing broken in GW2 is unconvincing mechanics. This game is far more flexible yet challenging than any other game I’ve played in the past 12 years. Including raids in several games.

Because at the end of the day, I can be a Guardian that goes for healing and boons, I can go consecrations, scepter/x and sword/focus and be a control/cc specialist. And I can even go full damage. All depending on the instance and the team I play with.
That the current dungeon mechanics just highly favour me going full damage, because it just completes the dungeon more efficiently, has nothing at all to do with the combat mechanics.
Hence why they redesigned AC from the ground up. With Stalkers having much more subtle mechanics and GS warriors raging at them. And the 3 bosses actually needing a brain. And what do we get from the community? BOOHOOHOO, I can’t dodge and spank anymore. I actually need more strategy and team building to efficiently clean AC now. I really do hope that the trinity supporters in this thread are in support of Anets attempts to pimp AC. If not, you’re just being hypocritical.

Without talking about Guild Missions, which seem to be fun and open world based, nothing in the open world is really challenging to bigger coordinated groups. Yeah, World Bosses could’ve been fun if there weren’t 100+ people around every boss and dragon every single time. But I digress. I want to highlight the importance of open world jewels here that can be incredibly engaging for groups, while taking almost no design effort for ArenaNet. Absolute win-win situations.

There is a cave in Mount Maelstrom, the Valley of Gwaun. It is littered with Champion Lost Spirits, (ascalonion ghost models) that all have some amazing buffs/skillsets to boost.
These bad kitten mofo’s were probably never put in that cave with the intention to be fought, even though there is a Point of Interest in the cave. The reason is that an event spawns in front of the cave with an absurd rate. The event NPC wants you to gather plants from the cave, but in turn will turn you into a bunny or other animal.

Now, if you would walk into the cave by yourself, in normal form, you’ll get blasted to pieces. Period. If you become an animal, the Champions will not harm you, you can gather your plants, get your PoI, etc.

However, for challenges, this cave is absolutely amazing. After a long time of not having been there, we took 15ish people in our guild, with the goal of clearing the cave of all it’s 20+ Champion inhabitants. Or so I thought. I sadly came to the conclusion yesterday that the population, at least from entrance to PoI seems to have been halved. If you look at the back of the cave, the area that you likely won’t aggro if you’re just there for the PoI, there’s still a density of 7-8 guys in a small corner. But just 3 guys in the front of the cave.
When I went there over a month ago, just entering seemed scary. Not anymore. I bet I could now get the PoI in normal form on my chars, and live to tell the tale.

What is the point of this thread? These small gems in the game, that can provide entertainment to a large group, for absolutely no effort on Anet’s part, should remain gems to be enjoyed. We cleared the cave in less than 3 minutes. And with the new loot rules of Champs always dropping at least a blue, it’s probably actually somewhat decent in terms of loot drops. But it’s not as challenging as it was when I tried over a month ago. I don’t care about the loot, I’d try to clean this cave if these Champs were special and had no loot table at all. I don’t have to have achievements, or anything, I’ll just take my own stopwatch to time it, only to try to beat it later.

But please, amazing gems like these shouldn’t be nerfed Anet. I realize that the PoI is hard to get if you run in in human form. I can even understand that you get complaints about this from people who don’t know about the transforming event. But don’t solve the issue by removing mobs, if anything, bring the PoI a bit closer to the entrance. Far enough that you get to peek in, but without having any real fear of dying. If anything, I’d hope Anet restores these 10 or so Champions that seem to have been removed.

Anyway, I want to share this particular ‘instance’ with everyone. It is (was) incredibly engaging to try to clear with a dedicated group of players, although, zerging it with more than 10 players is just going to destroy the fun. There are just too few Champions now. I’d love to see 5 or 10 man groups time trials videos appearing on Youtube as an unofficial Valley of Gwaun raid event, haha.
I’d also love to hear from everyone if they know about more places like these. Have you ever ventured into an open world zone, thinking that what you were looking at seems horribly ridiculously hard content to try to do and just dismissed it? Looking back, do you think going there with a group to clear it could be fun and challenging? I’d love to hear about these places. Ad hoc raiding locations like these can be more fun that a bunch of dungeons combined, after all.

In the PvP locker, there are two sets of heavy armor called Pit Fighter. The one set I’m interested in has 4 of it’s PvE equivalent pieces scattered in Kessex Hills at Karma vendors. The other two, the boots and the head, I have trouble finding. To clarify, I’m looking for the Pit Fighter version where the helmet looks like a roman centurion helmet: Basically a big broomstick brush on top of your helmet pointing upwards. :P
I’m having a whole of of trouble finding that particular items (as well as the boots of that set) in PvE. Anyone that can perhaps help me?

Account.9832:

You should probably tell them, then, because apparently they don’t. They designed these dungeons with the WP respawns in mind. Now they’re changing the respawns but not actually changing the dungeons at the same time. And they’re not even testing it in one dungeon first, to see how it works.

Pretty awesome that you know what they had in mind when the designed dungeons. You work at Anet? I’d like to hear more details then. Because when I read the Robert Hrouda’s post on the dungeon changes, I find this:

Robert Hrouda

Dungeons were designed to be highly focused on teamwork. The current res-rushing mechanic discourages the type of behavior we intended when a fellow player goes down. We hope that by eliminating res-rushing, we’ll bring dungeons more in-line with our original design goals, which are based around team play and strategy.

When I read Robert’s text here, it kind of conflicts with what you are saying. And I’m more inclined to believe that the original intention was that any and all dungeon content was designed to be played without ever having to waypoint-zerg. And after playing for all this time, and getting better at dungeons, I feel they achieved that pretty well, save a few weird paths, like CoF path 2 Magg event. Which is why they changed that event right now with this patch, along with the disabling of WP-zerging.

