Guild Wars 2

Of particular note to me was that – when I was lagging from the bajillion people in the area – the statue failed to load in time on one trip through the area. First there was a massive crater in the ground, then as things loaded the crater became smaller. Then the statue loaded. Makes me think we might see something happen with that statue at some point, no?

Buy it. rimshot

Seriously though, I craft and sell wanted armor sets. Not sure if it’s the most effective way, but it’s getting the job done for now.

Everyone sees dialogue, with one player seemingly at random speaking the PC dialogue. As for dropouts, the player can reconnect and rejoin the dungeon if it’s a connection problem without interrupting anything. If someone leaves for good, you can invite someone else to the party – either by having one person leave to recruit or from a friend’s list – and they can join the existing instance without issue.

Are you sure it was a hairstyle, and not a head accessory the character was wearing? Hairstyles don’t normally add accessories from what I’ve seen.

I actually hated that quest. Tons of running back and forth with absolutely no difficulty. Yeah, it took a while. So does watching paint dry.

Subject Alpha was easy as pie once I figured out when to dodge. I work full eight hour days and enjoy fighting with him when I hop onto Guild Wars that night. Just read a guide if you don’t want to figure it out for yourself, because after learning his pattern he isn’t nearly as dangerous. This is when playing with a 100% PUG group, by the way, so it’s not about having a cohesive team at all.

As an Engineer that uses bombs for DPS, I can also vouch for melee range being really, really easy once you figure out the timing between the red circles appearing and the attack hitting. He doesn’t do the AoEs fast enough to drain your Endurance even without Vigor, so long as you don’t waste any dodges.

I prefer to keep stat gear, and run 5 Superior Pirate runes and 1 Superior Traveler rune for +60% MF. Have another ~10% in gems on my trinkets, try to have a weapon with a Luck Sigil for ~10%, and pop edibles for +30% . . . so roughly +100% total. With that I get a rare pretty much any time I play for a relatively short amount of time, and even without using the Mystic Forge on greens I get rares pretty quickly.

Keep in mind you can buy ectos for roughly 17s off the trading post too. I’ve taken advantage of this many times before, and it’s currently my primary source of gold as I can make about 1g for each exotic I sell so long as I’m crafting the right types.

Meanwhile, after the patch my first drop was a Rare. So mileage may vary.

I think Mesmer and Necro are the only two that might have problems, now that I think of it. Necro DoT AoE might take too long to give credit.

I generally find myself only half completing escort events without a point. For instance, “get mechant X to town Y”. I’ll do enough to get a gold then go to a more interesting event elsewhere. I think this is more a problem of not enough interesting things happening in these events, really. The most memorable one I can thing of was in Caledon Forest, oddly enough, and had your guide wander through an area with enemies on high hill, bandits creating roadblocks that had to be destroyed, and a pair of catapults at one point. Instead, most events are just waves of generic enemies that don’t really do anything to make you want to see it through to completion. Especially if you’ll get gold just for fighting off one or two waves and moving on to something that’ll give more enjoyment.

Everyone has AoE of some type. It really doesn’t take much to farm these events, so there’s not much limitation on profession for that. Just bring the right weapons for the job.

Love the food tips especially. Good stuff overall though.

I totally agree. The cost I can accept, but they really should be a set of exotics or some of these beautiful skins may get ignored.

No one said “start running if he sees you”, that was something you came up with all on your own. Everyone who actually played the event and knows what they’re talking about has said “dodge and keep fighting”. You’re inserting an argument into this thread that has no place here, and have repeatedly shown ignorance of how the actual event in question functions.

Crafting earn great money too. For a long while Explorer’s equipment was selling for 25s or so a piece with only a 10s buy-in cost if you didn’t want to collect materials on your own. Now it’s been devalued, but the cost of Berserker equipment is rising in cost to replace it, already at 20s+ for the most expensive items.

