Guild Wars 2

Hokay! So, I finally figured out the problem and my game is running smoothly once more.

I downloaded a different temperature monitor this time, HWMonitor. It’s quite a bit more detailed than the crappy one I was using before and made me realize that my CPU temperature was reaching super high levels. A quick download of CPU-Z later, and I watched as my large drops in FPS corresponded precisely to my computer throttling my 2.0 GHz processor down to 0.8 GHz. Cross-referencing that with HWMonitor made me realize that my clock speed was oscillating wildly because I was approaching fairly critical temperatures. CPU-Z also made me realize that I was getting such bad temperatures because my processor was in some sort of bloody turbo mode. GW2’s extreme use of the CPU was making turbo mode decide that the processor really needed to run at 2.5 GHz all the time. So, essentially, my problem was overheating caused by the game’s CPU intensiveness overclocking my processor. I imagine it had always been somewhat marginal, and a recent patch just pushed the CPU usage over the edge – or, alternatively, I somehow accidentally turned on this turbo mode I knew nothing about.

tl;dr: Overheating and subsequent throttling due to my CPU’s turbo mode was my problem. Disabled the auto-overclock, and my GW2 experience is saved! Life lesson: Use HWMonitor and CPU-Z to check things, accept no substitues.

Okay, so, I found a band-aid solution that makes the game playable.

To deal with the random/no clear explanation frame drops: Limiting my FPS to 30 completely fixed this problem. With a 60 FPS limit, it’d dip down to about 10-15 fps even in empty areas. Now it stays solidly at 30 FPS all the time. Sadly, 30 FPS is noticeably not smooth.

To deal with populated areas: Set culling settings to lowest. Enjoy as everyone becomes a placeholder character. I still get big frame drops, but it’s not as bad.

There’s still something seriously funky going on, but at least the game is playable again and Lion’s Arch is a little less of a slideshow. XD

Since the August 13th patch (or sometime around then), I’ve been having massive FPS drops in Guild Wars 2, with no sort of performance problems in any other game or program. Before that patch, I would only get unplayable levels of frame dropping in the zergiest wvw situations, and even then only sometimes. Since the patch, my average FPS in populated areas (such as Lion’s Arch or the Crown Pavilion) has dropped drastically. My FPS in unpopulated areas has stayed more or less the same. Additionally, in every part of the game, including unpopulated areas, I will get massive frame drops down to 5-10 fps – often when turning the camera, but it also happens a lot when I’m just running forward. This persists through computer restarts, and happens consistently every time I’m in the game. The poor performance in populated areas and frequent drops down to very low framerates persist regardless of what graphic settings I have – the first thing I did was to turn everything down to lowest from the medium settings that Auto-Detect gave me.

I’ve tried a lot of things on my end, including a full reinstall of Guild Wars 2 (cleaned out the local files and everything), various versions of NVidia drivers, system restore points, blowing out dust, running as administrator, running in XP SP3 compatibility mode, reinstalling Directx9, disabling Microsoft Security Essentials, and various tweaks in my NVidia Control Panel.

My apologies if this is not the right place for it, but my thread in Tech Support hasn’t garnered any sort of response. Since I’ve tried a myriad of things on my end with absolutely no change, I’m thinking that it’s an actual bug in the game. It could be something on my end, but I’ve more or less exhausted any fixes I can think of.

[edit] I posted this in game bugs and it got moved here… If a mod sees this and wonders why I’ve duplicated my topic, mind merging this thread with https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Terrible-FPS-Drops-Since-August-13th-Patch/first#post2666394 ?

Tried updating to the latest NVidia beta drivers released today, but still no relief in sight for the massive frame drops. Has anyone had this problem as well, and did it go away with the last patch? :\

@Fatenekki – That’s my guess too, but it could be on my end. I’m honestly just trying to keep this topic alive in the vain hope that ANet will see it or someone might give me some more ideas to try.