The only thing that WP-zerging did for the game was allow bad players, who have no intention of spending time in learning the game mechanics, to stay bad players but still get their dungeons done. Albeit, getting them done but with such frustrations about them, that those become a vocal minority here complaining about how horrible dungeons are. They are not, in fact, most are doable without any deaths. The entire point about WP-zerging being disabled becomes moot when you don’t even die once.
Finally disabling this stupid fallback means that stubborn players will finally have to grow up and play the dungeon as intended, paying heed to the intended mechanics, or they will fail miserably in the process. If that discourages them to ever play dungeons again, I don’t really see why they should be doing dungeons in the first place. Apparently, harder group content isn’t there cup of tea then. Fine. If you do want to play the harder group content that is, quoting Robert, “highly focused on teamwork.” and “based around team play and strategy.”, then you’ll have to learn how to effectively play as a team to get best results. In other words, you’ll have to learn how to play in dungeons.

I, for one, am very very excited by this change. I hope that over next 6 months, players that are serious about dungeons, will all grow up to be fine dungeon players and that in 6 months, even a pug will be an enjoyable experience, because every knows the drill and no one is reliant on WP-zerging because they are too bad to do it any other way.

I have no idea where all the disgusting whining is coming from. I also have little playtime, having a full-time job and a family. I may be in a good guild that frequents dungeons but more often than not, I’ll have to pug dungeons anyway as they may already have a few parties going.

I’ve pugged AC too many times than I can count (I have AC gear of 6 of my 80s), CM, TA, SE, CoF and CoE. I refuse to do HotW until the bosses get half HP and water combat is improved. Arah is in it’s own little circle of hell and that’s guild only for me. Now if all the above complaints were about Arah, I can understand, but it doesn’t seem that way.
In all the other dungeons, I can now clear pretty much any path flawless, including having soloed Subject Alpha from 25% when people started RQing or were busy running back and dying.
Personally, I have no issue at all at getting new people in my groups. I always ask at the start of a run if someone is new to the run. If I get a yes, I immediately notify the group that I’ll take my time explaining each and every encounter from then on. If the other group members complains about me explaining and wasting time, I outright kick them for more social people who don’t mind helping new people. And if the new person complains, I’ll let him die so many times, that they’ll come back crying for advice. Tough love works wonders.

Honestly, from most of the posts in this thread, I get the feeling that it’s much more a lack of understanding of mechanics than anything else. Dungeons in it’s current form aren’t hard. I’m definitely not an elite player, that spends 10 hours a day in game. 2 hours in the evenings that I’m available at most. But when I do spend my time in game, I spent that time to improve myself.
When I first stepped into dungeons, I wiped and wiped and wiped as well. Until I got the timing down on Kohler’s pull attack (His right arm and sword will be pulled far backwards and it will be pulsing light for a good 1.5 seconds) or the scavengers leap/knockdown attack (they crouch for a good 2 seconds before doing their leap, you can even walk backwards out of it’s leap range and still avoid it in time).
Even if the mechanics are trivial, there are mechanics. If you aren’t completely confident in your ability to play your class and your situational awareness, (like me) you’ll have to compensate by gaining some knowledge about the dungeon.
However, once you do know the encounters, I feel there is no reason at all to ever wipe any more. Yes, some bosses have some nasty instant attacks, but just about anything in dungeons can be completely avoidable damage if you spend some time figuring out what’s coming.
For example, did you know that the bosses in AC path 1 and 3, the two that have a scream attack, both bosses have less than 1200 range on their attacks? So if you stand at absolutely max range with your character, both the scream attacks and the rock dropping attack from the ceiling in path 3 will never be able to hit you. While you can still do damage without any issue. Just takes 1 player to be in melee range to hold him there. One of those players that do have enough situational awareness to dodge all screams and rock attacks. That’s what you’re a team for.

Honestly, my experiences with pugs is that the bad players are in a mindset that they should be able to zerg everything, stand still for the entire fight, rage when they die because they were too lazy to dodge an attack that had a whopping 2 second charge-up and then complain that repair costs are too high/rewards too low and that they lose money.
The few bad players that actually do take my advice will quickly stop wiping, have a much more fun time, better net loot (less repairs), and I get a heart warming thank you at the end. (As those runs tend to take at least 2-3 times longer than when I would do it with a guild group, so I do invest a lot of time in complete strangers)
But for the most part, they continue to remain stubborn and feel they are either too good to listen to advice or are apparently in a mindset that the dungeon should be zergable without deaths without ever having to use w,a,s,d or the dodge button or otherwise it must be broken.

I feel a lot of people posting in this thread are in the last category. I’d like to offer the following challenge to every single person posting scornfully in this thread. I want you to PM me in game, and we’ll do a run through of either one of AC, TA, CoF or CoE. (Because those are my 4 favourites) We’ll take our time doing the runs, and I’ll explain everything I know. I expect you to actually pay attention to it and I’ll help you out as much as I can. I’m almost 100% sure that you’ll die a lot less than any other run and you’ll actually find it enjoyable.

60g all together.