I agree that the Flamethrower has a problem, in the sense that it only has one ability for each type of build. Crit is for #1, Power for #2, Control #3, Support #4, Defense #5, and Condition is on the toolbelt. No weapon should be a one-trick pony with all abilities of one type, but this is going well beyond that stipulation. It tries to do too much, and fails because of it.

Lack of continuity is a big issue as it currently stands. We need some characters to be with us from 1-80, and others can come and go in the storyline. Characters shouldn’t just disappear without explanation.

The Charr warband is a nice start, but we need those elements used across the entirety of the personal storyline. Otherwise, how will we care about them if most of them are only around for 2-3 events? Longevity on NPCs allows us to interact with them, build relationships with them, care about them . . . and through that, care much more strongly about the storylines that involves them as well.

Alviss, I don’t understand what you’re saying. I get you suggestion – that might be a valid point as well, especially if it favored, say, Asura responding to Zojja, humans responding to Logan, etc. It’s not ideal for me, but I get it. What I don’t get is how changing it to my suggestion is any worse for you than the way it already is. As things currently stand it already is just one person talking alone in the dungeon, it’s just usually not me. I’m heavily invested in the character of Zojja, and according to my personal story she’s a friend of mine. Why shouldn’t I be upset that the game prevents me from speaking to her unless I rush the NPC or something?

There’s nothing worse than going into a story mode dungeon – especially one involving my racial representative in Destiny’s Edge – only to have another player’s character steal all the dialogue in cutscenes. I was desperate for my character to speak to Zojja in Caudecus’ Manor, for instance, and was instead forced to watch a boring looking human with poor color choices do all the talking instead. The story should be my story, and if I watch a cutscene I want my character to be the one speaking in it. It ruins my immersion when that’s not the case.

My suggestion, then, is that for each of the five party members in a dungeon, each one will see their own character when watching the cutscenes. I’m sure the story doesn’t change drastically, but this will do a lot to add a personal touch to thing and help keep immersion players involved during the proceedings.

I use the trading post, and kept Leatherworking relevant the whole way to 80. I couldn’t do the same for Huntsman, however, and abandoned it around the 200 point mark. It was too expensive to keep up with two crafts.

I’m able to keep them alive easily enough via blinds. It’s a solid strategy for Thieves and Engineers especially, and if they drop it’s not too hard to revive them.

I think they’re quite easy to read. You can tell the status of metaevents by how many waypoints are contested, and there are so many events I can’t go a few feet without finding one or another. My only problem is that my server has a low population, and there’s never anyone actually in those zones. I think I see an average of 4-5 people in an entire night in Orr zones, and there aren’t enough for most events to actually get completed.

Yeah, Norn aren’t at a disadvantage on jumps. Only Charr are, really, because of their awkward run animation making it hard to tell where you’re “standing”.

I still can’t use the gate there and I’m at the level 74~ish point in my story. For some reason they wont open up and let me in . . . can I only warp to Fort Trinity from my own order’s headquarters or something? I was Priory but haven’t tried it from there.

With my Engineer I occasionally ran into difficulty, but nothing overwhelming; I’ve died maybe three times in the last 50 levels of personal story. The quests seemed well balanced and I greatly enjoyed them. Thumbs up ArenaNet.

Things like the trolls and the eruptions of burrowing creatures seem to be dynamic events that spawn in the dungeons. My first time through AC story we only had one event, the burrowing swarm coming in early in the dungeon. The next time, a troll attacked while we were fighting a monk/mesmer/necro mob combo, and a burrowing swarm did come but much later in the dungeon.

This is stolen from Zenyatoo, who I thought had an excellent idea in a thread on the Dungeon forum.

I have to say this on the subject, imo to balance out the tokens there should be a bonus for finishing all the explorable paths, a repeatable bonus.

For example, in Guild wars 1, when you did the domain of anguish, you could pick the starting zone of 4. Then you could chain them together if you wanted. If you did all 4 in a row, the reward kept increasing (first chest gave 1 gem, next gave 2, next gave 3 and so on)

Something similar could be done for dungeons. Make it so that if you complete every explorable path you get a large bonus of tokens, maybe 100+ of them. (this bonus could be earned multiple times) With luck this will De-incentivise running one path over and over, because while it’s easier, it may no longer be the fastest token reward. It will also help cut down on the overall grind for those players who actually wish to challenge themselves and tackle all the explorable paths.

