Guild Wars 2

Just to throw my personal experience out there.

Since laurels have been implemented, only 2 of my guild members (real life friends) log in anymore. Me and one other. Recently the other friend hopped into a big guild so he could do guild missions.

We used to have around 8-10 on at any given time for about 2-5 hours a day each.

No one likes logging in everyday to do dailies. It’s the first thing you do when you log in and it’s boring. So they just stopped logging in. We already did the daily grind in WoW.

Oh well, so much for the play how you want mantra.

rizzo.1079:

Yep just what I thought, an entire list of unfun, grindy bs.

But you only have to run the same instances every day, 2-4 hours a day for a week! That’s only a part time job

Yay another game I can’t play with my friends because it’s either progress or have fun. I’m not gonna drag all my friends to something they don’t want to do just so I can progress.

Thanks for destroying small guilds everywhere ANET! What a terrible TERRIBLE game design decision.

Dolby Axon does this already too

XxTAFxX.6741:

I would like to know what anet means by this.

Removed the ability to use many karma related items in WvW

Probably the Spiny Fruit things or whatever they were called. And the gears.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

It’s been mentioned in multiple places that there are time limits on the daily missions. Obviously we have no idea how long these are until the patch is released.

But I was thinking about how a few of these are scavenger hunt-ish type things where you’re given a clue and have to go find the boss in the world.
What are those of us who load maps slowly meant to do? Honestly by the time one map has loaded the rest of my guild will have probably already found the mission at which point I am left having to remap and wait even longer while I slowly load into the correct place and have already missed out on a chunk of the content.

Obviously thats the worst case scenario and hopefully something Anet have factored in when designing these, but I guess just what are other peoples thoughts? Does having to load into multiple maps deter you from this? Detract from the intended group element etc?

(Side note, don’t tell me to upgrade my internet, it’s not actually that slow for where I live -5-7Mbps- and there is no way for me to get faster internet. It doesn’t impede me actually playing the game, I have never had lagging or latency issues, maps just load very slowly)

You should buy a solid state drive or lots of ram and put the game into a Ram Disk! Most maps load in like 5 seconds

Nabrok.9023:

Alarox.4590:

Nabrok.9023:

Oh please, you’re not forced to do anything. So you don’t do the daily everyday, you won’t get the item you want as fast as others, but you can still get it eventually.

Exotics are almost as good for any purpose other than providing AR for fractals, and perhaps even better in some cases as you have more flexibility in what stats are available.

And they are supposed to be adding more ways to gain ascended items, including through WvW and crafting. I hope they add this soon, the value of having a jeweler is already greatly diminished with accessories now apparently being added. Please don’t do the same with the armor and weapon crafting professions.

Before it was easy. Get to 80. Get your exotics via WvW/crafting/dungeons/TP. Go have fun in WvW/PvP/Dungeons. The game had a good looking future as it seemed like a lot more open-world PvE content would be added, new dungeons would be added, WvW would steadily be improved, and PvP would receive significant attention to fix its problems and make it e-sport material. Almost none of that has happened.

As a result we get grind. The game was fine the way it was, all that was needed was problem fixing. Instead, we have the game before, except if you don’t want to be behind everyone else you have to spend many hours (cumulatively) doing things you don’t want to do.

There’s many ways you can improve the game. Adding grind is not one of them. It doesn’t improve the quality of the game. What it does is mask the problems and give us a different motivation to play besides fun and cosmetic progression (when that’s all we needed).

I don’t see the grind here. You come in, you do your dailies, 90% of which usually gets done without even trying, eventually you have enough laurels for whatever you want.

Play the game as you would anyway. Get rewards.

Where’s the grind?

No, now I spend 20+ minutes every day in Queensdale doing the same stupid events over every day and gathering COPPER before I can go out and actually play the game the way I want.

I tried doing 3 paths of AC before working on my daily the other day and only got to 25% Daily completion. So back over to Queensdale to finish it up… what a joke.