If you have no mats at all, that is. Even then, Cooking for example, can be cheapened a lot if you try to stick to mainly using the ingredients that can be gotten from Karma, which are quite a few. Cooking should be about 2-3 gold. Artificer likewise (crafting just potions). I’m thinking Leatherworking comes next, with about 4Gish. Then I’d say armorsmithing at probably about 5g. Jewelcrafting and weaponsmithing (avoid weapons that require lots of wood like the plague) are probably equally expensive, 6-7G? Huntsman remains and is horrible. Wood is horribly expensive at the Trading Post. Have fun burning 10G on this last profession alone. I’d probably recommend doing only 5 crafts, and skip Jewel crafting, Weaponsmithing and Huntsman. Just level the first 20 levels manually, which are faster than later levels. Then get 50 levels through crafting. At level 70, you can go into Orr, and by the time you reach Cursed Shore, you’re level 75. Do two hours of events and you’re 80 and made some money and Karma too.

This way, those 5 crafts will probably only have set you back 15-20 gold, depending on how many mats you started out with in the first place.

And like someone else said, always follow a crafting guide 1-400 to do the most efficient ways to level it up. Saves a lot of money.

Hi Falunel and thanks. Confirms a lot about what I already discovered.
Hmm, Mercury, you’re mentioning it only applies to swapped weapons, not on 2 weapons on 1 weaponset. This is somewhat new information to me.
Also, when I’m in the mist and going off the unusual situation of dual swords, one of sigil of fire and 1 with sigil of air, and put down a stopwatch, I never see air proc within 5 seconds of fire having been procced, and vice versa. I just redid this test again for about 10 minutes, chasing my combat log (would be so helpful if there we’re timestamps before each line >.<) for about 10 minutes in the mists.
This kind of leads me to believe that there is in fact a shared cooldown on x% on crit type sigils even between two one-handed weapons on one weapon set.
So my hope of having a set of sigil of fire mainhand and sigil of blood offhand is getting smaller and smaller :<
Am I testing this wrong or is there something else I’m overlooking? Or anyone else with other insights?

Hi everyone,

I would like to find out more about sigils and their shared cooldowns. I’ve read that all weapons swapping sigils share cooldowns. When you’re dualwielding, and you have two swapping sigils, only one ever fires off and the main hand takes priority. Is this correct?
I’ve also learned that in some cases, and this seems even more complicated, x% on critical hit sigils shared cooldowns too. But then it doesn’t apply to all sigils and the cooldowns are apparently different from one another too. Especially these sigils are a black box to me.
I know the +stat on kills sigils are likewise bound. You can have both a corruption and a bloodlust together. I’ve tried it out, and I know this is true, but would love to know why. Could it also again be due to these mechanics again of shared cooldowns?

Does anyone have some extensive knowledge on this? I’m hoping to get a sigil of fire and a sigil of blood together, but I’m afraid it will not work. Regardless, I’d love to know the exact working of shared cooldowns (if such a thing is known), because I have more characters and situations that are affected by these shared cooldowns.

I hope someone can enlighten me.

Hi all,

I’ve been toying around with a build, but I’d like some feedback on it first before I continue gearing up towards it.

The build is:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgEQRAsd7clwzqqHVTgGbNJxpHMf5NHlitbdSFcdpC8G;TABg0yvEeJ9S9lyLqiMFJKyWkrIZRLMGWsBZGB
(Copy/paste it into your browser bar, the semicolon ruins the fun.)

Dungeons:
My first big source of damage, of course, is through team support, being able to grant a good amount of buffs every 45 seconds, and every buff in the game every 90. (Lyssa runes) I can also spread confusion like mad, and just about everything I do reflects projectiles, which is huge in some (parts of) dungeons. (Changing Illussion II to Illusions IV and my sword #2 attack reflects. I can also change my heal to a reflection heal).
Against melee mobs, I usually use phantasms and my sword for pretty decent to high in your face damage. Next to my scepter/sword, I also have a greatsword on me. On smaller mobs, I may switch to GS instead of Scepter/Sword, but on bosses or anything with big damage, being able to spam clones for all the shatter effects, retaliation on CoF and Confusion spamming on all their big attacks is pretty nice. The clone production on scepter also assures that (because of the no clones on dodge trait), I can still get clones up pretty reliably for a big heal with Ether Feast.

WvW. This build is probably even more fun in WvW in bigger groups. (Coordinated over TS, prefably) Again, a kittenload of reflections and buffing oppertunity’s out of the wazoo. And of course, Mesmers in WvW are useful for portalbombing and stealthing anyway. A good thing that my Portal and Veil both last longer and are more readily available.

Now, the reason I’m making this thread is that a part of the strategy relies on Lyssa runes buff fests. I love Lyssa runes and have them on more characters with short CD heals and elites, but with signet of inspiration, the Mesmer is by far the most amazing Lyssa abuser, as it basically makes the Lyssa runes apply to every ally.
However, even if I’m a Lyssa fan, I realize that my survivability with this build isn’t huge. I know shattercat and similar builds use full berserkers as well, and I do fine with such builds. For my build however, I pretty much need to get up close and personal with sword. And even if I can negate a lot of the big damage, it’s usually the small quick auto-attacks on smaller mobs that melt through my health. (I’m freaking squishy!)
I’m really really unsure if I want to continue with the Lyssa buff strategy in this particular build (which is centered around glamour and reflection, buffing is just an icing), and get runes instead that give more survivability. Dolyak for example.

Sum up. I love my build. I’ve used it for some time now. Berserker’s gear is already bought, and as it is (with just ruby orbs in them, no runes), if I follow the strategy of getting in mobs faces against melee mobs, I get hurt quite a bit. Should I perhaps tweak my build a little or consider a weapon change, but proceed to get Lyssa runes? Or drop the Lyssa/buffing/signet of inspiration part and go for Dolyak runes?

Thanks in advance for the help!