I know my friend was thoroughly disappointing with sorrows embrace rewards, having finished all 3 paths, only to realize we had 90 of the 1380 tokens needed for a full armor set we were kind of discouraged.

While I think he exaggerates how much the reward should be, having some incentive to get people cycling through the content instead of plugging away at the fastest/easiest route would help it all see more use.

There already are unique skins for each dungeon. You can buy them with the tokens you earn for completing explorable dungeons.

polarity.8906:

Then I came up against Rakt.

• As an engineer I rely on turrets to keep my damage in line with other classes. Rakt pretty much one-shots them, leaving me with poor damage output.
• I have hardly any stun/blind/daze/confuse cooldowns that I could chain to reduce incoming damage, and while I do have plenty of slow and immobilise skills, they don’t stop him from damaging me, as he also has a powerful ranged attack.

He’s only one target, and Engineer has more than enough CC for the task. Rifle has an Immobilize and Knockback, and Pistol/Shield has a Blind, Knockback and Daze. You need to use these to keep him off your turrets, especially when you freely acknowledge that they can’t tank for you. It may work on random weak mobs, but the turrets in this game aren’t meant to hold aggro for the Engineer unless you specifically trait for it. And even then the Thumper is the only one really great at it.

Beyond that, your turrets have a lot of CC that can help as well. A net turret can help hold him away from your others, while rocket turrets provide Knockback and flame turret provide Blind. Thumpers have more health and can knock him away should he move to them, but you really need to keep track of where he’s moving and what he’s attacking to relieve your turrets.

If you want, you can also swap a turret or two for other utilities that may help further. Personal Battering Ram can help push him off turrets and slow him down, Bomb Kit packs a very useful smoke bomb that can Blind him through several attacks, Grenade Kit can cause Chill and slow his attacks down. Even the Flamethrower gives an extra knockback and blind.

All in all, you want him attacking you while you kite him. Given that he’s fast, that means you’ll need every trick you have to keep yourself alive as well, so don’t be afraid to immobilize and cripple during the fight. He isn’t that hard if you go in with the right strategy, but since I don’t use turrets very often myself I can’t tell you exactly how to do it. I went through with a Power/Vitality build using the bomb kit without trouble though.

The Battle of Claw Island (gw026.jpg)

Objectives:
Find and Revive Deputy Mira. – Endless spawns of Risen on beach. okay. Their resistance to most damage? very high. it took me 20 minutes to get an open window to revive, and i was still getting poisoned and attacked while doing so. I cannot do enough spike damage to wipe out a small group of Risen, then run in and revive (that was my plan, anyways). the time it took to get a window of opportunity, more Risen were charging on the beach. Not so hard when all the AI help was downed.

I felt your pain a bit. I actually had no problem reviving Mira, as once I realized the reinforcments were endless I just revived her a little bit at a time either between waves or when I was able to pop a smoke field. My partner, Magister Sieran, went down in the fight though, and for some reason I had much more trouble bringing her back up. The pack of undead actually killed me once, in fact.

I tore through it really quickly with powerful AoE myself. Killing one Risen took as long as killing 12 Risen, so the event wasn’t nearly the difficult grind you seem to describe. Maybe you just used the wrong tactics? Also note you didn’t have to kill everything until that final segment where you hold out. The rest of the time, especially when going to the beacon, the NPCs even tell you they’ll do the fighting and you should rush to light it.

Sieran was great, as was Zojja during the opening acts of the Asura story. I don’t think I can remember anyone else I cared about, although the Sylvari Necromancer whose name currently escapes me(Traherne?) is now growing on me as well.

Hi, just mentioning this because I found it a bit frustrating. I’m playing an Asura Engineer and picked the Priory order for my personal story. I did the Claw Island event, and in the story mission after that I was transformed into a giant to combat the undead horde. This boosted my stats nicely, but I quickly noticed two problems.