Make the daily a weekly so we don’t have to log in EVERY DAY to res dead NPCs and hope my teammates die so I can res them would be a good start.

ATMAvatar.5749:

You could get exotic weapons and forge them for a shot at precursors, but I second Zudet’s response – why didn’t you purchase keys as you picked up the commendations?

By the way, the casual gamer title is a tough sell with that many commendations on hand

My girlfriend was / is in the same boat and here’s the reason why:

They didn’t say -anything- regarding removing keys from Lionguard Lynne. She happily spammed the chat every 3 seconds telling everyone to come donate, they kept the recipe in the game while she was disabled. So you could actually create commendations while keys weren’t available to purchase.

Of course if ANET had come out and stated they didn’t intend to sell keys again, people wouldn’t have created thousands of these things with no where to spend them. There was nothing to replace the keys when Lynne came back and your only options were to spend them on worthless items or worthless skins that are kinda fugly.

One of the many dumb and disrespectful decisions ANET has been doing lately. Think it’s time to find a new game for me.

Honestly this whole thing is a stupid argument and doesn’t even really pan out in real game play. If you are wearing MF and doing a stellar job as a teammate, I have no problems or issues with you. If you are wearing MF and doing a crappy job as a teammate, it’s still probably not the MF causing the problem.

I’d take someone who makes the run go smoother over someone who doesn’t, pure and simple. Doesn’t matter what gear you are running. If you contribute (fractals for example — carry the Hammer in cliffside, stand on buttons in dredge, light fires in Snowblind, etc), you are a good teammate. Combos / Finishers, etc.

Yeah OK — if the person in MF is going down a lot or the group’s DPS is mind numbingly slow (as in you can tell the group is dragging in the DPS department), then it’d be nice if everyone took a look at their gear and tried to optimize. But it’s probably the whole group dragging and not just one guy.

For the record, I run full exotic (and whatever ascended I can get) Zerker gear. I just don’t think other people should care that much unless it’s a MAJOR hindrance. Which it probably isn’t if someone is wearing MF.

CassieGold.7460:

I was dropping Temporal Curtain durring a CoF run, while fighting the effigy…. one of the guys in the group asked why since no one needed the speed buff, and was then confused when I said: “because it’s a light field…”

Combo fields are a huge way to support your group, even on skills that don’t seem to have high value situationally for their inherent ‘obvious’ use, by placing combo fields for your team you can be an additional support asset.

Same reason I drop symbol of swiftness in places that no one thinks it’s needed…. light field = good

As a thief, sometimes throwing Shadow Refuge on the boss is helpful for both ranged and melee who are getting low — it’s field has a life steal. This is, of course, if it’s not getting used to res people.

Only problem is sometimes it stealths the melee (drops their aggro) and the boss comes running at a ranged person

Nuka Cola.8520:

I always said the same thing (nerf blah blah) but what they should really do is make its agony animation attack MUCH MORE visible. When everyone is spamming their skills, its extremely hard to see wtf is going on with his animation

Just have your team surround him in a circle. Then he has to actually turn towards you to fire that arrow and it’s much more visible.

Everyone should be able to dodge that anyway, but getting focus fired by him can be an issue ( if he does Fire Arrow → Ground AoE Fire → Fire Arrow all to the same person ).

If you are a thief, using #3 on shortbow once or twice evades most of his attacks pretty well if you are decent at catching the queues for his attacks — like him turning to shoot a fire arrow at you! (and obv smoke screen is helpful here).

Kumakichi.2583:

Well… pugs are just that bad. In my opinion 5% know what they are doing and really try. 10% are elitists who dont know what they are doing. 50% dont know what they are doing or care whether they contribute…. they just want there shineys. I had 3 fail groups in a row trying to get my daily fotm 10 done. Its was a pittiful display of what PUGs can be like.

Worst part is that people got to FotM level 10 and still don’t know what they are doing? How can you run the same dungeons that many times (at least 35 fractals to get to 10) and not know how to contribute properly?