Don’t get me wrong, I already try to do AC 3 times a day, and often succeed there. I also do two crafts, but usually from level 20-40. This because a lot of classes only start to feel more complete with the 2nd tier of traits. (Ele, Thief, Mesmer, Engi)
And then there’s the gap that I feel that lasts until at least 60, if not 70. Those 30 levels, I could do in 10 days with just AC, but just spamming AC isn’t my cup of tea.
But yeah, then I get back to my original issue, what else is there at this point that is fulfilling and fun to do and still acquires xp at a good rate? Again, I’m not aiming to just craft 80 levels. I do want to play the actual content, but a lot of the content is just unfun at this point with deserted maps. That’s why I’m hoping for tips on what people do now when normally playing the game to level a character. I’m not looking for powerlevel tips. :P

Story quests is a good point though, I’ll start doing them a bit more with my characters, perhaps that will help a bit. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m a serious altoholic, and have 3 level 80’s currently. Aside from those, I have 5 other characters (all professions) all between level 20 and 50.
My first 2 characters were probably leveled in times when many others were still leveling their mains to 80 as well, so I always had people around me to play with. The game felt much more dynamic that way, and I often found groups too to do the much more fun event chains and big group events.
My last 80, only completed just recently was a lot more boring. Deserted zones, avoiding certain events because I knew they were just not solo-able, etc. Not only did this lessen the enjoyment of playing, it also significantly slowed down my leveling.
Now, I’m not asking for tips to level, because I just want to race through content and become 80. I’m asking for tips because for me personally, a large part of my enjoyment also comes from the achievement that you actually progress in levels from time to time. This progress is starting to feel slow, and this is again due to not much to do anymore in lower level zones.

My current experience with my level 47 Ele is, is that when I go into Bloodtide coast? (the one directly south under LA), I barely ever see anyone, and when I shout in map chat if someone feels like grouping up to do events together, I rarely get responses.
Then I try to solo a bit, but everything just feels slower and less enjoyable that way.

So, for anyone who’s like me, currently leveling your x.th character, what do you usually do to still get some leveling progression? Do you sit it out and just go for zone completion by yourself? Do you port around same level zones until you find some population in one of them? Or do you have a set few levels that you just craft your way through because you know those are problem level brackets? Or perhaps an optimal route you figured out where you know that you can always find a few events to have both more fun and a more efficient time leveling?

I’d love to get some insights, because as long as Anet doesn’t come forth with an underflow (if ever), leveling just feels quiet now and in turn also slower than I’d like.

While I’m mostly in agreement with the OP, what I feel people need to realize, is that not everything is black and white. Live and let live and things.
I too, I guess because of age and been there, done that, have no more interest in grind games. I just want to play any given char, and once at 80, feel like I want to be able to engage in just about everything. (I say just about, because I realize that an 80 character in greens in WvW is a bit tough)

Now, with all three of my 80’s, I can run every dungeon in full yellows, and with my Guardian and Warrior, I can go as far as running dungeons in 80 blues. In that sense, GW2 is a game where stats really don’t matter. Even in full exotics, the really big hits will keelhaul you regardless. Given, the smaller and more constant damage may be easier to weather with exotics instead of blues, but okay.

I do think that with Agony, Anet made a huge mistake to add a arbitrary gate called agony resistance. But honestly, if Anet is really sticking to their word now about Ascended gear (see the latest AMA on Reddit where Chris is stating that Ascended is the last tier to be added), I personally don’t have any issue with the current design.
While it’s true that Ascended gear is more powerful than Exotic gear, I’m in agreement with Mulch in this thread. It’s just a minor increase.
Those then stating that they apparently have been conditioned into always needing to have the BiS gear at any given time, I can only say to learn how to deal with that mindset. It will give you much more enjoyment of the game.
I personally feel that Anet made the right choice on Ascended gear, it gives a little something to work towards while not having the huge legendary barrier to demotivate you. At the same time, the bonus is so trivial, that you’ll honestly will not need the stat increases to enjoy all content. (As I’ve stated, you don’t even need Exotics to enjoy all content, I can do level 10 FotM fine in yellows) Honestly, I feel this is something that is good for vertical and horizontal minded players alike, there is still something to keep one kind of player ready, and the horizontal minded players can enjoy the entire game the second they hit 80, since 80 yellows are incredibly easy to acquire.
Because in the end, we’re one community after all. What’s wrong with trying to please everyone? Does only you and your kind of players deserve to be happy? Or only the other crowd? GW2 is set up so well in terms of balancing and requirement on just playing well, that the way they are handling Ascended gear is done just right in my opinion. I just can not get myself to get angry at this little bit of vertical progression, as long as it stays limited to the Ascended tier.

Agony, though, is a different story altogether. Now Agony is what actually might make me consider a different game. I can already see the shout messages in chat “LF2M for (new dungeon to be added that also has Agony), 30+ resist required!!!11” Brrrrr

Also, Ele’s and Rangers have the most on demand water combo fields. I can’t proc blast finishers for area healing if we don’t have more of these in the game. A support Ele will probably do better support than a Guardian and Warrior combined. A tank specced Ele may likely be able to take a beating longer than a Guardian and Warrior combined. So unless you’re dead set on heavy armor wearers, consider Ele as well.

I have both a fully geared 80 Warrior and fully geared 80 Guardian.

My comparison of the two classes is from a guy who has always played a tank class in trinity games. Even though Anet claims tanking isn’t available anymore in GW2, they’ve yet to prove this to me. I’ve been able to tank entire boss fights in Dungeons with both characters. And by tanking, I mean that I was able to keep just about all the major boss damage centered on me without any party member ever dying (dying, not downed, just no way to avoid a player to not stand in a fire field if he just does not want to move, or something).