Yup, the full reinstall didn’t help at all. I’m completely out of ideas. Is there anyone from ANet reading that has some idea of what I can do? I’d like to be able to enjoy the game again.

I don’t really find that you need to dodge Alpha much/at all on P1, so I’d say that’s the easiest path. Just remember to have everyone melee him, preferably up against a wall. The flipside is that P1 has that really glitchy feeling midboss and the golem bomb section is arguably a bit harder than P2/P3. Way more interesting, but harder.

Really, though, none of the paths are all that bad, and they’re all quite similar. I’ve never run CoE with a pug, though, so ymmv. P3 is the most fun for me, since P2’s midboss is interesting but a bit of a pain if you’re not playing a mesmer with a focus. You might want to look up a video of whatever path you decide to run.

Patch didn’t do anything, and the removal of culling has made the game even more unplayable in some areas. :\

Thanks for the suggestion, Pyrii, but my problem happens no matter what settings I have – highest, lowest, or autodetect.

[edit] I’m currently trying a full reinstall – uninstalled the game and deleted all the GW2 folders I could find (appdata/temp/gw2cache, Documents/Guild Wars 2, and the installation folder). I’ll let you all know if it works out… Oh, I did back up my screenshots, of course.

I wrote up a list of things that I’ve tried, but the forum ate my post and I don’t have the energy to rewrite it. That said, if anyone has any ideas, please let me know. I’d be willing to try any of the things I’ve done again. :P Still holding out hope that this little problem will go away with tomorrow’s patch. Not sure what I’ll do if not, a lot of the content that I enjoy the most is unplayable or borderline unplayable right now.

Girion.5483:

Over the last 11,5 months I could play flawlessly on medium to max graphics settings, but since last week I’m suffering from massive performance issues. Framerate drops as low as 10-12 FPS, which basically makes the game unplayable.

The interesting thing is, that these performance issues, while often, don’t seem to be constant. Sometimes everything goes back to normal and I’m playing at 45 – 80 FPS, depending on the region and then again, out of the blue, the framerate drops through the bottom back to 10.

This is exactly what happens to me. Nice to know that I’m not alone…? Let me know if you figure out a solution! Hopefully, Tuesday’s patch will revert whatever odd outlier bug that’s causing this for us.

Sadly, logging off and rebooting does nothing at all to fix the problem. It’s the first thing I tried.

Still no improvement, despite trying a bunch of things on my end. The random frame drops are honestly quite headache inducing. Performance does depend on the area of the game, but the FPS dropping is happening across the board. My rough estimates would be:

Crown Pavilion – Can go as high as 30 fps, and as low as 1 fps. Just idling is usually 10-15 fps. Before the last patch, I was comfortably getting 40 fps on average and only had large drops if the zerg was beneath me – and even then, only down to about 20 fps. (edit: I just tried to do one of the bosses in the Pavilion and the zerg brought my computer to its knees. It was essentially a slideshow – 5 fps and under the entire time. My computer handled more than a few much larger zergs when this content came out without much trouble.)

Bloodtide Coast – Getting 60 fps (frame limiter), but with frequent spikes down to 15-20 fps. Never had any performance trouble in this zone pre-patch.

sPvP – I can’t seem to get over 20 fps regardless, and it keeps spiking down sub-10 fps.

The thing that really puzzles me is that most of this is regardless of whether I’m on medium (auto-detect) or absolute lowest settings. I can get a bit more peak fps on lowest settings, but I still get the massive frame drops that are rendering the game borderline unplayable. While I don’t have a top-of-the-line machine, my computer definitely surpasses the recommended requirements and I’ve enjoyed decent framerates for the last 11 months. I’m utterly puzzled as to what has happened.

[edit] I’ve also noticed that I can twirl my character around endlessly on the character select screen without any sort of fps drop, so perhaps it has something to do with rendering the terrain? I’m stumped.