1. The big issue is that my toolbelt skills disappeared . . . and I had a med kit selected as my heal. This effectively left me with absolutely no way to heal during the fight, and led to a death and retreat as I had to change some skills around on my character. The developers obviously thought healing skills were important enough to the gameplay to make them mandatory from level one, and so losing my heal that way was very frustrating and definitely made the game not play as designed.

2. This one was a minor issue, but still important. For melee, even with the knockback and interrupts, the giant form was weak. Being an Engineer, I still had access to weapon toolkits in my utilities and was able to change to bombs. My attacks as a giant did 300-400 damage, while my bombs did 800-1200! This is an even bigger difference than the damage comparison of my rifle to my bombs, meaning the giant form’s melee is weaker than a ranged attack. I think it needs to be made more powerful to reflect the strength of the form. I’m also unsure if I should’ve been able to even use toolkits while in this form, given how it was forced over my normal weapon skills and even removed my unique class features. Either way, the giant form was unsatisfying.

@Raedwulf: You went into a Dungeon without a stun break? That sounds . . . dangerous.

In any case, I use different weapons for different for different situations. Rifle is my mainstay weapon, but in dungeons I prefer to bring Pistol/Shield for its strong control elements. The shield in particular is one of my favorite parts of the class; having a ranged attack reflect and knockback on one ability, and a block/stun or group double daze on another? That’s some REALLY strong control, and four different uses from only two abilities. It’s fantastic. If pistols didn’t scale so poorly with power I’d probably use it more often. Pistol/Pistol I mostly stay away from. Having not built crit or condition damage, it isn’t worthwhile.

For kits, Bomb is my absolute favorite. It does massive AoE damage when paired with power increases, creates Fire(which with blasts does some nice Might stacks) and Smoke fields for support and control. Smoke in particular is hugely useful in dungeons, as I can shut down entire enemy groups for several seconds with that. Even at ranged, sometimes it’s useful to swap to Bombs to make a fire of smoke field and then go back to my ranged weapon to capitalize on it. I haven’t tried them with the bomb heal on them yet, but I fully intend to once I can. That’ll just increase their use.

Grenades are good, especially for the chill on their #4. I don’t like using them as a primary weapon though. I find aiming them kind of a pain, and don’t enjoy it, so if I equip them I mainly use them for the poison fields and quick chills. The blind grenade is of course also useful though. Blinds always are, especially when they’re AoE.

Med Kit is my go-to heal skill, both for the 10s swiftness/fury every 20s, extra heals an quick-recharge heal toolbelt skill. Even the condition removal is great, allowing my to shrug off poison before I pop my heal if necessary. Nothing else even compares unless I run a specific elixir or turret build.

Elixir Gun I occasionally use for it’s #4 acid puddle – which stacks beautifully with power – and the light field/regen toolbelt. The swiftness/cripple #2 is good too, as is weakness on its autoattack when I want to run support. It’s #3 is pretty useless without bulding condition damage though.

Flamethrower seems build more for a crit damage build, with the way it “streams” its attack. It’s toolbelt, blind and AoE knockback are great though. As it’s it’s #2 with Power, if you can hit right with it. Its #4 flame wall is also excellent for giving might to allies with Blasts and stacking burning.

For utilities, I tend to stay away from turrets, although when I do use them the Net, Flame and Rocket turrets seem the best. The latter takes the cake there with it’s high damage output, but I do really like the flame turret’s blindness overcharge. Elixirs can be good, but mostly only if you spec for it. I prefer getting B and S for free from traits my traits when I hit 75% and 25% health respectively. Elixirs R and C and be good for support though. I alternate them in dungeons from time to time, depending on what we’re going against. Elixir C in particular is great if you get slammed with 8+ conditions by the necromancers in there, while R gives both “free” revives and a stun break.