My current ‘main’ is my 80 warrior, because it’s more challenging in dungeons. Guardians are honestly awesome, if only for the fact that together with Mesmers (who have it less available than Guardians), they are the only ones who can bring Aegis to the table. Many big bosses in this game do their big deadly attacks on a set timer and these attacks are slow.
Throwing up Aegis on the right moment means you can completely negate this one attack.
While playing my Guardian for a few weeks doing daily dungeon runs, I found that with the exception of few, I could mace and shield or mace and focus in the face of bosses all day long. Perhaps to the point where some bosses were so easy to react on, that I could watch a movie on my second screen and do just fine. (I’ve done this)
Even if there is no real tanking in this game, bosses apparently tend to favor fighting players that are right in their faces (namely, me). All damage that I take, is damage squishier players don’t have to take. Any damage spikes the group would’ve taken, that I negate through Aegis, is damage the squishier players again don’t have to take.
Now, I won’t say Guardian is boring or snooze-mode to play. You have to do a lot of situational support. Aegis only blocks one hit. Use it too early and block a weak attack and you don’t have the buff when the big one comes around. Waste your heals or shouts or consecrations at the wrong time and … They are exciting to play, but as soon as you master one, and know an instance through and through, you’ll end up where I am. Movie watching mode.

Thus enters the Warrior. Warriors are a completely different beast. You’re not actually grabbing attention from bosses. And if they do decide to face you head on, then warriors just don’t have the tools to mitigate the damage to a point where you can happily keep standing still and breeze through the fight.
Warrior tanking is more active. You’ll need to stay mobile, use shouts or banners to heal (depending on what’s traited and what you’re built for), use banners to auto revive one or more players, use shouts to become condition cleansing monsters, etc.
They have a bunch of blast finishers from for example the longbow 3 skill, as well as banner dropping. Blast finishers, in my opinion, are the best support moves in the game. I have a macro that auto-types for me ‘group up for healing’. If I have anything in the group that can put down a water field, I quickly go over the ‘group up for healing’ routine. I can usually (banner build) throw down 3 to 4 blast finishers in a short time, doing close to 5k of instant healing to everyone around me. Coupled with constant regen from my banners in play, I’m constantly keeping my team alive.
Aside from all this team support, Warriors actually have the role of one of the major damage dealers. This gives you a completely different perspective on playing tankish support with a warrior as opposed to a Guardian. With my Warrior, next to deciding when to support and how, I’m also constantly in a position over overthinking: ‘Okay, so I could stand back, res a few poeple, do a healing combo run now and get people buffed up and ready for action again. Or, I could actually go in, being bulky and all, kill one squishy enemy, hoping that my downed team mates rally on this mob, try to grab attention of the rest of the group, kite them around, kill them slowly and keep them busy, while another team mate does the cleric drill.’
It happens more than often that my method of tanking that I’m used to (other games, Guardian in GW2) is thrown overboard on the Warrior and I go in offensively and still aid my team (I can still use shouts if I don’t go to far away, my banner can still be thrown down near my allies when I know I won’t need the regen, etc.) immensily.

Honestly, between the two, it’s a completely different way of supporting the team. Both are tankish creatures, so I feel that player either warrior or guardian as a ranged healer or something along the lines is a waste. Elementalists are actually so much better team supporters in that sense. But if you make use of both their team support options as well as their ability to mitigate damage or otherwise keep players alive and inherent tankiness, it’s just a matter of defensive playstyle versus offensive playstyle.

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Hi guys,

Thief being my 3rd char that I want to level (almost) entirely through dungeons, I feel it’s quite a bit harder to find a place in a group that makes it worthwile to get me into the party instead of anyone else. (Even if a group takes me in, I feel a dead weight sometimes, and that doesn’t sit right with me)
I’ve raised a Guardian and Ele through dungeons, and in the Guardians case, having on level green equips and a somewhat supportive build allowed me to tank and support, where as for the Ele, going Water support made me an asset for any group. These builds all lacked the trait points to go all-out awesome sauce and so I was often lacking in damage, but that was ok.

Thief, on the other hand, even if I spec for damage dealing at my lowly 47 to do AC, I’ll do a whole lot less damage to the enemies than a level 80 in exotics, regardless of scaling. I also bring little support in such a build.
Condition damage heavy is very often a waste, because as soon as someone else wants to throw on conditions, I pretty much become useless (even more when my probably weaker conditions start overwriting their more powerful ones).
I’ve considered utility, like doing massive blinds, aoe stealth and weakness support and this is decent, but feels a little bit lacking. I also can’t make a coherent build that makes sense when I want to do all these 3 things together.

Anyone here with some more experience in thiefs that can help me out? Basically a build made for dungeons for a level 50ish thief (40 trait points to spend), and with only green gear available with two stat options still. Yeah, tough assignment go go go :P

I’ll leave it for now, but if I find more good threads, or more discussion and solutions in this topic pops up, I’ll edit this first post to reflect this to keep one good discussion topic for suggestion that Anet may use to improve their game.