I’ve been running the game fairly comfortably on medium settings for the last 11 months, but, since the last patch (Aug 13th), I’m getting really awful FPS drops during regular play. Running around in an unpopulated zone (such as Bloodtide Coast), the FPS counter on the options menu is pinging wildly between my usual ~60 fps and about 10-20 FPS. In the Crown Pavilion, I’m getting 10 FPS on average and dipping as low as 1 FPS. I didn’t have any problems of this sort until a few days ago – performance was quite serviceable in the Pavilion zergs and I had only the occasional frame drop during the Gauntlet. Turning my settings down to minimum boosts my FPS by a tiny amount, but the massive 30+ drops still occur with regularity.

This problem seems to be isolated to GW2 – I’ve tried a few other games (including GW1), and I’m not getting any sort of frame drops. In GW2, I can’t go 10 seconds without having a problem. I’ve tried a few things on my end – updated my NVidia drivers, rolled back some Windows updates that coincided with the start of my performance issues, and ran a disk check to make sure my hard drive wasn’t failing – but nothing seems to have helped.

Is anyone else having similar problems? Sadly, this has made the Queen’s Gauntlet more or less unplayable for me, amongst other pieces of content. I hope a solution can be found.

A nice solution would probably just be to remove the “late start” thing. It seems kinda glitchy anyway – I’ve gotten it with 6 minutes to spare at times, but I’ve started games with 1:20 left and not gotten the message. I’ve also had the message not come up for the entire run until I get to the end chest (often with at least 0:30 to 1:00 left).

We started from the very beginning of the match. The “due to a late start” message is clearly a bug, since we were in there the entire time. I’ve updated the OP to reflect that, thanks for pointing out my lack of clarity there.

I just finished a race of Sanctum Sprint and didn’t get an end chest, despite being the first person to the finish line. My friend, who was in the same game, came second and also did not receive the chest. We both got the “due to a late start, no rewards will be given” message. We both used the wind powerup to skip the last spiral up to the top. I did, however, get completion towards my Sprint games played track (the repeatable one that gives a loot bag), so I’m not sure what was up with that. Other players did, however, get their chest, so it seems like the skip is possibly what caused the bug. Given that the skip is clearly intentional from the placement of the wind powerup, this seems like a pretty glaring bug.

ETA: I should probably note that we started from the very beginning of the match. As in, the 10 second countdown. We got the “due to a late start” thing as we tried to loot the chest, not at any point in the actual run.

Yup, it’s working now, got my last remaining achievement! Thanks for posting that update in this thread. <3

After playing quite a bit of Crab Toss (enough to get the other achievements twice over), I finally caved and tried to just cooperate with some players to swap Crabtacular wins. However, none of us seemed to be able to accomplish the “achievement”, even though we definitely had everyone except the carrier knocked over at the same time. One of the players mentioned that their grab and carry stats hadn’t gone up all day either.

Furthermore, both my friend and I won Crab Toss today and didn’t get the Crab Toss Champion daily. I won twice, in fact – once from properly playing, and once while we were trying in vain to trade Crabtacular “wins”. It seems like all Crab Toss achievements are completely broken for us.

Any chance on a quick fix/extension of Crab Toss for those of us who would like to complete everything? I’ve been trying at this for days at this point, and now I’m wondering if I’ve actually managed it before now but not gotten credit.

Hello Petal! Nice to see that you’re trying to make condition mez work after confusion was gutted. The undocumented fix that you mentioned to condition duration makes condi a bit more viable than I’d thought.

Just a few thoughts:

- I’m still not convinced that torch is the best option for a condition build. Prestige is a fantastic skill – I have no complaints now that it works all the time and isn’t a silly channel. However, using only one skill on your offhand feels like a bit of a waste. Sharper Images plus the iDuelist would stack a lot of bonus bleeds for condition “bursts”, and a weapon swap + Cry of Frustration + phase retreat and dodging would get your 3 clones up and running once more. Magic Bullet provides a very good stun as well, plus it can spread the love in outnumbered situations. The focus brings a lot of utility to the table as well – bleeds if you can immobilize people inside the phantasm’s range and utility from the pull, swiftness, and projectile block when iWarden is whirling. It depends how highly you rate the Prestige – fantastic ability, but is it worth two skills?