Those are not my skills of choice, however. When using Bomb Kit, I tend to use the Slick shoes for an easy knockdown while circling with bombs, not to mention the awesome speed boost on its toolbelt. Jet boots also make for good accompaniment; they give you both a stun break and a Blast finisher to get might/stealth from your fields. For a more offensive/control option, the mine works very well as a blast finisher too, as does your Crate elite.

Other utilities end up being more situational for me. I haven’t tried the tool kit, hence its absence above, but from what I hear it’s a great defensive tool. The Personal Battering ram also came in use during – for instance – the Lovers fight in Ascalonian Catacombs. Goggles are one of the best stun breaks available given its amazing toolbelt skill. They all have different uses, and you can combine them into a lot of interesting builds.

It’s also worth noting that heart quests mail you money after you complete them, so you may want to go through and loot your letters, so to speak.

Not your inventory, your mail tab. It’s the one that looks like a letter on the top left.

I did the other option and went Priory, so I can’t say for certain about the set up for that fight. I do know the other option involved hacked golems too though, and we completely pulverized him. Try to use control abilities, like Pistol/Pistol shooting through your Blinding Shot smoke cloud, your blind-inducing utilities or the stun/daze on Sword/Dagger. And let the NPCs swarm him while you shut down his damage. Unless that mission’s different, they should continue fighting with you. If you get in trouble, stealth out and don’t re-engage until you’ve healed a bit, letting NPCs take aggro.

Also, save your dodges for his leaping attack, if it’s that dangerous. Just try to kite the rest.

For warrior, Armorsmithing and Weaponsmithing are obvious choies. Hunstman will let you build bows and rifles, Jeweler will get you upgrade components and Cooking will give you temporary buffs. I think that was all that applied to the Warrior.

Which version of Rakt are you fighting? Did you hold the demonstration or raid the comm facility? And what Profession are you? That way we’ll know what skills you have available.

The amount of Defiant gained seems to come from the scaling of the event, and every CC the boss is hit with removes one stack of Defiant. When all stacks are removed, the next CC will affect the boss, and the Defiant stacks will come back.

I suppose it’s possible that some of the items you need for the Mystic Forge recipe come from crafting recipes though. I suppose I’ll find out when I get that far.

Indeed. When I hit Tier 2 I went from 78 to 99 crafting just refinement items, and got to 125 with just 8-10 items in the Discovery pane.

The longer the mob has been alive, the more bonus XP you get. It’s to encourage you to explore out of the way areas of the map.

Necros are working as intended, I believe. They aren’t like the ranger, whose pet is supposed to be in the fight. Necro pets are meant to die, which is why your abilities give you creative ways to kill them to increase your damage.

I salvage EVERYTHING I pick up that I don’t want to use. Any medium armor you salvage will give you leather.

I thought Legendaries were made in the Mystic Forge. Was that wrong?

I can’t speak too much on that, although I do know that stats aside there are a variety of unique skins that can be unlocked in the endgame. The ultimate weapon skins, for instance, are crafted using skill points and rare materials in the Mystic Forge.

Normally, it’s something you would’ve crafted on the way to 80. If you’re already 80 and have the gear you need, you’re better off training Cooking. Food can give useful buffs no matter what level you are, or what equipment you wear.

Having played Story mode on AC for the first time recently, I have to say that I think the biggest thing people don’t recognize about the damage they’re taking is the additional condition damage. Ranger traps cause bleed. Mesmers cause Confusion. Elementalists are causing burning. They wittle you to death and you don’t even notice it. Our group got through the Ranger trio with little trouble, for instance, but wiped on the Lovers twice because I was the only one that respec’d enough control to push anyone around.

Did you see Viking’s post? He directly addressed that issue. There are 8 dungeons in the game, each with a Story mode and three Explorable modes. While the Story mode is difficult compared to most zerg events, the Explorable modes are designed to be the absolute hardest content the game has to offer. With three of them per dungeon, that’s technically 24 different dungeons to take on, and beating each one gives you credits towards unlocking unique armor sets. Those unique armor sets seem to be the exact “cape” you’re asking for, and those explorable dungeons the hard content.