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Agony and hard content gating
I will not go into Ascended gear, as I feel the gear in itself is not the issue. The gear does exactly what Linsey Murdock describes here. It gives higher levels who feel they want to proceed a little further beyond exotics something extra, without the exceptional grind towards legendary. Yet the gap is small enough that you can just stay in Exotics too.
Agony, on the other hand, acts as a prime example of a badly thought of gate to keep players feel like they are progressing, because of having to get increasingly large resistances to said condition. Were it even possible, a fresh 80 that would try to join a level 20 fractals, would get creamed by this condition at Jade Maw, one of the unavoidable agony hits that’s a sure kill on those with not enough resistance.
Would this agony be used in other instances besides FotM later on, you would completely split the community between those with resistance, and those without. (which many players see as bad design)
I’ll write down two solutions I’ve found, starting with the one that is the easiest to implement with what Anet currently already has:

Solutions
     Agony resistance consumables:
I’ve read a really good idea, and this is basically a worked out version of that idea. It basically stated something along the lines: In any chest of any fractal randomly x (minimum of 1) vials of agony resistance drop. The amount of agony resistance on the vial is set by the difficulty you’re currently running.
For example, doing a level 1-9 fractal will always be a plus 5 agony resistance vial. Doing a level 10-19 would always be a plus 10 agony resistance, etc.
These vials would also have a few limits to them, like plus 5 vials can only be used when you are in an instance of level 10-19. Vial buffs last for 30 minutes but don’t persist through death, etc. They are also account bound. (Don’t create a skewed market for them)
The main benefit of this idea is that you still have agony and agony resistance that you need to combat the condition. It’ll still gate, more specifically, better players with fewer deaths have a better chance of advancing further through content than worse players. This is due to the need of having to pop agony vials after death and with vials being a limited resource.
If you’d run out of vials, you’d have to go back to lower level fractals to obtain vials there that can be used in your current progression. This also has the benefit that you’ll see people more willing to every now and then drop into lower content. Getting those vials will always prove valuable.
Most importantly The vials can be used regardless of gear. The linking of agony resistance with Ascended gear means that only the rich few or lucky few or those with way too much time on hands, will be able to enjoy all that the Fractals have to offer. For more casual players, obtaining enough Ascended gear to load all agony resistance in will be the major blocker for going on to a new tier (a new set of 10 levels) in Fractals. The vials still allow skilled and elite players to differentiate themselves from other players. They can still benefit more quickly from better rewards (if implemented) from completing high level fractals, and when playing correctly, vial management will be much easier for them.
Less skilled or just generally casual players who are not in a rush, can end up gathering enough vials to still proceed to level 100+ in time, and end up claiming some of the nicer rewards. They won’t need a new set of gear to complete this though.

     Remove agony:
This is the much harder implementation with what’s currently in game, I’d guess. But nevertheless, it’s a solution that I’d personally also still rather see implemented than the above. It basically means the removal of Agony completely, but with additional other content to ramp up difficulty. Stuff like additional skills on mobs, more mobs, more power on mobs, different mob types, etc. Example is the Asura lab harpies that suddenly shoot the lightning bolts over level 10, which don’t kill you through agony, they just kill you because they have a better skill set to use now. This would be a much harder implementation and imaginably would tax the developers much worse, having to come up with content for levels, instead of just having to write one script that basically gives them x level * base agony = z difficulty.

Allright, so many good ideas and so many top-level design issues are being mentioned at the forums regularly, but all these single threads often get lost or the big discussion threads usually wind up in too many posts without any apparent conclusions.

What I wish to do is make one constructive feedback thread, here in the suggestions forum where the major design issues are briefly mentioned. Under them, some of the better ideas mentioned on the forums will be listed. I’ll update this first post regularly, to make it, hopefully, an easy go-to post for Anet to find issues that are currently going on within the community and our own ideas on these issues and how the content should’ve been implemented. This can relate to PvE, WvW, PvP, or major concepts like crafting in it’s entirety, gearing up and customization in general, etc. Something like a suggestion for a change of the arrow keys or number field for how many items to craft at once is not for this thread. (Although I’d love to see the change regardless.)

Empty lower level zones
With Anet advertising so boldly that the entire game was the endgame, and that the journey from 1-80 was as much a part of the game as the level 80 gold/karma/dungeon grind, it’s odd to see that zones have become so glaringly empty below level 70. Some starter zones may see some population, but doing any event with more than 1 other (if at all) in zones from level 20ish to 70ish is a rare occasion. This means that some of the content in these zones, meant for more than 1 person, like Champion events, or just generally harder events, are never being completed, due to lack of companions. It also makes it feel that Dev time spent on generating more content for lower level zones is wasted, as most of it will not receive the attention it needs.
Recently, this got somewhat fixed with rewards being higher for level 60+ zones for level 80s, giving an incentive to visit lower zones. Yet, it’s no where near enough to see these zones becomes flooded.

Solutions
     Use of overflows:
A solution I read once (full credit goes to that person) was to put everyone in every zone into overflow’s by default, and not in the zone for that server. With the current technology in place for overflows and servers, it would actually be really a good idea for all players, across all servers of either EU or US, to go into the Kessex Hills Overflow by default when moving to that map. You should then always be able to choose whether you’d prefer playing the map on your own server. The obvious benefit of this, is that it’s way more likely that you’ll play together with different people.

     Increase incentive for higher levels:
Another, perhaps more obvious solution, is to use more aggressive scaling for higher levels for lower level zones, but make the odds of getting on level gear identical to that of a zone like Orr. A level 80 in exotic gear, currently in a level 1-15 zone just plows through content with (near) ohko’s. It makes sense then to not be able to get level 80 rares or exotics from these level 5 mobs.
However, if said level 80 players were to be nerfed into the ground to the point of a level 4 in just white gear (to off-set the access to all skills, traits, etc.), I’d have no issue to see said level 5 (veteran or champion) mob to start dropping level 80 goodies, with also access to rare, just like Orr.

Post 2 ==>

Hi everyone,

I have some questions about gear that I want to obtain for my warrior. But more specifically, questions about what emphasis I should put on stats.