- +3% damage per clone could be swapped for something else. Even with carrion gear, you don’t have too much direct damage that will benefit. Reflect on distortion might be a good utility choice, or recharge on shatters when you go below 50% health can provide utility and offensive shatters at key moments.

- On the flipside, especially given how much direct damage there is in wuvwuv, 3% reduced damage power clone might be worth trading out reduced CDs on manipulations. Probably not for your build, since you run two manips, but it could be a good swap if you’re only running one of them in certain situations.

Bumping this one up and confirming. I tested it with an ethereal and a light combo field, both with and without the Prismatic Understanding trait. Hopefully this will get fixed soon, given that the loss of the blast finisher drastically reduces the usefulness of this skill.

I’m kinda amused by how this gold-gems-cash exchange thing works in the eyes of players. It seems like half the complaints are that cash→gems→gold doesn’t give enough gold. The other half of the complaints are that gold→gems doesn’t give enough gems. It would almost seem like it would just be better to go back to a flat $ rate cash shop like in GW1.

Except, y’know, nobody I’ve talked to in game would actually rather have that system.

Gem store sales are catered towards the crowd that buys gems with real money, not the gold->gem converters. I’ve spent $10 on gems on day 1 (extra character slot, and it was actually a gift) and probably 150 or so gold on gems since launch (I really wanted Foostivoo, okay?!), so I’d say I fall into the latter category. With that said, I don’t really see the problem with sales catering to the real money crowd – when demand drops off and gems go down a bit, that’s effectively a “sale” for gold->gems converters. Am I a little sad that I bought 2 panes of bank storage a few days ago, given that it’s gone on sale? Sure, but that’s true of every sale ever. Relax, there’s no grand conspiracy out there and ANet has not programmed a malignant AI that intentionally screws everyone over. If they were capable of that, surely the mob AI in this game would be a bit more sophisticated! (Har har original joke.)

Also, the gold→gem price rises literally every time ANet has a sale or adds anything remotely popular to the shop. The prices stay at that peak for a while and then fall to a place where the market is more comfortable. This happened at Halloween, Lost Shores, Wintersday, and with the Quaggan backpack. If you expect to enjoy gem store sales, be prepared to buy gems ahead of time during the lull periods. I’m not sure why you don’t expect a rush of gold→gem conversions, given that it happens every time, and for good reason.

1) You have to use the Sigil specified.
2) From what I understand, most people use the recipe for one, since it reduces the variance in a very luck-based situation. The odds aren’t necessarily better, it’s more that your luck won’t be quite as “streaky”.

Good luck!

Svarty.8019:

Zyk.3597:

Ursan.7846:

You know, right now $10 gets you 800 Gems, which gets you about 11.5G.

If you do the math, to basically get 1500 G, you need to spend $1304.

I somehow highly doubt many people spend $1300 on pixels. And I highly doubt Anet actually counts on this to make money.

I’m utterly shocked that this point isn’t brought up more often. Why ruin a good conspiracy theory, though?

Some people are incredibly wealthy – this amount of money wouldn’t make a dent in their budgets.

Also, wouldn’t $10 get you much more gold from the I LOVE YOU people?

Hmm. Can’t figure out if you’re serious. I think this forum is ruining my sarcasm detector. The number of people that play GW2 that are wealthy enough (and willing!) to make it rain like that has gotta be a tiny percentage. I can’t quite see why ANet would cater the entire game economy towards squeezing out a tiny bit of real world money out of them (in the grand scheme of the budget of this game).

Ursan.7846:

You know, right now $10 gets you 800 Gems, which gets you about 11.5G.

If you do the math, to basically get 1500 G, you need to spend $1304.

I somehow highly doubt many people spend $1300 on pixels. And I highly doubt Anet actually counts on this to make money.

I’m utterly shocked that this point isn’t brought up more often. Why ruin a good conspiracy theory, though?