It’s even more infuriating the higher level you get. Doing any of the ‘odd’ numbered fractals between 10-20 is a nightmare — no one knows how to do anything or they just try and exploit/cheat. Worst is they get everyone killed suggesting “everyone stand here, the boss can’t hit you” (then we all proceed to get 2 shot by AoE).

Haha this thread is ridiculous. You guys are seriously considering kicking / excluding people from your group because it might take 45 more seconds to finish the run?

Most of you probably spent more time arguing and writing in this thread about how to save 45 seconds than you’ll probably save over every CoF you ever do.

You guys need a reality check. I guarantee most of you probably don’t “min/max” driving home from work (i.e. weave through traffic and cut people off) to save that precious minute, yet all of a sudden it matters here. I bet if you analyzed anything you do in life you don’t “min/max” it.

So much for enjoying the journey.

+1 would love this

The best part of GW2 is the dodge mechanic. I can’t play any other MMO that doesn’t let me dodge or evade attacks coming at me — and I’m not talking about using LoS like in WoW. I wish every game got rid of “hit chance”, and just let you either dodge it or not.

Azure Prower.8701:

Really? Another thread about dodging? This should be merged with the other threads.

But how ever. Your solution:

Roll thief.
Lure a bunch of mobs to your position underwater.
Use shadow assault (spear 5).
Get dodge daily done in 10 seconds.
Profit.

You’re welcome.

Haha that’s what I do! Go to WvWvW (your own one), take Garrison WP, jump in water and grab like 10 Krait, spam #5. Done in like 10 seconds!

Of course, not everyone can do that, in which case I suggest:

- Go to WvWvW (your own Borderlands)
- Run a little north east until you find the Neutral Worms. They are all on the path that leads up and down from the cliff on the east side of the citadel.
- Hit one of the big ones ONCE with a melee weapon or something that won’t auto attack kill him.
- Stand kinda far back and dodge the REALLY slow rock he throws at you.
- If you time it right, you get two dodges. One for the rock and one for the frost on the ground.
- Repeat for like 2 minutes.

Hope that helps!

Daily healer and kill variety can also -very- easily be done in Metrica Providence, the top left of the map where the Fire Elemental spawns. That area is constantly covered in dead Asura NPCs.

TigerDragon.4037:

I just hope it lets very small guilds participate easily. Our guild has four people total, and not all of us are active to the same degree.

Same… guild of RL friends here. About 10 total but only about 3-4 active at any time during the day.

Would love something ~3-5 of us could do together as a guild but not be a dungeon :P

Solid Gold.9310:

Zaxares.5419:

Per week:
- Kill 500 enemies.
- Kill 20 different enemy types.
- Kill 50 Veteran enemies.
- Dodge 50 attacks.
- Craft 50 items.
- Gather 100 ingredients.
- Do 50 events.

Each of those tasks above rewards 1 Laurel and the usual rewards. You can either blaze through them all in a single day (getting 7 rewards at one go), or slowly complete them separately or together over the course of the week. At the end of the week, the player still ends up in the same spot, but they have the option of either getting it all done quickly or at a slower pace, whichever suits their gaming schedule better.

Actually I quite like this idea, it would help people who can’t log in every single day.

I second this. Make them weekly instead of daily. Have them reset the middle of the week (like Wednesday). That gives Friday, Sat, Sun, Mon available to complete them — and you cover weekends in other countries as well! (note: I’m from US, but obv Anet has had issues with dealing internationally with their one time events record).

I stopped playing WoW many years ago and the thing I don’t miss at all was “doing my dailies”. Forced logging into the game every day is bad design for a game like GW2 which is marketed as a “play at your own pace” game.