My current build is http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIEQJARUjkOJv1O2QMxBEjiiAIOPoiAkJUKaj7A and my current gear is something along the line of:
All Knight’s armor. Ranger Runes I think. Or Eagle. Meh

Up until now, I’ve managed to do well with this rather glass cannony build (not completely because of Knight’s gear) just fine, surviving any dungeon as well as WvW and obviously open world content.

The new open world area, however, is quite a bit more demanding, and if I manage to solo 2 to 3 mobs, I give my self a proverbial pat on the back, because it’s just that more difficult. Fractals, I’ve managed to go up to 9, and even though it’s still manageable, I notice that I start to rely on getting ressed more frequently by my team mates because mobs start to hit harder and harder. And instant revive through vengeance / 100% rebound trait is starting to get unreliable in Fractals at this point.

Now, I have no issue making builds, and I’ve designed a few builds that suit me well for different purposes. So if I feel this build is the reason I start lacking, I can just swap builds to more survivable DPS builds or to a support build. (I already have a full cleric’s set for example for if I want to do shout healing)

What I’m looking for is a decent all-round gear set to replace my current apparently not so all-round gear set, that I can use on most content with most builds, including the above one, since I just like it so much. The builds I plan to use with this set will be slightly more DPS than support oriented, so more focus on power/prec/crit than say straight out tanking and especially healing power.

What I’d like to have feedback on is what stats to emphasize. Over the course of the past month of forum browsing, I’ve seen multiple discussions about stat focus on Warriors.
For example, some say that stacking Vitality on the already HP buffed Warrior offers little return in comparison to stacking Toughness. Yet, in WvW and even now in Fractals, it’s the 18k HP that I have that’s killing me through conditions, not the 3kish toughness. Should I focus on Vit, Toughness, both equally, or is the for example a simple graph that shows that there is a drop off point where stacking Vit steadily starts to lose out faster to Toughness when you’d keep stacking it?
I’ve seen similar discussions about power and critting builds (although those are not specifically for the warrior).
It makes sense that when you have let’s say enough power to hit for 100, a 50% crit chance and 100% crit damage, that you’ll do 150 damage on average, based on luck.
It also makes perfect sense that if you stack power high enough, you can just do a base 150 damage through power alone, regardless of having a crit chance at all. The latter is more reliable, but former allows for prettier numbers, since crit damage is something that stacks well and can offer a huge damage multiplier when you do crit.
But then, building for crit requires stacking two stats, while power is just a single stat.

I do have a two things in my build that require a crit rate to viably go off (bleeding and vuln on crit), and warrior’s have more of these traits that proc of crits, so having some precision/crit rate regardless of crit damage seems important again as well.

So unto the conclusion. I want to get this set right. I’ll hang on to my berserker set and I’ll always have my tanky healer set. I’d love to build a set now that’s more or less in between. Good to very good DPS and decent survivability.
I was thinking of AC (Power/Tuf/Vit) type of gear or Knight’s with for both either Dolyak, Warrior or Soldier Runes (I love swapping, so Warrior seems good)
In the latter case, I do get a little more Precision, giving me a few more options on the trinkets since I do still hope to aim for having an unbuffed 30-40% crit rate (before sigils of accuracy/fury/food, etc.)

I hope someone can explain a few things about the stat priorities to me and come up with a decent advice.

Thanks in advance!

Honestly, I don’t care about the gear having higher stats. That really doesn’t matter. All my chars can run dungeons in blues or greens, and still do well. If some players feel they need the additional stats for a gear progression feeling, that’s fine..

But I’m a bit bummed out on the artificial barrier they’re creating with Agony, especially because of my alts. With this, a fresh 80 can’t viably do all end-game content anymore, as I’ll have to build up Ascended gear and Agony resistances first, which sucks :< No way to get all my future 80’s I’ve got planned all geared up with my playtime. O well, I guess it was inevitable with all the whining.

Agony is really just a terrible idea.

Costumes are indeed set-up pathetically in GW2. Especially the soulbound part annoys me. Feels like a total greedy sleezy trick that Anet is pulling. A ton of games have costumes that are unlocked for an entire account, and you can access a specific seperate wardrobe to wear the different skins. So you don’t waste precious storage space on it. I have a lot of games that I do no play anymore, where my wardrobe is still bulking from the amount of sets in there. I don’t own anything here, and not planning to until I can use said skins also in the open world while fighting. Towns clothes as it is implemented now was a terrible idea.

Well, when you have a fully persistent (non-instanced) world, such crap as personal stories don’t exist. You have events that happen once and may or may not impact the world, and you may or may not have been there to take part in it and perhaps grab a title from it.
This way, an event has happened, and now the world can stay persistent because the event happened for everyone to participate in and the world has changed indefinitely because of the influence of the event. This is not a player by player different outcome and regardless of player progress.
This is one way of doing events that should change things.

If you’re talking about personal storylines, the events are all based on the single player. One player can be further advanced in his storyline then another. Events can also be ran at different times, etc. To implement this, you’ll have to start instancing. Which is what the personal story quests are, all instances. So basically, the GW2 world is already instanced. (Based on, if there is a single instanced part in a game, you already can’t talk about a fully persistent world any more.)
Add to the fact that in GW2, every single map is an instance too. You can only travel from area to area through a portal. This means zones are not connected but separate instances.
Add to that Overflow servers (and different servers in general), which are really nothing more copies of the same zones over and over again, just to have different players in each, wait for it, instance.
Needless to say, there is a whole bunch of instancing in GW2. GW2 is far from an open or persistent world. That’s okay with me, I like a fully persistent world, if done well, but instanced games (disconnected zones and such) are often a bit more easy to play in and that suits me well, becoming older and all.
But I digress.
What I’m trying to say is, is that a developer could easily copy the three Orr zone maps, get a team of graphical designers to work on ‘healing’ the art of those three maps. Then proceed to add triggers to all methods of transportation into these 3 zones that checks for certain events completed (‘Cleanse Orr’ and ‘Kill Zhaitan’ specifically) and make the player transfer to Orr2 or Orr3 depending of how far in one is.
The last thing is of course to think of new content of things that can happen in Orr after said map change. Are there still Risen around but fewer, because of the few generals? Are there other issues now in Orr that needs the players attention? Dynamic events that now surround the ‘cleansed’ Orr needs to be designed and carefully implemented.