Yeah, I switch my OH a lot based on situation. My core group would be focus, pistol, and torch – OH sword is fun, but probably the worst of the four for a condition build since there’s only one possible proc of sharper images. For tiny team/solo roaming (80+% of the time for me), I run exactly what you do – Mass Invis, Decoy, Blink. I like Null Field for my 3rd utility.

Alternatively, if they’re going to keep it as a channel, it needs to be an unbreakable stealth – sometimes projectiles I’ve sent out before using the skill break my stealth and it’s really annoying. The iMage needs to be a bit more responsive (the iMariner could be a great thing to pattern it off of), but this Torch hate is frankly a bit melodramatic. It’s not stupendous in PvE or anything (mostly down to the phantasm), but hardly worthy of all this hate.

Am I the only person who likes multiple stealths in WvW? I pretty much never run in zergs, though, and I spend most of my actively attacking time in Staff rather than Sword/Offhand.

Sarcasmic.6741:

Krispera.5087:

OMG no nerf. I welcome the Prestige change.

Trying to encourage Mesmers to use torch is enough of a nerf for this patch along with the stealth changes to trident. Anet didn’t feel they needed to publicly state a new nerf after those.

That’s a bit silly. Torch is a lovely weapon, just one that requires careful usage. I mostly use it in WvW for the combo finisher + stealth, so perhaps it flourishes more there. As for the trident, it’s still ridiculously good – I’ve run the Jellybelly fractal a few times since the change and it performs very well. Am I the only person for whom the old trident felt extremely buggy, albeit powerful?

Oh, the torch phantasm could cast a bit quicker. That would be nice – it’s a bit flowbreaking as is.

Quartz.3462:

Zyk.3597:

Patch seems fine for Mez. I’d like to see some changes to encourage build variety – I do feel like shatter builds are too good compared to condition/phantasm. Mantras might need a rework too. Trident changes are sensible, and it’s nice to see bug fixes – hope to see them systematically fixing all broken skills/traits over the next few months.

Oh, good to see venoms get the “phantasm philosophy” of block/blind/invuln applied to them. Consistency in skill mechanics is good.

(To be clear, I don’t think shatter should be nerfed, at least not by much. I’d just like to see Mez builds be balanced against each other better.)

Minor error. Thief venoms actually got buffed because they used to lose a charge if you attacked in combat even if you were swinging your weapon at nothing. now they only lose charges if someone avoids the attack. They always lost a charge on block, dodge etc. It’s a quality of life change.

I honestly think mesmers are in a good spot now. The change to shattered strength was a bug fix and not a nerf. As a phantasm mesmer there was no way my build could match shatter mesmers before so I’m glad they did not buff it this patch. I’m glad the iduellest trait has been fixed and there have been no huge changes to any profession this patch. on the whole I like this change. I would like more weapon options for all professions though.

Whoops. My Thief is still a baby and I’m saving up for spin2win, so I haven’t really played with venoms much. My main mesmer wishlist would probably be:
– Make mantras worth dabbling in. Building around them is the only way to make them viable, and that’s just not worth doing generally.
– Buff condition damage relative to shatters. I’m not sure it needs to be a major buff, but Mesmers (on land) are just not capable of matching the condition builds of other classes. To be clear, I love the reliance on staff clones and sharper images – that’s what makes a mez build unique – so I don’t want to see a Mez sans phantasms/clones become a condition powerhouse. Condition isn’t the worst in wvw (I play it, personally), but it needs some love in PvE. I’m honestly quite sad that Necros stole our Epidemic/Fevered Dreams-alike from GW1. Taking out the vulnerability on WoC might be a big step towards buffing condition builds, but would that make it too powerful? And how can we approach aoe conditions?
– Leave shatters mostly alone. I think they’re in a good place, post-Shattered Strength nerfbuff (buffnerf?). Very solid and fun set of builds. For Flame Ram’s sake, please don’t buff it again, that was silly and just made every other build nearly pointless in comparison.
– Please give scepter a niche. Deceptive Evasion means that a clone generation weapon is pointless, and scepter clones have literally no usefulness. They proc sharper images the least of all weapons (sword attacks decently fast, GS has three hits/attack, staff is just awesome) and have no “extra” effect (vuln, WoC). Confuse ray is awkward to use and would not even be OP if it just hit all at once – might have some nice usage as a well-timed skill shot if it was near-instant. The #2 block-clone isn’t all that bad, but doesn’t really meld with the rest of the weapon.