I farm fractals for money. At about level 20 they give pretty decent loot and I net anywhere from 2-6 gold per hour. Depends on your group, etc. This is just pugging it though. Not to mention the ascended rings and whatnot that are actually upgrades for most people

It isn’t “reliable” in the sense that you are looting chests for your rewards most of the time, but lodestones, rares, and exotics drop pretty regularly.

juno.1840:

Heals are a problem for some professions. Take mesmer where the only group heal we have is if you trait 30pts for restorative mantras.

I don’t think my mesmer has healed anyone but himself… ever.

You could always get people up from downed state (pretty sure that works).

Hell, I got credit for throwing Shadow Refuge on a downed person and someone else getting him up, on my thief.

Blueshield.6291:

In my experience so far, the best place I’ve found is the Uncategorized Fractal. Excellent source of Powerful Blood, and running fractals in general should net you an average of 1 rare per individual fractal to break down for ecto.

Outside of that, there’s a pretty good swath of geography on the west side of Frostgorge Sound. Everything from drakes and skelks to bears and griffons – at a high enough level – have a chance to drop Powerful Blood.

I’d go with the Fractals, though. Personally, I’ve had much better results there.

I know this is a ways off if you don’t Fractal much, but at lvl 20 I make around 3-4g per run. Usually that’s anywhere from 3-8 globs and whatever else drops. I’m seeing way more random named exotics at lvl 20 than previous levels. Plus the Jade Maw fractal (at the end of even numbered fractal levels) gives decent loot if you kill the mobs there.

Blacklight.2871:

Warruz.8096:

Zeldain.5710:

Raids are not inherently tied to gear progression.

Raids are simply large-scale organized group/guild PvE content.

Something this game DESPERATELY needs.

This so much, I love raiding . While I have become more casual with it over time I still enjoy the group dynamics of working together which of course comes with a social aspect desperately needed.

The social aspects I recall from raiding involve standing around for half an hour while the stragglers file in, trying to pretend that I wouldn’t rather be doing anything else but sitting on my hands; shrieking at the newbs for making newb mistakes; then wheedling, complaining and ultimately crying, over loot drops.

There are times I would have given my left arm, just for the opportunity to beat my fellow raiders over the head with it until the bleating stopped. I never, ever, ever want to be forced to play with people I don’t want to play with, in order to access game content I’ve paid for. Never again.

Raiding belongs to WoW and they both belong in the gutter. Better Blizzard continues to copy ArenaNet’s ideas than the other way around.

Pretty much!

Raiding can stay in the gutter. In fact, I want the opposite — I wish dungeons and fractals scaled DOWN for less players. My girlfriend and I would have a much better time in fractals if we didn’t have to keep playing with people we don’t want to.

There’s a thread from the Dungeon forums that talked about what people think of Guardians in instances. It has some insight and what people feel are the most “useful” specs in dungeons.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/What-do-you-think-about-Guardians/first#post1266556

I still feel the spec I’ve been running on my Guardian is pretty solid and I have no problems with surviving and pseudo tanking (as much as you can tank in this game). I basically can face tank bosses and then just jump back into the group and use “4” with the staff to get back to full if I run out of cooldowns to mitigate damage.

From the other forum:

I have a shout Guardian who (I’d like to think) is very useful in fractals. He runs PVT armor from AC tokens / karma with full Soldier runes (last one removes condition every shout). The shouts I use are Hold the Line, Save Yourselves, and either Retreat, Stand Your Ground. In the third utility slot, sometimes I’ll use Wall of Reflection (projectile fights) or Battle Roar (extra dps for not hard fights).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARWlYgyC33xKEf4ERWhVi9AjwPjXPcIFZIA;T4Ag0ynEOJdS9kyJqsMZJyymlLLZWrPGEA

GS for grouping mobs so runs go faster, staff for might/healing when I’m low or a teammate is low. My dps isn’t bad either haha

Jewelry can be a mix of Knights w/ Berserker gems in it or just straight Berserker. I think right now I’ve got Knights w/ Berserker gem for Amulet. I’ve got the Red Ring of Death (Berserker) and the Power/Tough/Crit Damage Ascended ring in the other slot. Back is Power/Tough/Crit damage.