I know this can be a whole lot of work, I’m a developer myself, but I do feel that especially for the last two personal story quests, that change so much in lore, that I feel it warrants a real change to in the world. So it’s most likely only somewhat limited to Orr. (Although if you, ArenaNet really feel strongly about making a dynamic world, I’d love to see other personal story quest lines have larger affect on the general gameplay.)

I foresee one large possible problem after implementation of this in Orr, this may split the population across the three instances of the same zone. So Orr1, before Orr is cleansed, might be deserted, because people rush the story line. This means less players to play with when you are in Orr but have yet to do said story quest. Taking a temple back or something can then be difficult with just a handful of players. Orr3 on the other hand can very likely have the majority of the players. So then Orr3 should need to be shaped in a way that even though Zhaitan is gone, there is still a lot to do in Orr3 because of .. insert good story plot here.

Orrrr…, simply put.. if you don’t have the resources to make alternate Orr instances, then don’t let us kill Zhaitan and cleanse the land. These two are just to out there to do and then don’t see any after-effects in the world.

I don’t know if anyone else suffers from this, but my main pet peeve with the GW2 storyline, is that it’s too epic a storyline to feel connected to the normal, non-storyline world.

So the Pact is formed, and you’re named commander. The first few missions after being made commander, you’re just that, commander (already an immensely high rank though in world matters point-of-view). People are still skeptical of you, Trahearne and the Pact. You complete a few more missions and from skepticism, opinions of you that you hear about from NPC’s around you turn in to widespread praise. Cleansing Orr, beating the Eye of Zhaitan, if you talk to all the NPC’s that are circle around you and Trahearne, you’re apparantly going down in legends as an amazing hero. Wow. That’s really epic.
And then you beat Zhaitan and there’s world peace again (there are other dragons, but for story/world progression purposes, everything is now happy happy joy joy).

And then you end the instance, and you’re in the same old Orr as before. Risen are still everywhere. The land has not been ‘cleansed’. Trahearne and his Wyld Hunt mission to cleanse Orr? He obviously failed, because that cutscene where you saw all the lovely scenery. It’s not there yet in the physical non-instanced world when you return to the exact same spot, the well. Not even one single flower in bloom that wasn’t there yet before the instanced cleansing.
And all the NPC’s? If the NPC’s in the story modes aren’t lying, I should believe that people are talking about me from Rata Sum to the Black Citadel.
And when I talk to NPC outside of an instance? I get barked at more than not.

What the dynamic events -somewhat- achieved in GW2 that isn’t apparent in other games, is a sense of a changing ‘world’. You can capture and lose camps, and the zone (it’s hard to say the world) is then somewhat altered.
I say somewhat, and am cautious to say changing world, because the effects are still barely noticeable. But it’s a start and I hope a third installment of GW, or perhaps an update will finally get this right. But this is another story.

How Storytelling relates (or more specifically, does not relates) to dynamic events, is that it’s all fleeting for the game experience. I for one would actually love to see Orr showing signs of being ‘cleansed’ after Trahearne finally finishes his Wyld Hunt. I want to see the power of the Risen greatly diminished when Zhaitan is killed.
I know this is a lot to ask for in terms of game changes, but it’s the expectation you yourself (ArenaNet) set up when you made a storyline that makes you walk around as the Commander of the Pact, Legendary Hero that killed Zhaitan, that which the legendary group Destiny’s Edge could not complete, etc. etc.

I’m not a roleplayer, nor a die-hard story-mode person in games. I don’t care much about that great single-player experience. If anything, in games, I like grinding, especially dungeon crawling. So from this, you can conclude that I’m not a huge critic when it comes to story modes. They are a fun add-on to my overall game experience. So when I see a storyline, I’ll check it out anyway, hoping it will be a good fun ride.
And don’t get me wrong, the storyline is (although a bit cliche at bits) decently enjoyable all the way through. You even feel a sense of pride as your character progresses from Vigil grunt to Vigil Warmaster and even Pact Commander.
But when the story ends, it truly ends. From there, you’re just repeating what is probably the last of what little remains of lore, repeatable explorable mode dungeons.

And now Orr is just this desolate place, that I apparently have to go to as a level 80 for my main source of gold and karma income. There is no story behind it anymore. These Risen that keep spawning, these events that keeps throwing hordes at you? So Zhaitan is still throwing his Risen armies at you even from his death? Awesomesauce.
And the land is still barren and there is death everywhere? And this promise to this last king of Orr that you spoke to after Trahearne cleansed the land? The promise that we would restore Orr and honor his last wish? The Pact is restoring kitten in Orr.

To conclude: No cleansing, no restoring, no diminishing resistance from Risen, no apparent sense of victory in the non-instanced Orr. Just a dead Orr, every day, every single time I repeat the same event again for some gold and karma. If I knew the storyline would just set me up for disappointment concerning Orr, I would’ve been better off not doing it at all in the first place.