[edit] Forgot a really big one for me – please make our clones have the same condition duration as ourselves! It’s annoying when you’re using pizzas or have master of misdirection to see the torch clone’s confusion fizzle out ineffectually.

As much as I liked ridiculous confusion stacks, Trident was a weapon that honestly felt extremely buggy. Didn’t help that the autoattack was entirely useless. From what I saw doing the aquatic daily, it feels a lot more coherent now, albeit less powerful.

Patch seems fine for Mez. I’d like to see some changes to encourage build variety – I do feel like shatter builds are too good compared to condition/phantasm. Mantras might need a rework too. Trident changes are sensible, and it’s nice to see bug fixes – hope to see them systematically fixing all broken skills/traits over the next few months.

Oh, good to see venoms get the “phantasm philosophy” of block/blind/invuln applied to them. Consistency in skill mechanics is good.

(To be clear, I don’t think shatter should be nerfed, at least not by much. I’d just like to see Mez builds be balanced against each other better.)

Getting this bug too. Still have “Master Carver”.

Nrgh. Does anyone know if T3 matchups get significantly less populated and open up a bit as the week wears on? I like capturing small objectives and random small scale fights, but I feel like there aren’t really any gaps for doing that. A ton of camps (and even Yaks) are quite heavily guarded. As soon as a camp gets contested, instant response. I mean, credit to all involved for playing the game well and having such great coverage… I’m just not having much fun since I only have a few buddies that I like to run around with, not a dedicated 5-person that can bust up noticeably superior numbers. I came to Mag along with my tiny PVE guild from a pretty dead server (yay, fighting endless Devona’s zergs) about 6 or so weeks ago on the recommendation of a friend. I really enjoyed the first couple weeks before this crazy ascendancy began and all the matches became landslides. I’m starting to wonder if I’m just not going to enjoy WvW in this tier, though…. Any thoughts? Think Mag might get back down to a level I’d be more comfortable at anytime soon?

If I remember correctly from the one time I had these spammed against me, the golems track you mercilessly. Bit extreme for something that can be spammed for that much damage…. If they took that out and the apparent “slide down the walls” thing, might be okay. It’s sad to see a spammable consumable that’s stronger than most weapon skills, though.

It let me submit it, but perhaps I did it wrong or something. “Confirmation” is pretty hard, unless the Millennium folks have an account on half of the servers. That said, what tipped me off to login and check was the massive disparity between the total points in Kain’s matchup and this one. I really hope ANet releases some web tools for displaying the score and on-the-fly rankings easily in the future…

Envi.2460:

their points are wrong, someone submitted them incorrect they have about 100k less… or so ive been told =)

Real score:
Mag – 479640, +610
YB – 81204, +70
IOJ – 32547, +15

As of a few minutes ago. I posted it in the Mag/YB/IOJ thread.

Don’t get too excited about the rankings on Millenium. Somebody put in fudged numbers for Mag. Their real score is WAY lower. SBI isn’t going to get overtaken.

I’ve submitted the correct ones, and I encourage other people to corroborate it. 100k pt difference there. Whoever did that is kind of a dick, people use that site a lot to check up on matchups if they can’t log in for whatever reason. <_< Too be fair, it might be a legit typo?