You’re gonna want to keep your crit rate somewhat high for AH to work well. Mine is like 27% (low) with the gear above and have considered switching my back and other ring to more Berserker type gear to convert that toughness → prec. That’s your own choice though.

Keep a scepter and focus in your bag for ranged fights. (Jade Maw / last kiting dredge boss, etc).

Yaki.9563:

blinkxzero.8035:

I have a shout Guardian who (I’d like to think) is very useful in fractals. He runs PVT armor from AC tokens / karma with full Soldier runes (last one removes condition every shout). The shouts I use are Hold the Line, Save Yourselves, and either Retreat, Stand Your Ground. In the third utility slot, sometimes I’ll use Wall of Reflection (projectile fights) or Battle Roar (extra dps for not hard fights).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARWlYgyC33xKEf4ERWhVi9AjwPjXPcIFZIA;T4Ag0ynEOJdS9kyJqsMZJyymlLLZWrPGEA

GS for grouping mobs so runs go faster, staff for might/healing when I’m low or a teammate is low. My dps isn’t bad either haha

Yes it is, stop deluding yourself. You bring decent utility but the Vitality is largely wasted and you do bad DPS. You’d be much better doing the exact same thing with Cleric’s gear.

Using Berserker jewelry to offset some of the DPS loss from the rest of the armor. Yeah he doesn’t hit as hard as my full Berserker thief, but the damage from the Guardian is pretty stable and isn’t as terrible as you imply.

I have a shout Guardian who (I’d like to think) is very useful in fractals. He runs PVT armor from AC tokens / karma with full Soldier runes (last one removes condition every shout). The shouts I use are Hold the Line, Save Yourselves, and either Retreat, Stand Your Ground. In the third utility slot, sometimes I’ll use Wall of Reflection (projectile fights) or Battle Roar (extra dps for not hard fights).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARWlYgyC33xKEf4ERWhVi9AjwPjXPcIFZIA;T4Ag0ynEOJdS9kyJqsMZJyymlLLZWrPGEA

GS for grouping mobs so runs go faster, staff for might/healing when I’m low or a teammate is low. My dps isn’t bad either haha

Basically this build just keeps removing conditions and buffing the group, plus absorbing lots of damage or mitigating it (Aegis spam w/ retreat, Aegis, then Renewed Focus and Aegis again). And you remove 2 conditions every 10 seconds passively if you are eating a lot of them or use Save Yourselves and bring them from your allies to you.

Guardian is incredibly amazing in dungeons. My thief can stealth, smoke screen, and dps — that’s about it :P

I’ve got a lvl 80 thief that is 20+ and I’ve run fractals like a billion times (I sometimes farm level 20 for gold since it’s like 3g+ per run). I find fractals fun since I’ve always been a dungeon runner.

I leveled a Guardian alt and was able to get up to level 10 (not actually doing 10) before I hit 80. I think I started doing them around level 20ish.

Now I would argue that my Guardian at level 20 was reasonably less effective than he is at 80 — that’s common sense. Keeping my gear current (each 5 levels) the scaling wasn’t too poor. I obviously didn’t have my elite skill available yet and my runes aren’t as nice (Shout build so Soldier runes at 80 are way better than when you are leveling).

Given all that information, would you still not want a lower level in your group if we are doing anything below level 5 fractals? I know all the fractals like the back of my hand and will be able to dodge most of the incoming damage since it’s regular routine. Not to mention a willingness to do more of the objectives (carry hammer / break seal, stand on buttons, light fires, etc) to somewhat make up for the lower level?

Usually when a group questions me when I’m on an alt I just link the 12213213 billion ascended rings sitting in my bank and they don’t care that I’m low level anymore

Would like an invite as well! Thanks in advance

blinkxzero.8035

Haha, yeah, always having the outmanned buff sucks at times…