Real score:
Mag – 479640, +610
YB – 81204, +70
IOJ – 32547, +15

Protoavis.9107:

Zyk.3597:

No, I think there’s some evidence that precursors have a hand-tuned probability of being forged that is less than expected. It’s also something you can figure out just using common sense:
http://www.gw2spidy.com/type/18/6?rarity_filter=5&min_level=80&max_level=

Not even close to 100 exotic GS, and I’m not entirely sure that crafted exotics are in the MF table (never done L80 exotic combines). Normally, each item has an equal probability within its tier, but this is clearly not the case with precursors – we’d see WAY more being produced and price manip would be extremely difficult as a result. I was curious if anyone had rough data that might point at the hand-tuned probability.

They are (the lvl 80 crafted exo’s in the MF table that is).

I’m either being consistently lucky and always turning a profit on investment to getting a precursor or they aren’t that difficult to get out with the 4 lvl 80 exotic approach, you just may need a couple hundred gold (ie what I think is holding back most from trying it out, the fear of losing that gold and not getting a precusor)

Ah, thanks for letting me know. I’d hazard a guess that the forge-crafted stuff isn’t in the table, though – Volcanus and such.

Hmm, precursors possibly just aren’t as rare from the MF as suspected if you’re consistently turning a profit. You could be really lucky, I suppose. It’s pretty streaky, I imagine – most combines would represent a massive loss, although some non-precursors ones give a decent profit.

No, I think there’s some evidence that precursors have a hand-tuned probability of being forged that is less than expected. It’s also something you can figure out just using common sense:
http://www.gw2spidy.com/type/18/6?rarity_filter=5&min_level=80&max_level=

Not even close to 100 exotic GS, and I’m not entirely sure that crafted exotics are in the MF table (never done L80 exotic combines). Normally, each item has an equal probability within its tier, but this is clearly not the case with precursors – we’d see WAY more being produced and price manip would be extremely difficult as a result. I was curious if anyone had rough data that might point at the hand-tuned probability.

Hmm. Anyone know the odds of getting a precursor from the MF? Anyone recorded a bunch of trials? The L80 exotic market could technically limit the maximum price for a precursor if people were willing to play the averages. However, gambles are sketchy and most people don’t like it, and most L80 rare or exotic combines are quite unprofitable without hitting a precursor jackpot.

Kinda like how pebbles→silver doubloons limited price manipulation on that market.

(Personally, I don’t mess around with going for precursors, since I’m happy to wait at least 6 more months before really going for a legendary. Long-term goal etc.)

I’d only support this if they did a fluffy/dark combo for every class. I want a technicolour necro and a disco ele.

In all seriousness, I love the Mesmer aesthetic. Not sure why everything needs to have a dark grimdark option. I’m totally serious that I’d be fine with that if other classes got more interesting and colourful alternative aesthetics, but, if not, I don’t really see why Mesmer should be singled out for changes.

WaR transferred? Disappointing, they were fun to fight. Is Borlis having internal drama issues as well?

Pentzski.4620:

Zyk.3597:

Whoa, just saw Drednyte’s forum signature. Did he leave PRO/get kicked out? It’s saying he’s on Yak’s Bend now.

He left along with a bunch of other PRO members. Apparently some inner guild drama or something of the sort, though I’m not the best one to ask on this. Just informing of the things I’ve been told.

Ah, not terribly surprised then. Always seemed to be a relatively controversial character. Any idea if DR is going to bleed more players because of this schism, or is it fairly contained?

Whoa, just saw Drednyte’s forum signature. Did he leave PRO/get kicked out? It’s saying he’s on Yak’s Bend now.

Funny to see DR complain about being outnumbered. When was the last time they had a close match…? It’s surely been at least 9 straight wins for them, and, if I remember correctly, the last time they didn’t win by at least 100k pts was 03-10 of November. As someone who fought against the DR hordes for months thanks to the rating system failing T8 very hard, I do have to kinda roll my eyes. (Ah, defending a keep 30v2…) With that said, I don’t wish any ill on them – I just hope they can get a little bit of perspective and not give up just because they’ve hit some resistance. Remember all the “props” you used to give us Fergs? :P I think T5 seems about appropriate for them right now, although I do worry that Maguuma and/or other T4 servers should they come down may have too many people for DR to handle.

Erm. What is an appropriate length for a gem store sale, then? Or should we just have no sales at all?

@sinican – It’s actually pretty easy to test by just going to the Mists. I checked just now, and a Sup Sigil of Force definitely didn’t affect my bleed ticks at all. Ditto vulnerability. The might stacks that staff autoattack gave me did, so be careful about how buffs might impact your perception if you decide to test this out.

Thanks for the advice, everyone! I can’t not take Deceptive Evasion as long as it remains in its current state, because I love popping clones out everywhere. After using that trait for months, the fractal and dungeon path that glitch it out always make me feel terribly naked.

So, assuming I do go with Rabid (Cond/Precision/Toughness) on the advice of most of you lovely people, any suggestions as to what to do with ring/trinket/amulet slots? As far as I know, you can get ascended rabid rings, but that’s a bit more of a “for the future” sort of thing. Run with Rampager for the jewellery? Carrion? Apothecary? Shaman? Something that pumps toughness? A mix of the above?

As for runes, would you suggest Undead, Lyssa, or something else? Undead does seem like an obvious choice given the toughness/condition stacking, but I find it funny that the #6 benefit (5% of toughness to condition damage) actually adds a bit less than the #5 benefit (+100 condition damage) for a lot of builds. Lyssa obviously gives a rather lovely “reset” button in conjunction with Mass Invis.

I’m also curious if you guys think that it might be better to drop Illusionary Persona and add the extra 10 pts elsewhere, such as in Chaos. Obviously, Shattered Strength is nice right now, but that’s surely gonna be nerfed soonish. Is it worth considering a scepter for confusion stacks as well? I’d probably be using the +duration pizzas and the tuning crystals, btw.

I’m thinking of running a 0/20/20/0/30 hybrid shatter/tanky condition Staff+MH Sword+Something build for playing around in WvW and dungeons. Perhaps this is ill-advised, but I’m sorta aiming for a somewhat all-around build that isn’t made of glass. However, I’m not really sure if it’s better to go Carrion (Cond/Power/Vit) or Rabid (Cond/Precision/Toughness) for my gear.

I understand that the conventional knowledge dictates that Rabid is superior for condition-focused Staff builds thanks to Sharper Images and bleed stacking, plus Sup Sigil of Earth for extra bleeds and all that delicious crit synergy. The problem is, I like to shatter very frequently for burst + aoe (nice in dungeons and crowded wvw situations), and so I’m not going to constantly have 3 clones spamming bleeds. Going Rabid over Carrion seems to end up with noticeably weaker shatters with this build from testing I did in the Mists. I’m not actually sure that the extra bleeds outweigh the noticeably lower base damage from attacks and shatters.

I’m just wondering if anyone has some valuable input to provide on which armor set would be more optimal for the Shatter/Condition build I’d like to play. Rabid seems like the better choice in theory, but I’m just not sure that Sharper Images makes up the damage gap. Sup Sigil of Earth also is definitely another point in Rabid’s favour, but the 2 sec cooldown between procs makes it seem slightly less attractive than I first thought. There’s also the whole synergy between Runes of the Undead and Toughness, but the difference isn’t quite as big as I expected.

Or, y’know, you could just tell me that hybrid condition/shatter is a silly idea and I should go sit in the corner. :P

Mmm. How long is it going to take for Kaineng to go up? I’m wondering if wuvwuv on FC will even survive losing most of our already-meagre force, or if it’ll end up like September-era Devona’s Rest…

I’m not keen on the idea of server hopping, but I’m starting to wonder if the off-peak hours that I tend to play at will have any other Fergs on…

New bug: Since the reward (karma+other stuff) resets daily, I’ve been running the puzzle every day to grab it. Today, I opened the chest and got absolutely nothing on my first run. My second run gave me only 3 winterday gifts. So, essentially, the daily reward just completely got skipped.

I’ve gotten this twice… Anyone found a workaround?